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Different stones= different results.

Back from a couple days of work and received a couple new stones from Ardennes. (Pics to follow) I, too, took Bart's advice not to worry about more rather than less pressure and got the same results using dilucot. It also was so much faster that I was able to do three razors in just over and hour, trying to make sure it was not just a fluke. In addition, I was trying to speed up my x strokes and found that I reached a finesse point where I was not just much faster, but much more consistent with corresponding better results. I wonder if the speed across the stone made a difference, too.
 
i alternate speed i go pritty fast then i will slow it down just to get some feed back of hone . i get a nice rtym and stick with that .
 
For me, firm but fair works well, kinda like when you are with a women, if the touch is too light the results are lacking, but if you go at it like you are trying to wear it out, things end up far from smooth, if you see what I mean? hahaha

Best regards
Ralfson (Dr)
 
Bart said:
A Unicot with the misty slurry step is smoother than a Unicot performed on water only.

That means that Coticule smoothness depends not only on the garnet shape but also on the fluid power as well. Wow :thumbup:

Bart, do you think that Unicot (with misty slurry) equals the smoothness found in Dilucot?

OTOH, by doing a 2 or 3 tape layers Unicot, would that yield an "Special Pour Barbe Dure"-edge? Or that doesn't make sense at all?
 
jeez... this is getting bad.... now I'm honing at night before I go to bed, and again in the morning before I go to work.... What, oh what, has become of me?

I had to try it again, to see if I was dreaming or some such. There is a definate improvement of the cutting feeling by changing the bias of the forces at play. I'd tried a bit more pressure in the past, and this isn't really adding any more, just changing the focus of it. The blade is still flat on the stone, just with more load directed towards the edge. Previously, when I used pressure by squishing the blade straight down into the hone, I didn't get the feeling that there was a whole lot that changed.
It really seems to speed things up, enough that I can see evidence of swarf even with just water. And also, that grabby catchy feeling isn't as pronounced, whatever the hell that phenomenon is.

I'm off to shave with that razor I did last night.... I hope it lives up to it's promises!


(I can't believe you guys let my comment about a fat chick on a greased water mattress slide!:D )
 
Wait until you get up in the night, leaving the soft warmness of your loved one, to sit in the cool still night honing a razor.
That is what my mentor told me, and dammit! you know he was right...lol

Oh yeah the fat chic thing.... we have a "No Fat Chics" ruling in our house hahahaha, when I was a G we had stickers made for our motorcycles, that read "No Fuckin' Fat Chics!" and the guy who was sent to get them almost bailed when the girl on the desk asked exactly what the stickers read, she must have weighed 250 pounds! hahaha

Sleep Well
Best Regards
Ralfson (Dr)
 
Chris, your coticule honing will be on the up and up for a while. A few times in there you will hit a wall and not be able to figure out what you are doing wrong.

Right now I am at the point where I never will unicot a blade. I try as hard as possible to get my dilucot edges to perform. After stropping most do. My real challenge right now is to get an HHT-3 of the hone with a very small amount of downward action with the hair. My hair is to thin just to pop while its sitting on the edge. The only hones I can do that with are my latnueses and my vintage coti. Since I know that I only work on my other ones. I usually try and hone 3 a day.

I remember when I was trying to figure it out, I kept thinking, "DAMN. it can't get any sharper than this!" But then I would get better. Eventually I honed with a Ray honed razor and it was super great. I'm still not quite to that level!

Good luck,
Caleb
 
Ah yes, "Fat Bottomed Girls", Freddie Mercury--one of the greatest songs of all time. "Git on yur bikes and ride". In the Navy we used to call it your "Fat Qual".
 
Fat chicks are like mopeds.... they're fun to ride, but no one wants to tell their friends about it:w00t: :w00t:

What a glorious shave I had this morning! Wonderful edge! I've been faceterbating (God how I hate that word!) all day! Keen and smooth, no weepers or irritation at all! No question of lacking keenness.

Finally! What a sense of accomplishment! You guys have been most patient and are deserving of my thanks for taking the time to steer me along and offer such great and unending encouragement.

I think the time has come to hang up my n00b badge. I hereby forthwith do henceforth declare myself "Honster!"B)

My most undying gratitude,
Chris (Honster Extrodinaire) Calvé
 
Chris, I've been following your progress for quite a while and while I'm still well and truly in the n00b category your posts and the advice they've prompted has so far been more than helpful in both the understanding and characteristics of my particular hone and the way I use it.
Informative and entertaining stuff.
Keep coming with the questions and your findings man. :thumbup:
This stuff is priceless.
 
Thanks guys, and I'm glad to stand as an example for others. I try not to take myself too seriously so I'm not above asking silly questions others with a tad more dignity might not!:D

speaking of which....

I've kinda got this bugger pinned down now.... but I'm a little unsure exactly when to let up with the pressure.
I've been doing some kind of pyramid type system, where I keep going back to a lighter slurry stage and reworking it back out, but using a lighter slurry each time, and trying to stage the pressure down each time. It takes quite a while... (can you say "understatement"?) though the results I'm getting a typically very good. Just long in the coming.
I've been keeping the "Advanced Feedback Markers" page open as a crib sheet, but I'm not really sure when to bang out a few 1/2 strokes, or wether a few strokes with pressure is sending me back a step or not.... If I've read it right, I am trying to move very slowly through the ultra light slurry stage (after rinsing but not wiping the stone or razor), thinking this is probably the place where the keenness comes from?

I've also noticed that my La Viennette slurry stone is scratching the surface of my Dressante. ...gggrrrrrr....
 
wdwrx said:
Thanks guys, and I'm glad to stand as an example for others. I try not to take myself too seriously so I'm not above asking silly questions others with a tad more dignity might not!:D

speaking of which....

I've kinda got this bugger pinned down now.... but I'm a little unsure exactly when to let up with the pressure.
I've been doing some kind of pyramid type system, where I keep going back to a lighter slurry stage and reworking it back out, but using a lighter slurry each time,

Why Chris? why are you not just starting with a milky slurry and slowly diluting.

wdwrx said:
I'm not really sure when to bang out a few 1/2 strokes, or wether a few strokes with pressure is sending me back a step or not....

If the slurry you are using is thicker than the one you just came off, then yes you are moving backwards, and half strokes will see you right through to water, you dont need regular X strokes until then.

wdwrx said:
If I've read it right, I am trying to move very slowly through the ultra light slurry stage (after rinsing but not wiping the stone or razor), thinking this is probably the place where the keenness comes from?

You need to work slowly through the entire slurry stage, if the bevel is not set right, or you misjudge your dilution as you work through, you wont achieve a shave sharp edge, the keenness comes from correctly performing the whole technique, not just the finishing stage, other wise we would just rough out the edge and then do 2 or 3 hundred laps on water, which of course just wont work.

wdwrx said:
I've also noticed that my La Viennette slurry stone is scratching the surface of my Dressante. ...gggrrrrrr....

Did you try lapping the edges of your slurry stone, to make them nice and rounded? or maybe just tilt the slurry stone slightly, and you should find you make slurry with much less pressure.

Its all here my friend; http://www.coticule.be/unicot.html

Hope this helps, and keep up the good work buddy

Kind Regards
Ralfson (Dr)
 
tat2Ralfy said:
Why Chris? why are you not just starting with a milky slurry and slowly diluting.

If the slurry you are using is thicker than the one you just came off, then yes you are moving backwards, and half strokes will see you right through to water, you dont need regular X strokes until then.

Well dammit... when you put it like that:D

I keep going back because I haven't got the edge to the point I want it. So my reasoning is to go back to some point ahead of where i started the last step, and do it all over again. I can usually gain an incremental improvement. BWTH does it mean? Am I outrunning my slurry then? Or spending too long without diluting and thereby dulling the edge faster than I'm gaining?
I guess I'm interpreting the advice I've read that suggested for more keenness to go back to a light slurry and go back up. (Forgive my paraphrasing) which seems to pan out for me as; do a dilucot, test, do another smaller dilucot, test.... do another, even smaller, so on and so forth, until I'm just kinda showing the slurry stone to the coti, and then going to straight water from there. I tend to spend a bit more time at the final lightest slurry stage thinking that I want some cutting power, but not alot, to make up for any misjudgment in my progress.

Thanks for the link... even though i've read that about a hundred times, I still find some new little golden nugget whose relevance eluded me before. "Review, review, review", as my college prof's always used to say....
I'm going to try another attempt exactly as Bart's showing in the vid. The first time i tried it... well... let's just say Bart makes it look easy!

Thanks Ralfy!
-Chris
 
criss if at the end of honing i'm no where near hht then i just go back to milky slurry , that way i'm sure to catch up on keeness. if i'm violin stage at the end i tinker on water stages by using half strokes and finishing on lighter x's.
 
2 additional tips...

1. Don't over-analyze. Just hone.

2. Use the same pressure all the way till the end. Next, finish with 50 light X-strokes. Light means just that. It doesn't require some special talent to manipulate Gravity itself. Just light. 50 laps. For the pressure during the rest of the procedure, please refer to this post: http://www.coticule.be/the-cafeteria/message/5710.html

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
wdwrx said:
I keep going back because I haven't got the edge to the point I want it. So my reasoning is to go back to some point ahead of where i started the last step,

I take you mean before and not ahead?
wdwrx said:
and do it all over again. I can usually gain an incremental improvement. BWTH does it mean? Am I outrunning my slurry then? Or spending too long without diluting and thereby dulling the edge faster than I'm gaining?

If you spend too long without diluting the slurry, the edge will max out at that stage, all you will do then is waste steel and time, on the other hand if you are letting the slurry become even a little thicker than when you started, you will be moving backwards, and dulling the edge, if you take a razor dulled on glass, do a few sets of half strokes on milky slurry and it should shave arm hair, now if you carry on without adding water the edge will drop right back to not shaving arm hair anymore.

wdwrx said:
I guess I'm interpreting the advice I've read that suggested for more keenness to go back to a light slurry and go back up. (Forgive my paraphrasing) which seems to pan out for me as; do a dilucot, test, do another smaller dilucot, test.... do another, even smaller, so on and so forth, until I'm just kinda showing the slurry stone to the coti, and then going to straight water from there. I tend to spend a bit more time at the final lightest slurry stage thinking that I want some cutting power, but not alot, to make up for any misjudgment in my progress.

Thats bang on, what I do is what I believe is a simpler version of just that, I do a full dilocut and perform a HHT, what follows depends on the result, if it passes I strop and go, job done, if it catches here and there, or does a very very loud violin, you know the one where you can feel it wants to catch, I go a couple of sets of 30 half strokes on water and then around 60 regular X strokes on water again, that brings the whole edge up to par, if however its a dull violin, or worse still the hair just pulls over the edge like butter off a knife, then I rub the slurry stone twice on the hone, and go back to doing half strokes, dilute every set for maybe 3 or 4 sets, until I am just on water again, then its business as usual, I very very very rarely have to do that last fix, and among others the half strokes on water and then regular X strokes, is my main fix for when the edge is slightly below par.

Hope this helps even more?
HONE ON!!

Ralfson (Dr)
Damn I hate these long drawn out answers....lol
I meant what Gary just said! hahaha
 
Bart said:
1. Don't over-analyze. Just hone.
oh, if only you knew..... Not the first time I've been told to just shut up and get to work! bwhahahahh:D :D


OK, dammit! I just tried copying Bart's video.... twice. And just accomlpished in 20 minutes what it took me 2 hours to do last night. After the first time, I realized I might be diluting too fast, so then i got a big stack of pennies (15), and every time I did a set of 20 1/2 strokes and a dilution, I moved one penny from one pile to another until the first pile was gone. Then I wiped half the stone, and did it again 5 times more, with five more pennies:)
HHT2 after the second round, and so i went back to about 3 sets of 20 half stokes on water, and another 50 x strokes and got an easy hht3... maybe even a 4! Woot!
At the risk of being acused of over-analyzing...;) . I think it all comes back to the pressure I'm using. The first time, some time ago, that I tried copying the video, I wasn't using enough pressure, so at that point i wandered off and adapted the process to my ignorance. Revisiting it again now, with my newfound insight into pressure, has made it much more effective. And way quicker!
Thanks for the tips! I promise I'll shut up now!


Cheers,
-Chris
 
wdwrx said:
HHT2 after the second round, and so i went back to about 3 sets of 20 half stokes on water, and another 50 x strokes and got an easy hht3... maybe even a 4! Woot!
Cheers,
-Chris

Bingo!
Thats just the ticket old bean!!:thumbup:

Best regards and well done Chris, see the stone, feel the stone, be the stone (jk) lol

Ralfson (Dr)
 
[sup]Holy Shit!. [/sup]




Is this thing ever freakin' sharp!


Now that it's stropped it the sharpest edge I've ever gotten.
Using the medium hair that Gary sent me, it shows just the tiniest teensiest little bit more resistance on the pop.I'd call it a HHT5. I'm almost scared of it!:scared:
I'm speachless!
:lol: :lol: :lol:

edit... in my excitment, I forgot to mention that I compared it to the J.Haywood Gary did for me, with the medium hair sample he sent along with it. What I meant to say was that the results were almost identical.
 
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