After the last honing session on my Gold Dollar 208, I didn't quite feel comfortable about the end results. So I decided to try a friend's 2 stone honing method and see what happens :
First I killed the edge with the back of my 600 grit diamond plate :
Then I reset the bevel with my Naniwa Professional 600 grit water stone. First I did 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 and then 10 round trips to clean it up. That wasn't enough so I went back and done 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, and then 10 more round trips to clean it up. That pretty much did it according to my thumbnail test. Then I did 10 more round trips to finish setting the bevel:
Next up I did 10 round trips ONLY on the nylon webbing of my strop after I checked the edge under my loupe which looked great:
OK now comes stone number 2 which is what's left of my Norton 4/8K combo stone. Norton water stones may be back into the fold due to budget reasons only this time there will be no combo stones because apart from the 8K, they dish very badly and simply don't last. That and I'm only getting the full size version of the 4K if I like the results of this method. On the 8K I did 60/60, 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, then 10 round trips to clean it up a bit. It looked very nice under the loupe as well:
Next I did 10 more round trips on the nylon webbing side of my strop:
After that I cleaned and lapped the stone to start fresh for my 2nd round on the 8K stone:
This time I did 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, and then 10 round trips to clean it up and then I did 5 stropping strokes on the stone to make it a little smoother and more comfortable to shave with:
Then I followed up with a full stropping routine which was 10 round trips on the nylon webbing, 20 round trips on the scrub leather and then I finished it off with 60 round trips on the smooth leather:
I'm more than confident now with the edge on the Gold Dollar 208 and I had a close call while wiping down the blade with a microfiber towel:
How well it shaves and how comfortable the shave is will be determined tomorrow morning. But you can get by with just 2 stones. You need a bevel setting and finishing stone and that's it. I recommend starting at the 1K grit and finishing on a either an 8K or 12K grit until you get the hang of it. And it would be a wise decision to get a lower grit stone such as the Naniwa Professional (New Chosera) 600 grit stone as well because it can double as a repair stone without doing any more damage to the edge of a razor.
