Earlier today, my 209 didn't perform as well as I would have liked. So decided to use my friend Dr. Matt Robins' Coticule technique which is really fast and provides a nice and smooth comfortable edge that has no trouble removing some tough beard growth. So let's get started:
First thing I did was kill the edge by using the back of my 600 grit diamond plate. You can use the stone itself which also works and also removes any burr that may be on the edge:
Next I turned the water on low and I did small "X" strokes until the razor gets sticky and struggles to go across the stone with what's left of my Norton 8K. This razor was worse than expected because normally you would get that sticky feeling in roughly 40 round trips or less. This time it took 60 round trips before it felt sticky:
Next I turned up the water a little bit and did another set of X strokes. This time around it only took 40 round trips before it got sticky:
Next I did 10 round trips on the clean side of the nylon webbing on my strop:
Next I grabbed my Shapton 12K and did the same thing with it that I did with my Norton 8K. This was the first time that I've ever used this technique with my Shapton 12K and I was very impressed with its performance. It took 60 small "X" strokes before it got extremely sticky and basically got stuck to the stone like it was glued to it:
Next I turned up the water and repeated what I had just did. This time it took only 40 small "X" strokes before the razor acted like glue and stuck to the stone which is when you are suppose to stop. This Shapton 12K is awesome with this technique:
Next I did 20 round trips on the .5 pasted side of my strop. Normally if this was a Vintage or Premium razor, this would only be half of this amount at the most probably not even that:
And being extremely careful so I don't end up getting stitches, I wiped down the razor to remove any excess paste so I don't contaminate the smooth leather side of my strop:
Next I rubbed the strop down until it felt very warm to the touch:
Then I did 40 round trips on the smooth leather side of my strop:
I'm really looking forward to the next time I use this razor to see how well it shaves. In the past, I got nice smooth buttery edges with this technique using only the Norton 8K. This time a Shapton M5 12,000 grit finisher was used which has already proven to have a very nice and comfortable edge using my old technique. It takes longer to photograph, write this blog post, and to clean up my stones than it does to hone this razor with this specific technique. That's how fast it is.
