After shaving with my new Gold Dollar 200, I decided to take my Vintage razors to the stones. No need to mess with the Gold Dollar 200, it only has 1 shave on it and is a long ways off before needing to be re honed and I more than likely won't do a full progression when that time comes. I've also decided to take a look a Norton water stones again only this time, I will be going with the full sized versions instead of the combo stones like I did the first time around. I also decided to stick with my friend Anthony Esposito's honing method as well. There's no need to spend all day honing razors even though it's therapeutic & relaxing:
First I soaked my Suehiro 1/3K combo stone which I've pretty much have dedicated it to being a Nagura slurry stone on a full time basis & my Norton 8K water stone:
Basically I created a slurry with both sides of my Suehiro followed by a slurry with my diamond plate and I did 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds worth of half strokes followed by 10 clean up strokes with the first slurry. After that I reduced that to 20/20, 10/10, 5/5 seconds worth of half strokes followed by 10 round trip clean up strokes. I repeated this process with my Apache Strata & Shoubandini Japanese water stones:
I also hit the fire hose strop 10 round trips with both razors between each stone and just before finishing on my leather strop:
After finishing with fire hose strop, I did 5 round trips on the scrub leather & 10 round trips on the smooth leather side of my strop which is on its last leg:
So basically I'm looking at getting a new set of stones & leather strop when I get paid again. The reason I'm leaning back towards the Norton water stones is because of their width. I love my Naniwa Chosera 600 grit stone but it does make for an interesting situation sometimes when it comes to honing. So let the research begin. I sure do wish that Best Sharpening Stones didn't quit stocking Shapton glass stones. That would have been sweet if they hadn't.
