Upon rereading, I noticed this became a bold reply. I would like to emphasize that I merely used Chris' quotes as a vehicle for my message. It is not directed to him personally, nor to any one else who posted in this thread. If you feel addressed, well, I hope you give it some thought. Coticule.be tries to be different than most large forums. This means that we'll probably chase off a certain audience with our crap-cutting attitude. So be it. It's the only way to keep the shared information
evidence based- even if it's totally weird
-.
Here we go:
Chris said:
Being firmly in the “novice” category myself, I find I’m still at the point where if things don’t turn out, my first inclination is to wonder what the hell I did wrong....
That is a very good inclination. Blaming a tool is very human and I'm sure no one who ever learned a crafty thing or two, has never found himself in a position where he cursed a tool that he later found out to be just perfect. In the case of razor sharpening, allow me to reassure you and every future reader of this thread, that if you have been able to get one razor shaving well off a particular hone, you can get them all shaving well. I'm not sure how I have to interpret some posts in this thread, but anyone stating otherwise, is - in my experienced opinion- spreading nonsense.
Everyone has a prerogative to lie to himself, in order to justify the purchase of unneeded stuff. There is no shortage of online communities that serve to extend such fantasies. The field of straight razors is no exception. But, alas, this particular website was founded to offer a bit of a safe haven of that, or at least to make an honest attempt to be that.
I hone on Coticules, and for sure, nor I or these stones posses any magical abilities. Still, I have yet to come across the first razor that demanded me to lay the hone I was using aside for another one, in order to bring the edge to a level where it will shave very well. Whatever left as a margin for "improving" these edges resides in a very small reality, so small that it is clearly less significant than the differences between good beard prep and superior beard prep, or even between a good shaving day and a stellar one, for a multitude of petty little reasons. We all know what I'm talking about.
In that respect, it seems fair to say that any steel/stone mating, would not lead to differences of a magnitude that could be objectively isolated from other minute factors within the comfort zone of a good shave. In other words:
if a razor refuses to shave well after sharpening, don't expect the purchase of another finisher to offer any solace.
I have more whetstones than I need. In fact, I have more whetstones than I
use. It could be tempting to claim that they all posses unique and specific qualities required for getting each and every razor I own honed "up to my high standards". However, that claim would not be backed by much repeatable experience...
Chris said:
Browsing the forums often doesn’t help; signal to noise ratio and all that. And the obvious agendas of some cause me to question their objectivity. But one never knows when they might be onto something....
I beg to differ with that conclusion. On any Internet forum about any topic, it's fairly easy to spot when a post has "gear fetishism" written all over it. Usually there's a striking lack of empirical data to sustain the claims being made. Imagine someone would claim that a stainless Dovo always shaves better off a Naniwa 12K than off a Shapton 16K, and this is exactly the opposite for a carbon steel Dovo. Imagine other people testifying that they've done the test and reached the same conclusion. Now.
they might be onto something...
Chris said:
Of course, there is also the adage: soft razors need a hard stone and hard razors need a soft stone. (...) And an old text I read once that suggested that razors become ‘tired’ after time on one hone, so another, different type, should be used periodically, make me think there might be something to it.
Hard steel can be faster abraded on a soft stone, because a soft stone renews its surface at a quicker pace, hence exposing more fresh, ardent particles. That's a well-established fact, connected to the use of synthetic waterstones, and carborundum oilstones. It is typical that such a simple observation starts taking myth-like proportions.
About razors becoming tired of a hone: I beg you all. Let's stay real. With all believing that, I'll share a small secret: Grow a 6 day beard, and on the 6th of June (only on that date), at midnight, grab a dull razor and go to a crossroads. When you arrive there, immediately start shaving with the razor. A man in a black cloak will approach form the darkness, he will take your razor and he'll hone it on a familiar looking cream colored stone. Then he'll hand it back to you. If you accept this razor and finish the shave, you will from then on be able to put an amazing edge on any razor, even when honing with a chunk of asphalt. It works! Don't ask me how I know..:sleep:
Chris said:
I rationalize that by a need to create a framework in which to operate and make sense of what I read. How else can I know how a stone performs, not for someone else but for me, without buying the damn thing?
Well, I have here a Nakayama, a Chosera 10K and 2 vintage barber hones. I believe I can get the Chosera's keenest edge, but is that also its best edge? Maybe a tad of slurry yields friendlier edges of that stone? I don't know, because I never took the time to investigate it.
The Nakayama, I can get a great edge from that stone as well. Probably my most investigated hone, after Coticules that is. But I'm nowhere near the end of my Japanese friend. Again, honing plenty of razors on it, comparing them methodically, keeping notes, setting up little experiments, thinking a bit outside the box: these things take a lot of time and test shaves. Time I don't have.
The barber hones are both practically untouched. How could I ever say something meaningful about how steel X respond to hone Y, without first making sure that I am operating within the respective hones' limits, instead of within my own shortcomings?
Or is the general idea to figure out which hones operate best within our personal lack of skill and knowledge to use them? If I had to apply that adage to shaving, straight razors would suck big time...
Kind regards,
Bart.
