Well this was fun & it was fast too. Both razors needed to be honed especially my Gold Dollar 100. It was starting to pull & tug something fierce. I'm more than certain that both razors are up to snuff so let's get started:
All of my stones were soaked & flattened after wards. These stones got a really good 15 to 20 minute soak at the very least:
I love these bench pads. Not only did they work, they held all of my stones in place & they didn't budge hardly at all while I was doing Japanese style honing. These are the $15 U.S. Dollar Suehiro bench pads from Chef's Knives To Go website:
The first thing I noticed was the fact that this 1K stone had no trouble bring up a slurry at all which tells me that this 1K is a fast cutter:
The slurry is also a grayish color. You really can't see it on the stone very well, but it turned my water a grayish blue type slurry:
As I mentioned, this Suehiro Cerax 1K is a fast cutter but the bonus is the fact that it polishes while it cuts which is a very good thing. This stone also leaves extremely little to no spine wear as well:
The Suehiro 5K Rika was also a fast cutter & also left a nice polished edge behind but it was slightly slower than the 1K which is & was expected. In fact I suspected that it would be slower than it actually was which is also a good thing:
After that, I finished on my Shoubandini Type 100 & the non skid bench pads made a huge difference with this stone. It made using it much easier & there's no doubt that I got better results on this stone today than I have been:
Next up was the fire hose strop which I did 5 round trips on with both razors:
Then I did 5 more round trips with both razors on the scrub leather:
Then I did 10 round trips on the smooth leather with both razors:
All in all, I'm extremely pleased with my new stones & progression. My new progression is 600, 1K, 5K, Japanese natural. That's the progression my friend Anthony Esposito uses & my other friend, Frank Misa also suggested it. Using 4 stones to take any razor to shave ready is pretty cool & I can't wait for tomorrow's shave.
