I love this Shapton M5 12,000 grit stone it's an awesome stone and very affordable at $55.00 dollars plus shipping from Amazon. Shapton wins hands down:
The first thing I did was kill the Norton 8K edge. It's harsh and very uncomfortable for me even after stropping and it often takes a while to get a nice keen edge:
I did Japanese style honing and I did my usual 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds on each side and I diluted the slurry between each one and I finished that up with 10 round trips to clean up the edge and give it a nice polish. The audio feedback is phenomenal and the stone cuts and dries fast too. It was also really smooth in terms of feel like a piece of glass while using it:
Next I did 10 round trips on the nylon webbing of my strop:
Another thing I noticed was how stupid easy it was to clean up the stone and the slurry came off the razor and my hands very easily too which is really nice. I often had to wash my hands in shampoo to get most of the slurry off followed by hand soap and then what I didn't get off, I had to basically wear it off. Not with this stone :
Next I did another session on this stone just using the weight of the blade and I did 30/30, 15/15, 8/8 seconds on each side with the same style honing I did earlier followed by 15 round trips to clean up the edge. This 2nd session was even easier and much more smoother than the first one was. Next I did 10 round trips on the nylon webbing followed by 20 round trips on the scrub leather:
Next I rubbed the smooth leather down till it was warm but not quite hot to the touch:
Next I did 40 round trips on the smooth leather which was almost like stropping on glass:
Under the Loupe the edge was nice and polished looking and the spine looked really nice as well. Almost no wear occurred on the spine during this honing session and I didn't use tape either:
I am super pleased with this stone. It took longer to photograph and write this blog post than it did to hone the razor and clean up was much easier this time around as well. Like I said in the beginning, Shapton wins hands down. Wow what a stone.
