After my last shave with the Gold Dollar 209, I could definitely tell that it needed to taken to the stones again. And normally when it comes to re honing a razor, I would start with the 8K stone and go from there. But I wanted to test my full progression and see how well it does. Okay let's get started and do the entire progression:
First I checked the edge out to see what I was dealing with and I could tell that it definitely needed some work. No chips or anything but it looked slightly dented from where I closed it:
Next I killed the edge. Until today, I've NEVER killed the edge on this razor mainly because it was finished on a Jnat by Anthony Esposito several months ago:
First stone up was the Naniwa Professional 600 grit which I reset the bevel and started over from scratch. I got slurry every where. I did my Usual Routine which is 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, then 10 round trips to clean up the edge. But it still wasn't quite enough so I went back and did 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, and then 10 more round trips which got the job done in terms of resetting the bevel. With the premium razors such as Dovo, Boker, Ralph Aust, Ti and some of your custom razors, the amount of time on the stone would go way down because the bevel is pretty much set from the factory and I would start at the 3K or higher :
And of course I hit the Nylon webbing of my strop for 10 round trips between each stone:
Next up is my Suehiro 1/3K mighty mini combo stone and I started with the 1K side first and did 60 "X" strokes. Can't do the usual routine on this stone because it's smaller than my 6 by 2 inch diamond plate which should tell you how small this stone is:
Then I went with the 3K side of my Suehiro and did 60 "X" strokes as well:
Next up I did 2 sessions of my usual routine on my Norton 8k stone or what's left of it:
Then I did my full stropping routine:
And here's my stones and diamond plate after I cleaned everything up:
Like I stated earlier, I normally wouldn't start with the 600 grit stone unless I was doing some slight repair work or starting with a factory edged Gold Dollar, Gold Monkey or ZY razor. And I'm still trying to decide on which line of Shapton to go with at the moment. My budget is saying Professional at the moment despite the fact I would love to get both the 16K and the 30K. The 30K stone costs $10 dollars more than my truck payment does.
