Thread: Finishing Threesome

Hey Dave,
It is truely satisfying, finding a natural stone progression, as well as a finisher that work well. Ive done so myself, with a number of natural stone progressions and find it immensely satisfying.
Congrats man!

Thanks,

Mac

Great thread.

I would think there's a lot of redundancy in the progression mentioned in the first post. But if you have the hones, and you like using them all in the same honing sequence, I don't mind being wrong with that opinion.

On Coticules, in my experience so far, only two issues can cause a Coticule to fail as a finisher.
One is a defect. If the stone is contaminated with one or more small chunks of quartz, it wont work well on razors. Some Coticule layers have quartz contamination, that's why the people of Ardennes Coticule really keep an open eye for it. If by great exception one would escape their attention, I am very sure they would replace it immediately.
The second issue is with very soft Coticules. It's rare, but some Coticules are so soft they will generate slurry from the contact with the razor. These are always very fast hones. The issue can be fixed by finishing under a slowly running tap.
All other Coticules I ever tried (not counting, but I'm talking about 40-50 hones, both standard and select grade, various sizes and shapes) have always been excellent finishers. I can't feel the differences on my face, and I don't believe that anyone else can either.

About overhoning. It seems to me the term is used for several conditions. Sometimes, lower level scratches can turn up as strange anomalies during the finer stages in a honing progression...
With enough pressure, anyone can tear the fragile edge of a razor apart on any hone.
But using the X-stroke (or one of the variations) with normal light pressure, I haven't overhoned an edge even while doing a 1000 laps on a Cotilcule, or doing several 100's on a Nakayama, or similar lap counts on the Naniwa Chosera10K (a synthetic hone). The only wire edges I have raised so far, were on DMT-E, and they rather quickly dissolved while honing on a BBW with slurry. If you get StraightRazorDave's excellent results, why worry about something that most guys who rely on natural hones have never met?

Care to try reversing that "finishing threesome" progression and see what edge that delivers?

Best regards, and cheers for the fine results,

Bart.

reading along here I get the impression that it is assumed that a finish stone must be a slow stone; why?

I have never heard anywhere of high quality japan finish stone refered to as slow.

Pressure has something to do with it. If i touch down on a razor with asagi stone it will show black instantly. Using light touch = not so much. This to me does not make for a slow stone. it's just light pressure on a fast cutting finisher that is somewhere between 16 and 30k+