As mentioned in a previous thread, I had been maintaining Unicot edges to shave with for the last year.
Not only is the Unicot method extremely easy, maintaining that edge is as easy as throwing on however many layers of tape you used to put the micro bevel on it, and doing a few laps on water. That's kept four razors shaving nicely for over a year.
Recently, I've gotten in to honing again.
Having only one really good prior success with Dilucot, I dove in.
Weapons of choice: A green coticule/bbw natural combo, and a very old vintage "Pike" brand coticule that I had promised myself I wouldn't use. Yeah, right.
Blades: Various old vintage ebay specials.
Obstacle to over come: shaky hands.
Even with my shaky hands, the Unicot method is a total cake walk. It is my strong opinion that anyone with opposable thumbs can put a smooth shaving edge using Bart's Unicot method. The Dilucot, however, seems to be a bit trickier.
I failed miserably in my recent attempts, never achieving a smooth shaver. Until last night. The key for me was circles. Circles are, thankfully, easy to do. Even for those of us with shaky hands.
I followed the complete Dilucot procedure on my 8"x3" green coticule, substituting circles for half X strokes. This morning's shave was awesome.
A couple of observations about circles...
My green coticule is an amazing finisher. However, using just water, it would (in the typical coticule way) never increase the keenness of a blade. Even with my shaky hand half X strokes. I just spent a couple hours working several different blades with just water on both the vintage Pike and green coticule using circles. Interestingly, with a lot of circles, the increase in keenness was very noticeable. The final keenness from the green coticule with water and circles was better from the green coticule than the vintage. Following the circles up with 40 x strokes left a very smooth edge.
Circles also seemed to decrease the sensitivity to not diluting the slurry with extreme accuracy. Unless I waaay over diluted, I didn't have much of a problem.
If there's anyone around here struggling with the Dilucot method, circles might be something to try out, especially if you're not capable of doing half x strokes correctly (as in my case).
FWIW...
Not only is the Unicot method extremely easy, maintaining that edge is as easy as throwing on however many layers of tape you used to put the micro bevel on it, and doing a few laps on water. That's kept four razors shaving nicely for over a year.
Recently, I've gotten in to honing again.
Having only one really good prior success with Dilucot, I dove in.
Weapons of choice: A green coticule/bbw natural combo, and a very old vintage "Pike" brand coticule that I had promised myself I wouldn't use. Yeah, right.
Blades: Various old vintage ebay specials.
Obstacle to over come: shaky hands.
Even with my shaky hands, the Unicot method is a total cake walk. It is my strong opinion that anyone with opposable thumbs can put a smooth shaving edge using Bart's Unicot method. The Dilucot, however, seems to be a bit trickier.
I failed miserably in my recent attempts, never achieving a smooth shaver. Until last night.
The key for me was circles. Circles are, thankfully, easy to do. Even for those of us with shaky hands.I followed the complete Dilucot procedure on my 8"x3" green coticule, substituting circles for half X strokes. This morning's shave was awesome.
A couple of observations about circles...
My green coticule is an amazing finisher. However, using just water, it would (in the typical coticule way) never increase the keenness of a blade. Even with my shaky hand half X strokes. I just spent a couple hours working several different blades with just water on both the vintage Pike and green coticule using circles. Interestingly, with a lot of circles, the increase in keenness was very noticeable. The final keenness from the green coticule with water and circles was better from the green coticule than the vintage. Following the circles up with 40 x strokes left a very smooth edge.
Circles also seemed to decrease the sensitivity to not diluting the slurry with extreme accuracy. Unless I waaay over diluted, I didn't have much of a problem.
If there's anyone around here struggling with the Dilucot method, circles might be something to try out, especially if you're not capable of doing half x strokes correctly (as in my case).
FWIW...
