Something felt off with my the last honing session that I did not too long ago. Even though I did a previous blog post stating that it would be the last honing session on the 209, I didn't feel comfortable at all with the edge. So I broke out what's left of my Norton 4/8K combo stone and went at it. Right now the 209 is the only straight razor I have and I have been looking at EBay quite a bit here lately for a nice vintage to start a new collection. So once I get some premium and vintage razors in, I will be saying good bye to these types of razors. So lets get started:
First I killed the previous edge using the Norton stone and while I soaked the stone for 10 minutes, I thought about which method and/or technique to use this go around. I decided to use the 40 circles method which is used often by Mr. Lynn Abrams:
So after soaking the stone and wetting the razor under some low running water, I performed 40 seconds worth of circles on each side followed by 20 round trips to clean up the edge and to give it a little extra polish. One of the reasons I want to go to vintage and premium razors is that these take much longer to hone and require a massive amount of metal to be removed to be made shave ready and they also tend to eat up the softer stones like you can see below:
Next I did 10 round trips on the nylon webbing of my strop:
After I finished the 10 round trips on the nylon webbing I went ahead and cleaned my Norton with a 600 grit diamond plate:
These Norton stones are fairly easy to clean just avoid the flattening stones:
Next I went back to the Norton again and this time I did 20 seconds worth of half circles on each side and I followed that up with 10 round trips to clean up the edge. As you can see with the slurry below that I got the entire edge of the razor and it was time to strop it:
I also went ahead and cleaned my stone again before stropping my razor:
Now for my full stropping routine. First up the nylon webbing of my 3 inch black latigo strop that I got from Straight Razor Designs nearly 2 years ago which has held up really well. I did 10 round trips which cleans the razor very well:
Next I did 20 round trips on the rough leather which really makes the edge pop under the loupe:
Now before I finished on the smooth leather, I took the palm of my hand and rubbed it down using a back and forth motion until it got nearly hot to the touch which makes a huge difference in not only the edge quality but it feels much smoother and more effortless:
Next I did 40 round trips on the smooth leather side of my strop:
Under the loupe, the edge looked great but I won't know how it is until I shave with it which will probably be tomorrow:
The sooner I can go to premium and vintage razors, the better because honing these Gold Dollar, Gold Monkey and ZY razors wears me out much quicker than it does to hone something like a Dovo, Boker, Ralph Aust, Ti, or a Vintage.
