Pressure and torque: An observation.
A while ago I had several "AHA" moments due to this thread: http://straightrazorpalace.com/honin...tml?highlight=
I finally developed a fine and controlled one handed honing stroke for those super fine finishing stones.
But here's the catch, ever since that thread my edges went down the drain, my usually reliable HHT were suddenly failing all over and the shaves were lousy, incredibly frustrating. :banghead:
I tried all sorts of stuff, various progression of pastes and sprays on leather and balsa, sprays on my stones, you name it.
And the edges were still crap, suddenly my Feather SS and DE's got a lot more use due to my frustration.:gaah:
So finally I had to sit down and try to evaluate what the heck was going on. :thinking::hmmm:
Obviously a honing stroke that was so light you'd need a Hadron Collider to measure it was not working out. At all.
Then suddenly something Glen said to me during that previous thread came to mind, he always apply some torque towards the edge when honing. Even when doing the light finishing strokes.
And that was it, I whipped out the Shaptons for like the 10th time in a couple days, kept the pressure still light, but torqued the razor towards the edge at all times, even doing the "3-2-1" on the Shapton 30k.
Even when stropping I could feel I had my good edge back, the image I saw in my scope looked like my "old" edges and when I finally got to shave, I had a killer smooth shave, thank heavens!
:rock:
So what have I learned?
We are dealing with metal, it needs some contact with the hones, doing a Yoda-stroke using the Force to barely hover over the hones does little.
Keep pressure down, use slight torque, you want the very edge to positively contact the hone at all times.
Now the real work ahead is finding just the right balance for the finest hones, to really tap into edge magic. :)
Glad to be out of this rut, it was no fun.