Earlier tonight, I was debating on whether or not to re hone my 209 and I'm glad that I did because it was worse than I expected. Unlike the last honing session, I didn't count unless I was doing Japanese style honing which is a back and forth motion or half circles. First I started with my Naniwa Professional 600 and I built a slurry using my 600 grit diamond plate. And unlike the last honing session I kept going until I had zero resistance going across the stone. It took a really long time and I also used both sides of my Suehiro 1/3K combo stone as a slurry stone. I think it took around maybe 30+ minutes on the 600 grit stone before it broke free and had zero trouble gliding across the stone and I diluted the slurry often as I went along and wiped the razor off:
Up next was my little Suehiro 1/3K combo stone and I used my diamond plate to create a slurry on both sides. I pretty much did the same with it as I did with the 600 grit stone earlier. I also did the same thing I did with 600 grit on my Norton 8K stone using both the diamond plate and both sides of my Suehiro 1/3K combo stone to create a slurry numerous times:
Last but certainly not least, my Shapton 12K was up next. But unlike the previous stones, my Shapton 12k acts like a Japanese natural stone and gets extremely sticky when the razor is done and you have gotten all you are going to get out of it. I did the same thing with it as I did with the 600 grit stone earlier using both the diamond plate and the Suehiro water stone:
Next up I did 60 round trips on the .5 pasted strop:
Then I followed that up with 60 round trips on the clean fabric side and the rough leather side of my strop. And just before going to the smooth leather side of my strop, I rubbed it down until it felt really warm to the touch and then I did 60 round trips on the smooth leather:
If I keep getting cuts in my towels like this, I will be buying more microfiber towels before I know it. I've already cut this one up quite a bit and they tend to not last after getting cut:
Tomorrow's shave will be very interesting after this honing session. I'm still looking at various razors and stones specifically Japanese natural stones, and some more low to mid range synthetic stones specifically Shapton and Naniwa specialty and traditional stones.
