Quote Originally Posted by JimR View Post
Ehsan-I hear your frustration. I felt something very similar when I first started this path. So here's the not-necessarily-honing-specific advice my barber gave me, which helped me out immensely.

1. Just do one thing. Choose one hone, one slurry stone, one razor, and work on that. If you're jumping form hone to hone, razor to razor, your variable just get way too jumbled and it's hard to control your results.

2. Relax. When you start to get frustrated with your honing, it comes out in your body. Your razor control can get bad, your strokes can become uneven and the results just aren't there.

3. Hone happy. If you're not happy, you're probably thinking about something else and not paying attention to what you're doing.

Finally, specific hone advice. When raising your slurry, time>pressure. It can take a while to raise a good slurry with your tomonagura. Don't use pressure to speed it up, just use the time. Pressure can cause not only clumpy, bad slurry but can muck up the surface of your hone.

And finally, the kiita I sent you is well suited to slurry honing, just make sure you don't use much pressure in honing, because it has a tendency to release fresh particles and that can dampen your final polish.
Thanks for the tips, Jim. I think for now I'll stick to the Kiita you sent me and use a piece of it to raise slurry, since you've tested it with slurry and know that it gives a good edge.

I was definitely using a fair bit of pressure to raise my slurry, so I'll try going about it more slowly from now on. I'll keep posting in this thread as I keep trying.