After this morning's shave, I found that the Soft Arkansas touch up I did was not enough and the razor really struggle which means I get to do some honing. I did NOT kill the edge but I used Dr. Matt's ILR technique which is under running water and produces a nice keen edge that's extremely comfortable. This technique works extremely well with Coticules too:
Using a low stream of water I did round trips until it started to get sticky and struggled to go across the stone. This time it only took 40 round trips :
Next up I did 10 round trips only on the nylon webbing of my strop:
Then I turned up the water and kept going again until the razor got sticky again and wouldn't hardly go across the stone yet again. This time around it took 50 round trips till this started to occur:
And to make sure my stone was clean and flat, I broke out the diamond plate which is made by Ultra Sharp 2 and is a 600 grit which I find to be perfect for my needs:
Next I followed that up with a full stropping routine of 10 round trips on the nylon webbing, 20 round trips on the scrub leather and 40 round trips on the smooth leather:
Under the loupe, I saw no scratches of any kind. Only a slight haze appeared which is just about what it looked like under loupe when I first got it a few months ago:
I'm confident that the edge is good because I've used this technique before and it produced a very nice enjoyable edge. Once I spend $86.19 over on Amazon, I will have a full set of stones counting this Norton 8K side which is all that's left of my Norton 4/8K combo stone.
