Thread: finishing with japanese naturals - what's your way?

My J-nat Ohzuku is pretty slow, but I don´t want to slurry it
(or can´t, cause I didn´t find me the right slurry stone yet)
So I have to make sure the pre final stages are done perfect.

I then finish with 30-50 light but firm laps
(light but firm sounds stupid, but what I mean is I don´t want to do my laps too lightly,
or my hand gets shaky) with just water on the ohzuku.
This applies to any other finishing hone as well.
I then check the edge. I do all the tests:
thumb pad, shaving arm hair above skin atg, hht.
If this doesn´t work too good I do some more laps.
Maybe again 40-50.
If this still isn´t enough I have to decide.
My pre final honing wasn´t perfectly done.
So I can either go back to 4 or 8k,
or I add 1 or 2 extra layers of tape making an extra bevel on the razor.
This usually does the trick.
I do about 20-40 light strokes with the extra layers of tape
and recheck. Usually, if I didn´t screw up, all tests should be passed perfectly.
No-sound hht, no dragging arm shave atg above skin.

Then I do some stropping.
Well, this applies to all finishers, just as well,
not only the j-nats

I use a light slurry worked up with another piece of J-nat hone to finish, or use a little diamond plate, depending on the stone.

Or I use a spyderco UF as an baseplate with J-nat slurry on it, that way the slurry has ample time to break down, without bringing out larger, fresh cutting media. That has given me the finest results to date.

Nothing special. On my Maruka Nakayama Asagi, I spritz on a little water and hone until it's done, which the razor will tell you if you listen to it. I let the slurry dry and reuse it next time.

Originally Posted by Mijbil

Thanks guys, but a few folllow-upS:
Holli: do you strop or smooth (CrOx) after, and if so what materials and how much? And why do you say you never use slurry on a finisher? (One expert told me, intriguingu, that with softer stones a slurry will decrease effective grit, but with the hardest stones - like an Asagi - a slurry can actually *incnrease* the effective grit, perhaps 2K-3K.)

I also wonder: are you guys able to get the edge as sharp as, say, a .25micron diamond paste (to my mind about as sharp as a razor can get)? I know that the j-nat edge is much smoother and a different beast, but I'm just wondering how *sharp* one can really get it.

Thanks again .

I strop only on leather - I don't use pastes and I don't have linen. I do 50 laps on the leather. As far as not using slurry - the way I visualize it is that slurry sits on the stone, so your edge will run into the slurry and that will dull the edge. I don't know if this is a correct theory, and I don't know if it is true in practice because I never use slurry on my finishers. I am very happy with the edges I get, so I feel no need to experiment at this time. My Asagi also has stamps that I don't want to lose, so slurry on the Asagi is out of the question.

I have no idea how my edges compare to .25 diamond because I have never done a comparison.

Originally Posted by Mijbil

I also wonder: are you guys able to get the edge as sharp as, say, a .25micron diamond paste (to my mind about as sharp as a razor can get)? I know that the j-nat edge is much smoother and a different beast, but I'm just wondering how *sharp* one can really get it.

Thanks again .

BTW. finishing on my Ohzuku will lead to a perfect straight line under magnification.
Given the usual tests like hht and shaving my face,
it is absolutely comparable to anything I ever finished on,
including 0.5 diamond, 0.3 Chromiumoxide, 0.1 Ironoxide.
Smooth and nothing near agressive. In short: perfect.
But it took me a while to get to that point.
Now I can do it on all the razors I got.
I got me a very good Ohzuku, indeed

Originally Posted by joke1176

I use a light slurry worked up with another piece of J-nat hone to finish, or use a little diamond plate, depending on the stone.

Or I use a spyderco UF as an baseplate with J-nat slurry on it, that way the slurry has ample time to break down, without bringing out larger, fresh cutting media. That has given me the finest results to date.

pretty interesting. No Uf so I can't try it.

Originally Posted by kevint

pretty interesting. No Uf so I can't try it.

I haven't tried it on any other surface, but I bet it would work just as well on any hard barber hone like a carborundum or Swaty as well...

Hell, it might even work on a piece of glass.

Hmm - but isnt the spyderco much less fine than the j-nat slurry?

mparker - interesting. I have often thought that I might be able to get to the point where I could hear or feel when a given stage is finished, but I'm not there yet. Only been honing a few months, though.

holli - I find your slurry-theory hilarious, adorable, and quite possibly correct. though I never thought about it that way. since if it is a watery slurry, "running" into it won't do much damage, and if its a very dry, paste-y slurry, then the edge goes over it. but an interestign notion. also, so you dont use any sort of fabric, ever? (by linen I just meant fabric generally.)

thanks, seth.

EDIT: also: what is this everyone keeps talking about the way the bevel looks? i've never cared too much how it looks. i guess the idea is that we need *some* way of telling what's going on down there at this microscopic level besides shaving. but how much can your really tell by the scratch marks? how much correlation is there between that and the "effect"? I suppose I can imagine that uniformity of a given scratch-mark might tell you when that particular stage is done (like sanding), though, even that might not necessarily correlate, if the very edge got polished/smoothed well before the whole face of the bevel.

Originally Posted by Mijbil

holli - I find your slurry-theory hilarious, adorable, and quite possibly correct. though I never thought about it that way. since if it is a watery slurry, "running" into it won't do much damage, and if its a very dry, paste-y slurry, then the edge goes over it. but an interestign notion. also, so you dont use any sort of fabric, ever? (by linen I just meant fabric generally.)

I'm not sure what part you might find hilarious. Bart says that a coticule slurry thicker than milk will impede the sharpening of the razor, even with slurry sharpening. It is also common to every slurry method I have ever seen written about to dilute the slurry as you progress and to finish with just water. The way I visualize the slurry interacting with the edge is my attempt to explain the methods/results everyone seems to have/get.

Originally Posted by mparker762

Nothing special. On my Maruka Nakayama Asagi, I spritz on a little water and hone until it's done, which the razor will tell you if you listen to it. I let the slurry dry and reuse it next time.

I would tend to agree here. On my Asagi, I simply spray a little water as well and will do 10-15 X strokes or just a few circles followed by 10 X strokes and the razor is usually there. On this stone, for me, the application can be repeated without over-honing. I also do not clean the naturally formed slurry off the stone and let it dry. I have never found any benefit to creating a slurry and for me, any heavier slurry has made my results more unpredictable and in almost all cases not as nice.