Originally Posted by
Rocan
Score! Been busy with class lately so no pictures yet unfortunately... But good news!
Found the time to speak to my father to ask him to borrow some of his lower grit hones he uses for some of his knives... He mentioned to me that he has a "box of those very high grit japanese stones" that he got a while ago... I got real excited and questioned him further. My fathers the kind of guy who isn't too cultured on the classic methods of doing something as you'd learn from a professional, but an extremely intelligent man who knows a good thing when he sees them. As he put it, they were very high quality natural stones, some of them being so smooth that they felt like glass. I asked him if they were square, and he said he had ran a straight edge across them when he got them and that some of them were dead straight while the others were close. he hadn't touched them in a while though. so he can't remember their exact condition. Unfortunately he wont be able to get those to me for a little while, but for now I'll have myself a rougher hone to do some quick work on the edge.
He also mentioned that he still had a couple of straights sitting around somewhere, if only he could find them. Time will tell.
My soap and brush came in a few days ago as well. Colonel Ichabod for both, the brush being a 37 dollar badger hair brush that has just the right texture when moist (at least in my opinion... Not the softest brush (I remember my grandfathers being VERY soft), but I like the firmness). As soon as I made my first lather (which is a lot easier then people make it out to be, I had a nice fluffy lather in about 2 minutes on my hand (for now)) and took a shave (still using my production POS for now) I was hooked. Not to mention how little of the soap you need! I got a closer smoother shave then I have in ages.
I'm considering picking up a DE safety razor at some point (probably will if I find a nice old Gilette that I can buff up really nicely on my buffers) for the faster shaves while I'm still inexperienced.
Really excited... I love it when aspects of my life improve!