I have two diamond sharpening tools and they are nothing like the stones that I have seen others using in this site or any other site. So do I try and hone using the stones? That where all I could afford or can I get away with a separate cromium oxide (green) pasted strop to hone my blade?
If your budget is real tight have a look at the king Icebear 1K/6K combo.
It's not the fastest, and it's not the best. For the price it's a great little stone that's going to do what you need.
For the Crox the cheapest option is to make a paddle. Get a length of cheap smooth hardwood, And get some balsa wood. 2-3 inch wide 10 inches long, and of a thickness of over 1/4 inch. Glue the balsa to the hardwood, Give it a light sand then apply your crox. The cheapest crox is powder form, and you can mix it with a little mineral oil to make a paste.
Ebay or a local model shop is the place to find your balsa. Any good razor store online should sell the correct grade of crox. And the hardwood can be scavenged from a pallet or anything else you can dig out of a bin. You should be able to build the whole thing for under £10 ($15).
The king stone generally retails for about £35 ($50) And covers a bevel setter and a finishing hone with a single purchase. While the stones are not in any way the best, they do work, and they have a superb price point.
The other option is to get better stones and stagger the buying.
The norton 4/8 retails for about $75, but you might need a bevel setter as well to go with that. You get a lot more stone for the money with the norton.
My preference for stones has been the king, It's part of my mid term program on razor honing, I didn't want any norton stones, so I went for the king 1/6 the next stone will be a 12K naniwa. Then I will go back at intervals and replace the 6K with a 5-8K naniwa, and the 1K with a 1K nainiwa. The total outlay to do this in one step is pretty big here in the UK it's about £180 for those 3 stones! Doing it with the king only adds £35 to the cost, and for that I get a competent stone that when I have everything else in place will still be great for knives and chisels.
Your diamond plates probably have a grit rating of between 150 and 400. This really isn't any good for sharpening a razor. Added to that diamonds put deep cuts into the metal. There fine if your sorting problems, removing chips ect. On a good razor they will do more damage than good.
I've heard that a barber's hone can maintain an edge indefinatley. Maybe get a crox strop as well, just for polishing.
Well if you're kind of limited in funds you can get a nice quarter hone at whippeddog. He sells hones that are just as good as any but smaller size. Works just as well :gl: