Got the Norton kit from SRD yesterday and attempted to hone up a flea market find that I recently polished up. I inspected the bald before starting and realized that it had a spot about 1/3 of the way out from the heel that seemed to have a little wider bevel than the rest of the blade and that the bevel on the opposite side was much thinner across the length of the whole balde. So I ignored all that and honed it anyway. After a few passes on the 1k, I got a decent TNT, so I moved to the 4k/8k and did the standard pyramid as posted in the Wiki. After the 4k, I wasn't getting much arm hair shaving ability...more like scraping. But I again, I moved on. Long story short, my final results were rather disappointing.

So I did a little more research, watched some of Glen and Lynn's videos and retried my hand at it. I took the blad all the way back to the 220 stone to try to remove the "high spot" and even out the width of the bevels. I did about 40 circles on each side with a fair amount of pressure. The blad was more even as were the two bevels.

Then, on to the 1k with similar circles, a few back strokes and then 25 really good X strokes. Right away I could feel a difference and could cut (NOT shave) some of my arm hair. TNT was consistant across the blade.

I went to the 4k/8k, again following the pyramid. After the first 25 laps on the 4k I was popping arm hairs off. I really tried to focus on the idea of polishing at this point with very light strokes. Two hands actually seemed to make it easier to apply less pressure, pushing the bald forward rather than down.

I did the whole pyramid with tape on, then pulled the tape and did 5 strokes on on the 8k. I followed this with 25 on the 1mic diamond spray and 25 on the .5 CrO2 strop. Now the arm hairs were really popping. I don't get a good HHT, but can cut them eventually. I did dry shave a couple of spots on my face and there was little or no pulling. Don't get me wrong...it is an order of magnitude less sharp than what I got from Lynn on my first Dovo. But I took a $25 razor, cleaned it up, and made it "shave ready." Or at least, I think I did. Pretty cool.

Can't wait to strop it up and shave tomorrow morning.

--David