interesting thing dawned on me today....

I recently purchased a coticule/Belgian Blue whetstone combo stone, and after reading all the info about the dilucot and unicot methods, a strange thing occurred to me. Both methods recommend stropping about 60 times on linen and then 60 on leather after honing before shaving. Given the amount of stropping (especially on linen), could the "magic" behind the comfortable edge that coticules produce be caused more by the stropping afterward than the stone itself? I haven't shaved directly off the stone, but it seems like it could be that a comfortable edge comes more from stropping than any particular finisher? Please forgive if this is heresy, it was just a thought that crossed my mind.

That's a good question. But I say whatever works.

In my experience you need to strop any razor after honing before you test the edge. Just try coticule and 60 laps on leather only and compare it to stropping on both leather and linen and see whether it makes a difference.

At the end of the day the only thing that really matters is that you get a comfortable smooth shave. Experiment and see what works best for you.

:rofl2:

There are several threads about stropping after honing, it gets real interesting if you go farther back in the achives here on SRP and you will find that some actually found that Honing, then stroping 50/100, then shaving, then stroping on the paste of choice, then stropping 50/100 again brought out a significant change in how smooth the shave became and stayed... The theory back then was that the shave broke down the edge, and got to the true edge, then the paste tweaked it in..

Try that and see what you think :)

This is a very good question and is so very difficult to quantify. All we have are experienced, anecdotal, qualitative data from users on this, and other, blogs. Of course this is valuable data for sure, but what our hobby really needs is an scanning electron micrograph "SEM" of edges followed by some sort of quantitative cutting resistance that simulates whiskers. There are such tools for knives, but the edge of a straight razor is far to fragile to use them.

With that said, here is my anecdotal response. :D

I think that the stropping on leather is the single most important refining step to any edge, and that if it is being done right there is benefit up to 100 strokes beyond which I don't find and difference. I typically use 60-80 laps. I have always found it fascinating that most DE razor manufacturers stop at ~900 grit for the final hone on the micro-edge. Of course the angle and pressure are perfect. Out of curiosity I have tried a lightly honed razor right off my 1000 grit followed by CrO balsa then 100 laps of leather. It was an excellent shave virtually indistinguishable from my Naniwa 12k finish. What this means to me is that once the edge has converged perfectly, even at a fairly low grit, the refining stages of CrO and/or leather seem to be contributing the most to the comfort of the shave. Of course this is just a qualitative opinion.
:D

No. As much as I believe in the benefits of stropping, there is no way you can strop a good edge onto a blade if the edge was rubbish off the hone in only 60/60 (or even at all, depending on the edge). So I would say that, regardless of the name you want to put to a honing recipe, the smoothness or lack thereof of the edge can never be solely attributed to the post-honing stropping regime.

James.

You could always just try to shave directly off the stone, omitting the stropping. That would show you exactly what is gained from the stone, and what is from the stropping. I have shaved directly off most of my hones, it is quite interesting and rarely very uncomfortable.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

No. As much as I believe in the benefits of stropping, there is no way you can strop a good edge onto a blade if the edge was rubbish off the hone in only 60/60 (or even at all, depending on the edge). So I would say that, regardless of the name you want to put to a honing recipe, the smoothness or lack thereof of the edge can never be solely attributed to the post-honing stropping regime.

James.

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You make a good point. I agree that stropping will not make a bad edge better or shave ready. However, your statement does support the fact that stropping does make a good edge even better. Stropping is doing something at the microscopic level to the edge at this point beyond what is acheived by the stone alone. Otherwise, we would all just shave directly off our stones, which I have also done with some success.

I think that was the point being made. That a nicely honed bevel and edge from just about any coticule or waterstone is definitely improved by the stropping process and that this may be the ultimate determinant of shave ready. Otherwise, why strop at all.
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My statement had nothing to do with making a good edge better. That is a given. The OP asked whether these so-called unicot and diluticot recipes edge's comfort is more to do with the stropping than it is to do with the stone. I said no it isn't using what is generically referred to here as the "polished turd" principle as an example. If this is not the case, why hone at all?

James.

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Originally Posted by Gammaray

Out of curiosity I have tried a lightly honed razor right off my 1000 grit followed by CrO balsa then 100 laps of leather. It was an excellent shave virtually indistinguishable from my Naniwa 12k finish. What this means to me is that once the edge has converged perfectly, even at a fairly low grit, the refining stages of CrO and/or leather seem to be contributing the most to the comfort of the shave. Of course this is just a qualitative opinion.
:D

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Mercy sakes, Gammaray, you seem to be suggesting that I may have wasted upwards of $7000.00 on my hone collection when I could have simply accomplished my goal of achieving a shave ready edge by merely setting a bevel, dragging the edge across a piece of balsa wood, strop it up and "BINGO".

You may well be right about this and I will definitely pick a good razor out of my pile of blades and give it a whirl with my Chosera 1k. At the very least, I will PM you with the results of my 1k odessy. I will try anything once and thanks for the challenge................

JERRY
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I know it sounds crazy but the 1k seems to leave some "teeth" on the edge that really cuts the whiskers without hurting the skin. However, the CrO balsa or leather for 40 or more laps followed by leather only for another 100 produced a surprising result. Of course I still prefer my 4k, 8k, and 12k stones, but it certainly confirms the DE credibility at this level. Our edge at 1k is also without the benefit of the coatings used on the DE as a final "smoothing" step. I look forward to your feedback.

Could this be murray carter by any chance? Lol

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No I am not Murray Carter. :D
But I do own one of his excellent hunting knives. I suppose if I were going to shave with it I may consider his sharpening method, but it is not what I use on my razors.
Besides, even Murray doesn't attempt the 1k level shave. He finishes with 6k then a lot of newspaper stropping before attempting to shave with a knife.
The razor angle is much more shallow and gets considerably sharper than a knife at the 1k level, especially with very light final strokes in the stropping direction.
Try it for fun...you may be surprised at the results.

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Originally Posted by str8fencer

You could always just try to shave directly off the stone, omitting the stropping. That would show you exactly what is gained from the stone, and what is from the stropping. I have shaved directly off most of my hones, it is quite interesting and rarely very uncomfortable.

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Yes, I have read of this and done this, once. So only on one razor. It was not a bad shave at all, not even overly harsh (my first few shaves are "harsh" after honing). My theory is that with stropping, you're re-aligning. With honing, it's more forceful than stropping because you're putting the edge's face, only one side, in contact with a hard surface, and of course it's edge-first not spine-first when done conventionally (my apologies to MC aka gammaray (I had the same suspicion!)). But in theory you could just lightly refresh an edge on your finisher with far fewer laps than for stropping, but of course you're removing just a little metal, revealing fresh metal so it's not the same. But the idea is that you would also be re-aligning the metal very efficiently (or removing the worst offending misaligned "teeth"). In my head, straight off the hones I'm dealing with an edge which could be fairly aligned, but the teeth are oh-so-subtly pushed in one direction from the last stroke off the hone.

:gaah:Holy Bat Sh!+, Gamma

I cannot believe how absolutely correct you are regarding the shave from a 1k stone. I used the Chosera 1k, CrOx balsa and stropped. WOW!!!

It's not 100% but it is in the 90th percentile for a close shave. You really have stimulated my creatve juices with your off-the-wall suggestion about shaving directly from the 1k.

It seems that I now have a shameful bunch of finish hones I DO NOT NEED.........................

I've been str8 shaving for 45 years and did not know it could be done. That just goes to show ya!!!

JERRY
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Jerry I am sorta suprised that you haven't read about the 1k shaves in the past...

You can skip all the stropping BTW and still get a shave...

These experiments came up several years back to prove that actual shaving sharpness was attained at a much lower grit then many originally thought...

Seems a properly set bevel is important :w
People who reckon their shaves are harsh off the 12 or 16 k's should try a 1k shave.

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Originally Posted by mrsell63

:gaah:Holy Bat Sh!+, Gamma

I cannot believe how absolutely correct you are regarding the shave from a 1k stone. I used the Chosera 1k, CrOx balsa and stropped. WOW!!!

It's not 100% but it is in the 90th percentile for a close shave. You really have stimulated my creatve juices with your off-the-wall suggestion about shaving directly from the 1k.

It seems that I now have a shameful bunch of finish hones I DO NOT NEED.........................

I've been str8 shaving for 45 years and did not know it could be done. That just goes to show ya!!!

JERRY
____

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I LOL at your response. Very funny. I am delighted that you actually performed the experiment. You are correct in your assessment. The SR at the 1k level is not 100% but it is amazingly close. The infamous Feather blades can stop at 900 grit because the final incident angle is so much lower than our ~7 degree limit. With final coatings the sharpness of almost any reputable DE is truly impressive. The SR benefits from the higher grits because our final angle is higher and we have no coatings. So while this is an amazing exercise to try, I am sure you will want to continue to take full advantage of your impressive honing collection in the eternal pursuit of SR edge perfection. :)

Jimbo,
I think you are quite mistaken. No matter what ANYBODY says, leather removes metal from a blade. You could even probably get an edge onto a blade without stones. Just strops and pastes (ofc there would have to be a bevel). I do think this is a most interesting issue though. :)

I am not sure to which response you are responding.

But I agree with you that any material can eventually remove metal given enough pressure, strokes and time. Leather is arguably the finest grit we finish with estimated at 60-90,000 grit from the molecular compounds impregnated into the leather naturally and through the tanning process.

Using leather alone to refine a poor bevel would probably take many hours of contiunous work, maybe even days, but I must concede that given enough time some metal can be removed albeit very inefficiently.

one thing i have heard a few times is that coticules benefit from more laps on the linen after honing than other hones.

Stropping on leather definitely removes metal albeit very very slowly. One only need look at my strops to see they are greyed with the many deposits of microscopic metal which has been imbedded. I really believe this slow deposit of metal in the strop is what makes the draw increase over time. Think about shaving and what it does to the edge and you must realize that skin will remove metal. It is a question of how fast or how large the particles are being removed. Hones remove it quickly and skin or leather very slowly but quite perceptibly. I have restored one razor with nothing more than emory/crox/leather. It was a slow process to be sure and not in anyway practical. Since obtaining a Norton 8k I can do the same work in minutes now.
My razors now get the 8k followed by the Crox on leather followed by leather. I can keep a good shaving edge with followups on the leather alone for weeks and then bring it back with a few laps on the Crox finishing with the leather.

The reality is what gives YOU the best shave!

my 2 cents and worth just what you paid
It really comes down to what you find creates a comfortable shaving edge. There are many ways to get to the same destination.