My JaNorton Misadventures

It was pretty painful to take two of my best-shaving razors, both of which I had honed with great success using the Norton 1k to set the bevel, then following the pyramid method fairly religiously to get them to shaving readiness, then finishing them on the 8k.

But...here we go...

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In preparation for the honing, I very gently ran the edge of my blades over a drinking glass, then took them to the stones. I had lapped my 4k/8k in the sink with my DMT 325 (the big 4"x10" monster).

I started with the TI Le Canadien, deciding to roughly follow Maxi's successful steps as described in his post here.

So it was:

4k) Medium slurry with my nagura. 20 circles, moderate pressure. Repeat. Followed with 10 X's, moderate pressure. Rinse stone and razor. TNT pass. Then 20 circles, no pressure. Repeat. Followed by 10 X's no pressure. Rinsed stone and razor. Finished with 10 X's, smooth, even strokes. At this point, it wasn't doing a good job on arm hair, so I took it back on the clean 4k for a further 10 X-strokes, at which point it seemed to be popping arm hair fairly well, so I moved it up.

8k) 10 X's, no pressure. Rinsed stone and razor. New water on stone. Remove water with finger. Damp stone: 10 X's, ultra light, very slow stroke (3-4 seconds down, 3-4 seconds back).


For the W&B Bow Razor, I followed pretty much the same steps for bevel setting on the 4k, but after the 40 circles and about 20 X-strokes, I moved to a pyramid.
This is 4k/8k: 20/5, 15/5, 10/5, 7/5, 5/5, 3/5, 3/7, 1/7,1/10. Now the blade was ploughing through arm hair with ease, so I proceeded to clean the stone and razor, then, holding the stone in the palm of my hand, I went for 10 slow X-strokes with very little water.

That's it for the stones, now I'll strop them each for 100/100 on my SRD Premium IV, then maybe a further 50 on the 'roo strop I got from episaacs. Tomorrow will be a shave-test with the W&B, then maybe the next day the Le Canadien.

Fun stuff!

Thanks to all the experienced honers for sharing their methods, as it's a great guide for the noobs like me. If I can't get these dialled in like this, I'll go back to trying the bevel set on the 4k again, then run them through some more pyramids, as I know those work for me.