The 66 Gets Rehoned:

Even though I was confident that the touch up I performed this morning would have helped, I decided to re-hone the Gold Dollar 66. I simply did NOT feel comfortable with a simple touch up and thought more was needed:

First I drew a grid on my Norton 4/8K combo stone and lapped it with the Ultra Sharp II 600 grit Diamond plate and let me tell you, the diamond plate was awesome on the Norton 4/8K water stone. I was done lapping both sides of it in less than 2 minutes :

Next I killed the edge by gently pulling the razor across the back of my diamond plate. You can use an ordinary drinking glass, another water stone, or even and ceramic bottle to kill the edge :

Ok next I reset the bevel on my Naniwa Professional 600 grit stone using the usual routine of 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, seconds followed by 10 round trips to clean up the edge a bit and then I repeated half of that routine to make sure that the bevel was set:

Next up was my Soft Arkansas oil stone in which I did my old routine that I use to do with my Norton 4/8K combo stone which was 100 round trips followed by the usual 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, seconds followed by 10 round trips to clean up the edge. I spent extra time with this stone by choice mainly because I wanted that extra polished look on my edge and it worked. Now here's where things get interesting. I stropped the razor 25 round trips on this stone  To me this makes for a more comfortable shave and it also deburrs the edge if there is any on the razor and I didn't see any through my Loupe:

Next Up was the old 4K side of the Norton 4/8K combo stone and let me tell you, the slurry was instant with this side of the stone while in the past it would take several minutes to get a slurry. I did the usual 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds followed by 10 round trips to clean up the edge. I also stropped 25 round trips on this side of the stone as well:

Now I repeated the same process above only I did an additional half of the routine along with the stropping I mentioned above on the 8K side of the Norton water stone:

Now I returned to the Soft Arkansas and I stropped the razor 100 round trips and the reason for this was to take harshness of the synthetic edge off the razor to make for a much more comfortable shave for tomorrow morning:

Now to finish the razor off, I did my usual routine on my 3 inch black latigo hanging strop which is 10 round trips on the Linen (nylon webbing in my case), 25 round trips on the scrub leather and 50 round trips on the smooth leather. I also plan on getting a bench mounted leather strop and trying the CBN Emulsion system to see what happens later on:

After my next stone purchase, the Norton 4/8K combo stone will no longer be in my progression. It will be the Professional 600, followed by the Soft Arkansas and then a little extra time on the Arkansas surgical black oil stone. To me these Arkansas oil stone edges are the most comfortable edges I've shaved with to date. I love the Japanese natural water stones but they are kindly hard to get and depending on which Japanese natural water stone you get, they can be expensive. And I simply can't afford one just yet. It will probably be around maybe August before I can get a Jnat.