Well I tried to quit blogging for a while and take a break to enjoy the hobby but due to quite few private messages from friends along with some emails, I pretty much had to deleted the previous post and start blogging again . So with that being said, I decided to do another old school honing session on my Gold Dollar 66 and my 208. So lets get started:
First thing I do before anything is to check each and every razor. The reason for this and why it's good practice to do especially if you are honing razors for other people is that no razor will hone the same. Even if it was made by the same company and is the exact same model of razor you are honing, it still can hone differently. Another reason is that someone could have attempted to hone the razor and severely chipped it and/or it could be warped which means that there's a good chance that the bevel is not set on it. You simply never know until you look:
Next I strop them 10 round trips on the linen only which removes any possible burr and cleans the edge up a bit and also realigns it on both razors:
After that I check each razor again to see what I've got to work with:
Mine were in extremely good shape, but I decided to go ahead and reset the bevel and go old school again and I started with the Naniwa Professional 600 grit which is my "go to" bevel setter. I did 60 half circles on each side and then I did 25 more half circles on both sides followed by 10 round trips to clean up the edge. After I did my thumbnail test and determined that the bevel was indeed set on both razors, I did 10 more round trips to give both razors just a touch more polishing and to smooth them out some, I did 5 stropping strokes on the stone which will give it some comfort:
Next I stropped both razors 10 round trips on the linen side of my strop only:
Now I wanted to give the edge a little special treat and some even more polish. So I whipped out my Soft Arkansas Oil stone and did the exact same routine that I did with the bevel setting stone followed by 25 round trips to clean up and refine the edge a touch more and then I also did 10 stropping strokes on the Soft Arkansas with both razors :
Next I hit the linen side of my strop again with 10 round trips on both razors:
Next up I did the same routine with both razors that I did with my bevel setting stone earlier which gave both razors a pretty nice looking edge:
Once again both razors got 10 round trips on the linen side of my strop:
Now this is where things get a little more interesting. First I did the same routine that I did ealier with my bevel setting stone followed by the usual 10 stropping strokes on the linen side of my strop. But instead of stopping there, I cleaned the stone with my 600 grit diamond plate and did 25 more half circles on each side followed by 10 more round trips to clean up the edge and then I did 5 more stropping strokes on the stone to give both razors that smooth comfortable edge:
Now since the Norton 4/8K combo stone is a synthetic stone, I did 10 stropping strokes on my Soft Arkansas oil stone which takes that harsh synthetic edge away and makes the edge that more comfortable and easier to use in my humble opinion:
Next it was time for a full stropping routine. I did 10 round trips on the linen followed by 20 round trips on the scrub leather and then I finished both razors off with 40 round trips on the smooth leather of my strop. This strop performs OK, but I feel that it's time for me to get a couple of new hanging strops along with a bench mounted leather strop for a little surprise later on:
From this point on, I will be focusing strictly on my shave of the day posts, mail calls and honing sessions only. I got caught up in the B.S. that's been going on in the wet shaving hobby and pretty much got burned out. I also ended up blocking a lot of people that were causing problems. So in order to keep from getting burned out worse than I already am, I'm just going to focus on what I'm doing and pretty much ignore the B.S. and just post what I'm doing. So please don't think nothing of it if I don't respond or just hit the like button because there's just been too much crap going on in the Face Book groups, blogs and YouTube videos as of late. So I'm going to stay positive and enjoy what I'm doing. I don't care what you buy or who from anymore at this point. Which is where all of this started to begin with and it's a slippery slope.
