Thread: Leo's Daddy Learns to Hone (picture heavy)

Originally Posted by olafurson

What if the only instrument ever available to Louis Armstrong was an electric guitar? Would we know his name today?

Did he ever try to master all the other instruments in existence? I don't know. Maybe he could have possibly been THE man to make the Hobo a truly popular music. Just like my famous countryman Toots Thielemans made the harmonica acceptable in serious Jazz. What if he played trumpet? Who's to tell. You can get so busy trying all different options in life, that you end up mastering nothing. In my humble opinion, this art called life has a lot to do with making choices and sticking by them.

Originally Posted by olafurson

Why would finishing on paste work when finishing on coticule-with-water wouldn't? I would think once the bevel was set, you could finish on whatever you wanted. None of that makes sense to me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's theoretically possible to go straight from a low grit hone to a high grit hone without a third hone in the middle, right? It'll take longer to grind down the harsh grooves of the low grit hone and get to a fine polish, but it'd still work.

Wouldn't it then still work to go from a slurried coticule to a water-only coticule, if you just accepted the fact that you'll need a buttload of passes on the water-only to wear down the slurry-created grooves??

I'm not saying that's how I want to do it, I'm just asking.

Most hones, in casu synthetic water hones and diamond hones, refine the edge by replacing coarse scratches with finer scratches. Coticules don't quite work that way. Their large garnets cut deep when they are free to spin in a slurry, between the steel and the surface of the hone. On water, those same garnets are only partially exposed, and can't spin. In a manner of speaking, the edge rides on a bed of microscopical multi-facetted marbles. The garnets now cut extremely shallow and exert more of a polishing effect. Here's a picture of a Unicot edge. The lower part carries the typical "sandblasted" pattern of slurry. The secondary bevel is polished on water.

We use slurry, because the hone is too slow to work with water for any significant steel removal. But slurry has a downside. The very edge bounces with the garnets as well, which is slightly detrimental to it. Basically we are at the same time removing steel from the bevel sides (which has a sharpening effect) and rounding the very edge (a dulling effect). The finer the edge, the less it can withstand the impact with the garnets. At a certain point, the edge will loose as much keenness as it gains from steel removal off the bevel. That limit is determined by the density of the slurry (and by the natural differences between Coticules).
On most Coticules, the edge is not yet sharp enough for finishing at that point. There are a number of options to augment the keenness. Diluting the slurry (too lessen the dulling effect) is one. A secondary bevel is another. Putting it on a high grit synthetic hone works too. And even your BBW with light slurry does the trick, because the garnets in the BBW display far less "slurry dulling", unfortunatly it cuts also much slower.

Bottom line. A set bevel off a Coticule is not yet sharp enough for final finishing it. There has been a lot of debate about this, but I believe this is the same with an edge coming form a synthetic 1K hone, but that edge does carry a sawtooth pattern, which aids its cutting performance, but does not provide a smooth shave for the skin. With a Coticule you are gaining sharpness till the very end, relying on the HHT during the final stages demonstrates that on each razor I hone.

Originally Posted by olafurson

Fine. I'm going to try the Unicot method, ONCE, and document its success or failure. Maybe if I can convince myself the simple Unicot works, I'll be more willing to give the complicated Dilucot the study time it requires.

I'll try again, just for you Jimmy. And I'd better not annoy Bart too badly if he's the only dude who knows how to explain how to use this thing.

Why all the skepticism? There's a growing group of people making use of a Coticule to its full extent, and several of them are more than capable to compare with other methods. Furthermore the procedures I have gathered to use that hone are fully disclosed and explained, here on SRP in countless threads and on my website. And yet you almost sound as if you would be highly surprised that any of it works.

Respectfully,
Bart.

I don't know if Louis Armstrong would have been a great guitar player. I don't know if you would have been better off getting just a yellow coticule rather than a combo stone. I don't know how much a particular stone contributes to one's eventual overall honing skills. I don't know what is "theoretically possible" in a honing progression.

But I do know how to take a dull blade and make it sharp.

As a psychiatrist, I have noted how many very intelligent people get victimized by their own brains. Because it is such a strong tool for them, they depend on it too much. They overthink things. They reason and conjecture and run "thought experiments" in their heads, which is all well and good -- up to a point. That point is reached, I think, when it interferes with decisive, effective action; when thinking takes the place of doing.

Watch a child at play. They enter games with their full selves -- body, spirit, will, imagination. They do not think: "Should I jump?" They just jump. And this play is the basis of all future successful activities. They discover their limits, their abilities, their purpose. And it is done not in the abstract, not in theory, but in the present, and with joy.

I think that is the best orientation to adopt when learning to hone.