Thread: Keeping my nose to the...er...Japanese Natural Stone

Hi folks,

This is a very long post. Hope some of you can make it through it

I've recently received a Japanese Natural Stone from thejapanblade.com. It's a Oozuku Kiita final finishing stone with Nashiji, rated at 4+ hardness, but supposedly as fine as harder asagis (as far as I can tell, Alex does a lot of testing on these stones, so I'm taking his notes at face value). It's pretty fast too, darkening on slurry in about 20-30 x-strokes, and I notice some slightswarf after about 20 x-strokes on water.

I've attached a picture of the stone.

I've been playing around with it for the last couple days, trying to learn it, and it definitely seems like it's going to be a long process. This thread is going to be some sort of a honing diary for it. Short version of this post: having troubles getting keenness, skip down to the bottom for specific questions.

Some background: I learned to hone on a coticule, and I learned how to get a nice keen edge on a La Verte Coticule. However, the razors that I finished off with it would leave a slightly harsh feel on my face, especially after a couple days in a row. Eventually I learned that a lot of people feel similarly about La Vertes, that they don't leave that mellow of an edge. So, I ended up selling it, and grabbed a select coticule. Something to note is that the HHT for a finished razor off of this stone yielded a slight catch and pop, but it was pretty easy to pass the HHT.

This new one is an interesting little specimen. It's definitely really fast on slurry (starts darkening almost immediately), but I've got some issues getting it as keen as I want. After a bunch of experimenting, and eventually doing the unicot method, I had a razor that would shave, but not as nicely as I wanted. It was definitely a mellow edge, but not as keen as I wanted. The surface of this coticule does feel noticeably rougher than the japanese natural, and also compared to the la verte I had previously.

In order to try and get the best of both worlds, I decided it would be a good idea to finally get into Japanese Natural Stones, as it certainly sounds like they can give you a very keen and smooth edge.

After receiving this particular stone, I've been playing around with it, practicing on a 5/8 full hollow Erik Anton Berg with one layer of tape. I'm getting the razor to undercut water easily on the coticule, and then raising a medium slurry on the JNat with a supplied tomonagura stone. I've tried working on this until it dries out, then refreshing and raising new slurry until it dries out, and the edge is undercutting all the slurry. I do halfstrokes throughout, and then I add a little water and do x-strokes until that dries (about 20 or 30).

After doing this, I had a razor that would shave, but once again didn't feel that keen. The razor won't pass the HHT, although it does cut my arm hair pretty easily.

I tried a variation of this again today, starting with undercutting plain water on the coticule. Then I raised heavier slurry, doing x-strokes until it started to turn pasty, then I added water and raised some new slurry on top of the old stuff, and kept going. This time when it started drying out, I added water, and then after every 20 x-strokes I added more, diluting until I got to very light slurry (overall this took about 5 or 6 dilutions). Then I rinsed both the stone and my razor, and reapplied tape. On plain water I did about 30 x-strokes, and the entire edge was undercutting water.

Since I had already shaved today, I was unable to test the edge on my face. It did cut arm hair above skin level quite easily, but still didn't start to pass the HHT.

Here are some questions for those of you who made it all the way through this novel.

1. Has anyone noticed that they cannot pass the HHT as easily off of a Japanese natural stone?
2. I've used undercutting on water as a test to tell that I've got the maximum keenness off of a coticule (or if not the maximum, quite close). Is this not similar on a Japanese natural?
3. I do use a guiding finger near the tip of the razor, but I'm very careful about not adding any extra pressure with it. I try to keep the finger behind, rather than on top of the spine to help with that. This method has been fine when using a coticule. I also tried to hold the JNat in my hand, using the other to do strokes, but it felt like I was adding uneven pressure so I stopped and went back to my previous method. I did this right at the beginning, so did all the slurry work and dilutions the second try with the guiding finger. Would the original one handed funky strokes have screwed things up enough that they could not be reclaimed? Could using a guiding finger add enough pressure to screw up an edge?

Any other tips/tricks?

Thanks in advance!