After this morning's shave, I decided to do a quick honing session on my Gold Dollar 66. I've just heard from Jay Dee and he seems to like one of the razors and has said that it was much better than it was when he sent them to me. So as soon as I get another water stone, I'll announce my honing service in a separate blog post with all of the necessary information:
Now I did NOT kill the edge but I did 100 round trips under low running water followed by 5 stropping strokes on the stone itself and then I ended up doing 50 more round trips after that. I normally keep going until it feels sticky and it struggles to go across the water stone:
Next up I did 10 round trips on the nylon webbing of my strop:
Then I went back to the water stone again and kept going until it felt sticky and wouldn't hardly go across the stone. This time around it took just 50 round trips :
Next up I did my entire stropping routine which consists of 10 round trips on the nylon webbing, 20 round trips on the scrub leather and then I did 60 round trips on the smooth leather:
Not shown was the Soft Arkansas oil stone which I did only 5 stropping strokes to help give the edge a little extra smoothness and then I went back to the smooth leather side of my strop and did 20 more round trips to finish of the razor. I did the very same thing to my 209 which has a Japanese natural stone edge earlier this past week and it more than helped in terms of waking up that edge. So tomorrow's shave will determine whether or not that it worked which I am more than confident that it not only worked but will be a really nice edge.
