After this morning's shave, I decided to touch up my Gold Dollar 66. I also gave it some thought and I also decided to bring my Gold Monkey Triple 6 and the 208 out of retirement and I honed them as well. So let's get started:
First up was the Naniwa professional 600 grit. Now I did NOT kill the edge on the Gold Dollar 66. And the edges were already killed on the 208 and the Gold Monkey when I retired them about month ago. I did the Anthony Esposito method. The 66 and the 208 got 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, seconds worth of half circles and I followed that with 10 round trips to clean up the edges. I also did 5 stropping strokes which produces a much smoother edge. The Gold Monkey triple 6 got the usual 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds worth of half circles and I followed that up with 15 round trips to clean up the edge and 10 stropping strokes. After owning the Gold Monkey triple 6 for about a year, I've found that it needs more time on the stones due to a higher stainless steel content in the razor:
Next up I did 10 round trips on the nylon webbing with the 208 and the 66. The Gold monkey got 15 round trips on the nylon webbing and I did this between stones :
Next up was the Norton 4/8K combo stone, or what's left of it. First the 4K side and all razors got 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds worth of half circles and I followed that up with 10 round trips to clean up the edge and 5 stropping strokes before going back to the nylon webbing for 10 more round trips:
I did the exact same thing I stated earlier on the 8K side with the only thing being different was I did 2 sessions on the 8K side and on the 2nd go around, the Gold Monkey got 30/30, 15/15, 8/8 seconds worth of half circles followed by 15 round trips to clean up the edge and 10 stropping strokes which should ensure a smooth comfortable edge:
Then I did my full stropping routine of 10 round trips on the nylon, 20 round trips on the scrub leather and 40 round trips on the smooth leather:
Under the loupe, all I saw was a slight mirror like haze:
The shave will pretty much tell me how I did on these razors, but since I've been using this technique off and on since I started honing.
