Thread: Keeping my nose to the...er...Japanese Natural Stone

Well thank you for all the responses so far! I did try the shave off the second method today, and it's a LOT better than the first. To recap, the first was making a medium slurry, and just honing away using halfstrokes and x-strokes until the slurry dried.

The second, better method for me so far is diluting to plain water. I was able to get a very comfortable shave with little to no pulling around my problem areas. I still think I can do a lot better, but I think this was a step in the right direction.

I think my next step is going to be trying another razor out, going from plain water on the coti, to light slurry on Jnat diluting to plain water. If that works then I'll know that refreshing the slurry multiple times is unnecessary. I can't wait to experiment more with this stone, as I think I can probably get the razor keener. It is VERY smooth at this point though

I agree with the thin slurry to water method also (at least for that's what has worked great on my stone). At first I tried a thick slurry and it actually dulled the edge to a degree.

Did a marathon honing session tonight. I've got three different razors honed up and ready for some shave testing over the next couple days.

First is the Erik Anton Berg from before. Did a touchup just using a very light tomonagura slurry diluted to plain water, then worked on til damp.

Second is a Genco Easy Aces that needed a bevel set first. Did that on my coticule, and diluted to plain water. Then I raised the same light tomonagura slurry on the Japanese Natural with the same method as above.

Third one was a little different. I had a Robeson Shuredge that I had previously honed using unicot on the coticule (in order to find out how keen my coticule could get me). I thought I'd experiment a little, and try to remove the microbevel using just slurry on the Japanese Natural to finish using the above method (just to see how fast the hone actually was). However, somehow I lost track of what I was doing, and while doing a bit of a rolling X-stroke I ended up with the edge of the blade at an angle to the edge of the stone, moving straight down the stone for about a cm. I ended up making a tiny slice into my perfect bevel! Almost invisible to the naked eye, but there it was.

So, with the experimentation already in motion, I thought I'd see if I could remove that teensy tiny chip using just my new stone (as it already seems like it's blazing fast). Lo and behold, after one round of medium-heavy tomonagura slurry it had disappeared, leaving me once again with a nice even bevel.

Not sure which razor I'll try out tomorrow, but hopefully they'll all pass the shave test fine. If they all shave like the EA Berg did the first time around, I'll consider it a moderate success. Here's hoping I upped the keenness this time though!

I still haven't been able to pass my HHT off of this stone, but the blades are cutting arm hair nicely (as before) so we'll see how it goes. (As an aside, as soon as I finished I rounded off the edges of my Japanese Natural. Probably should have done that earlier...)

If you want to improve the keenness try refreshing the slurry progressively reducing how much you refresh as you dilute. It'll keep sharpening the edge until your ready to stop refreshing the slurry and start adding smoothness to the edge, it might help with your HHT, as it should be able to pass it easily

It's been quite a while since I updated this thread. Figured I'd put some thoughts down for posterity.

First, I'm absolutely sure I can still get better results.

Second, the amount of slurry I was using was probably insufficient. I ended up getting back in touch directly with the source (Alex Gilmore) and asked him about his methods with the stone. He said he used a decreasing series of half strokes (40, 20, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1), diluted and repeated for finishing.

I tried that, and nothing much seemed to happen. He also sent along a youtube video of him honing, so I watched that (probably should have done that first, but I guess I was impatient--didn't have any fully shave-ready razors anymore). Turns out he's using much thicker slurry than I was. I had been making slurry that was almost unnoticeable until you started pushing it around with a razor, so I tried his method again with thicker slurry.

Voila! An edge that shaved very comfortably, with no pull around my chinny-chin-chin! However, I still did not pass that darn HHT! I'm thinking that my hair sample just doesn't respond to a japanese natural edge, so I should stop worrying about it.

Of course, with that exciting milestone under my belt, I started wondering about harder stones. Mine is softer, and absorbs water relatively quickly, quick enough that in the space of 20 half strokes the stone can start drying out.

So, I did exactly what everyone says not to do. I went out and I got another stone. I saw that there was a cosmetically flawed Nakayama Asagi available for a greatly discounted price, and I pounced.

That came in just a week ago and I've been experimenting with that as well. Using the same method described for my other stone, I was able to get an HHT-3 off of the stone! So now my theories are completely blown about the HHT and Japanese Naturals. Apparently that test works great for my coticule, but for my Japanese Naturals I either need to do a lot more work on them (of course!) or I need to figure out a better test.

Back to the drawing boards, although at least I'm getting comfy shaving edges now. Just going to start chasing that perfect edge!

I could not find that youtube video, would you mind sharing the link?

Here ya go:

Honing a razor on a Nakayama - YouTube