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Lather and honing

Thanks Bart! I understand the concept of putting lather, but I don't find it produces a lot of slickness as you reported earlier. I find that dish soap creates a lot of slickness.
 
Bart said:
Thanks to all for trying and reporting back. I hope you didn't see this as an exercise in waisting time.

Bart.
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Not in the slightest.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I love the ideas and different techniques the members here come up with.
The more I try them, the more I learn. Even if I can't get them to work for me, there's always something else I get better at.
Trying this and Emmanuel's "ovals" have worked wonders for my stroke.
 
Bart said:
It seems no one had much luck copying my one-time success.
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On the contrary. I had great success with it, particularly when i was really struggling to learn my stone. I didn't have the soap dry, but allowed a wetter soap to get a bit dryer.
I'd heartily recommend it to anyone that also struggles.
If one gives some thought to the mechanics of what's happening, it seems to me to be very intuitive that it will reduce the abrasive function of the stone, leading to a more refined edge.
 
Bart

I think you said that you put a hard soap layer on your la dressante and that edge cut through it while honing/polishing. I have a hunch what is going on, besides the lessening of the aggressiveness of the hone. I think, since the soap has no dulling effect, it has a mechanical stropping effect on a microburr formed while sharpening. It is very similar to my stropping a couple times on my jeans or the Dovo sharpening lady using her wet piece of horn. Old carpenters used to sharpen a plane blade and plunge it into softwood to remove a burr and I have noticed that when I first started doing a HHT that if I caught a piece of my wet fingernail with the edge by accident before touching the hair it would frequently pass even if not before. I have a feeling you could hone on a clean coticule and then use a piece of hard soap to remove the burr and continue. Maybe I'll try it next Saturday when I bathe. "Rubber Duckie, you're the one...."
 
jfdupuis said:
Thanks Bart! I understand the concept of putting lather, but I don't find it produces a lot of slickness as you reported earlier. I find that dish soap creates a lot of slickness.
Click to expand...
I don't recall reporting about slickness.

I've been playing around some more. This time I used a silversteel 9/16 Dovo (my fist razor, started out as a 5/8":) ).

I dulled it on glass, comfirmed that it didn't shave arm hair, and restored it back to HHT-3/4 on yesterday's Les Latneuses, with the dry soap coating still on it. It was an outstanding result, certainly for this razor, that I know to normally only pass HHT-3 at 10-15 mm from the holding point with thick hairs. Again, this score was noticeably better. It took about 150 laps (estimated) and there were traces of black residue on the stone afterwards.

I did have to rinse the blade under hot water and clean it with a tissue paper before it showed any HHT-response.

I repeated it 2 times, with identical results, checking after 20 X-strokes (not there yet), after 40 (still not there yet), and after 80. By that time, the edge was ready. In between attempts, I rubbed the stone with my bare hands.

The 3th time it failed, but the coat of soap was wearing off at places and the stone was turning black near the sides. I decided to clean the stone, rubbing it with my hands under a hot tap. That worked very well.
Next I produced slurry, and took the razor through a quick Dilucot (five fast dilutions with with sets of 30 halfstrokes). I ended the Dilucot with 2 sets of 30 halfstrokes on water. I noticed that the Coticule still had a slight greasiness from the soap. I finished with X-strokes till just before the stone was dry, leaving it only a bit damp. I estimate it were 80 strokes or so, normal pressure. The Dovo again passes the HHT like no tomorrow.
Stropped and put it aside for test shaving tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
DJKELLY said:
I think, since the soap has no dulling effect, it has a mechanical stropping effect on a microburr formed while sharpening. It is very similar to my stropping a couple times on my jeans or the Dovo sharpening lady using her wet piece of horn. Old carpenters used to sharpen a plane blade and plunge it into softwood to remove a burr and I have noticed that when I first started doing a HHT that if I caught a piece of my wet fingernail with the edge by accident before touching the hair it would frequently pass even if not before. I have a feeling you could hone on a clean coticule and then use a piece of hard soap to remove the burr and continue.
Click to expand...

Which (with a little stretching) brings us back around to the TNT during honing, even the later stages. If there is a micro-burr present, either the soap, or a TNT, or a piece of horn should accomplish the same thing.
But I have to admit, I'm slightly skeptical that there exits a micro-burr.... how would it be detected? I've never noticed one under magnification, and I've never noticed a jump in HHT from the TNT, but I've only tested to ensure that the edge wasn't degraded; I hadn't thought to look for improvement. As well, the common wisdom is that there is no burr created with a coticule, though it may just be a matter of scale.
C'mon Denny, put your twoonie ...er.. money... where your mouth is! Show me this burr!:D :D
 
DJKELLY said:
I think you said that you put a hard soap layer on your la dressante and that edge cut through it while honing/polishing. I have a hunch what is going on, besides the lessening of the aggressiveness of the hone. I think, since the soap has no dulling effect, it has a mechanical stropping effect on a microburr formed while sharpening. It is very similar to my stropping a couple times on my jeans or the Dovo sharpening lady using her wet piece of horn
Click to expand...
Quite possible Dennis, but without a SEM to look at the edges, we can't know for sure. What matters to me, is to offer Coticule users a clear goal to aim for, before considering a test shave. Before I started relying on the HHT, I hated it to have lather on my face, jumping back and forth between test shaving and honing variations, trying to figure out if the edge was better or not. And at each attempt, I had to re-strop.

I never had a good shave off a razor that didn't passes the HHT of the Coticule prior to any stropping, even if the razor did pass the HHT afterwards. That's why I'm for my personal practice not that fond of your stropping-on-jeans-prior-to-HHT approach.

But you might be very right with your hypothesis that advantages of the lather method are for a part caused by a kind of keenness that we otherwise boost by stropping on the linen. My first impressions are that stropping these edge seems to impart a less impressive performance boost than stropping a "water-finished" edge. Nonetheles, HHT-4, bordering on 5, has always been good enough for me.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
I must say I am liking this thread, and the "BOSS" finishing method a great deal, I will try again soon as by the sounds of it, I had far to much dry soap on my Coticule first time

Thank you for all of this Bart my friend :thumbup: and thanks too for everyone that is trying this method and reporting back

Best regards
Ralfson (Dr)
 
well i gave it ago. i used palmolive stick. i usedmy la vainette as i'm trying to get this hone to work well . i did dilucot on my john clarkes finish last stages of dilucot . i just don't believe it i have got the best hht of the hone , i have been trying for the last two days and not had that result, typical. any way i rubed in some palmolive . did 40 x passes the razor sliced away throught the soap after that it was not to bad to hone on. plenty of grab but very honable . the hht was still there no improve mant and tbo i would say not quite as good in certain spots . i'm now off to try ralfys secret weapon on the blue side.
 
Chris, I have no idea if there is a microburr or not, and it doesn't matter. Just a guess. I am positive that coming off my kind of honing with moderate or more pressure, that stropping on jeans or other means of improving the edge mechanically definitely gives a couple point improvement from right off the stone. I am just too lazy to do very light x strokes.

I did try honing on a new les latneuses and right off the hone I tried to slice into a very stiff bar of bath soap, thrice. The hht jumped up two points and stropping on my jeans did not improve it. I also tried loading a la dressante with the same soap, dry, and it gave a very nice hht off the stone, but I never considered doing 80-100 strokes. I'd have a stroke. Guess it makes sense, though, if we are reducing the aggressiveness of the stone. I want to try the Dovo fraulein's piece of wet cow horn.

Apologies for the juvenile bath humor. Just a childish effort to fit in with you continentals. Your clean pal, Denny
 
Another update:

I took a Double Arrow. I find these notoriously difficult to pass HHT-3 off the Coticule, unless I Unicot them.
I dulled on glass, did the quick Dilucot from the previous post and ended up with a hesitant HHT-3 on thick hair.
I picked a thin hair and could only play violin with that one.
I tried all kinds of variations using lather, but nothing really worked. Some results reduced the keenness others brought it right back. Wet lather seemed to set me back instead of forth. This afternoon's trick (honing till damp and then some) trick didn't work. I was ready to give up when I tried yesterday's approach. Rubbed the dry hone with the soap, massaged the surface with my bare hands. 30 X-strokes, the first ones shaving off a thin coat of soap, soap gunk on the razor, etc. The last half of those 30 strokes things started gliding better again. Results: HHT-3 on the thin hair. I decided to make another 50 laps to see if there was further improvement possible. HHT on the same hair back to violin.
I started over, rubbing the stone with the soap. 30 X-strokes. Back the HHT-3 on the thin hair.
I've stropped the Double Arrow. Test shave tomorrow, together with the Dovo. I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out my best Dilucot on the Double Arrow so far.

DJKELLY said:
I tried to slice into a very stiff bar of bath soap, thrice. The hht jumped up two points and stropping on my jeans did not improve it. I also tried loading a la dressante with the same soap, dry, and it gave a very nice hht off the stone, but I never considered doing 80-100 strokes.
Click to expand...
Highly interesting, my friend. I'm grabbing another Double Arrow as we speak. Stay tuned. Back in 15 minutes.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
Ok so are you saying it's a 30 stroke max kind of thing?

If I have time tonight I will try the same thing with a DA

Good luck with the tests my friend
Regards
Ralfson (Dr)
 
tat2Ralfy said:
Ok so are you saying it's a 30 stroke max kind of thing?

If I have time tonight I will try the same thing with a DA

Good luck with the tests my friend
Regards
Ralfson (Dr)
Click to expand...

I don't know, it's all very odd. Maybe Dennis is right and it's some sort of strange effect from cutting through the soap, that wears off later on. Or maybe the subdued abrasion is released slowly as the stone looses the coat of soap.

We'll find out.

Back to the hones!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXh1tW16V-8&playnext=1&list=PL22557F5B269FDB23&index=34
 
Might be going in circles here, Bart, but I used the narrow la dressante Gaz picked out for me at Ardennes, loaded it with soap, rubbed it with my clean fingers and did 100 x strokes. The first twenty or so shaved off the soap and I did not get much after forty laps. After eighty I had a nice hht3 without stropping on jeans. Stropped on jeans and hht seemed to drop a point or at least a half point. Did forty more on the same stone with no further soap added and hht without stropping jumped up to 4. This seems to be very much like your experiment to me. Works great. Shave was magical, as Gary would say. A very aggressive but spookily mellow edge. I could not cut myself, it seemed.

It appears that extra strokes equal six strops on jeans in the middle of this procedure. You are one of those crafty Caucasions.

Your pal, D.
 
idunno.... I got some improvement with the "dry" soap thing.... not a great one. About a from HHT 1 off the stone w/ water to a 2 off the stone w/ soap to a 3 off the linen. I can see it lending something more to the edge. I'll try again another day; the party is one house over tonight.

Any thought to the mechanism? I'd put forth the hypothesis that it is possibly using the swarf as an abrasive medium... My stone seemed to collect a bunch of it, and it seemed that I was honing on the swarf/soap mixture as much as anything.

I was going to try Denny's "cutting up the soap" thing too, but the only soap in the house is a half melted blob in the shower. I hope someone's put that on the shopping list.
 
Sorry about the extra 5 minutes. I watched Ben Hur.

The second Double Arrow, then. It was a razor honed long time ago, for some experiment, can't remember what. I checked under the scope, it had a single bevel. It did pass HHT-3 on thick hairs, but only 10 mm form the holding point. I dragged it thought the puck of soap, 3 times, per Dennis' suggestion and cleaned it (note that I always clean the edge before trying the HHT, I won't mention this an further). There was definitely some HHT improvement, but it still wouldn't sever a thin hair, as the other Double Arrow did off the hone.
I left the hair where it was and did performed the dry lather trick. 30 laps. No improvement. 3 drags through soap. Nothing. Checked if I could still pop the thick hair. Yes. Added 60 laps on the hone as it was (dry with soap on it). Nothing. Added a 2 drops of water to make the hone damp, rubbed with my hands and did 40 strokes. No change. Added a long series of X-strokes (way over 100). No change, perhaps the HHT- on thick hair went less well, but it still passed.
Cleaned hone under running tap, rubbed most water off with my hands and performed many strokes till the hone was as good as dry (hone showed some blackish streaks). Still nothing. Cleaned hone under hot tap, dried it and decided to do the dry soap trick again. Counted 30 strokes. Bingo: razor passes HHT-3 on the thin hair (except heel). 3 drags trough the soap puck. No change.
Added 20 laps on the hone, paying attention to heel. Great HHT on thin hair all over. Stropped and put razor aside. Test shaving sample #3 for tomorrow.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
Quick question...so you guys use a dry coticule and
Rub it with a wet or dry soap? Any preference on thr soap? Tallow or glyceryn base?
 
If my theory is correct, Bart, the dragging through the soap is only for intermeditate improvement on the way to further refinement, and won't make any difference if many other polishing strokes are performed and the microburr, if there is one, is already gone. The fact that you saw some improvement at one point with the soap "horn" seems to support a microburr, but I am not saying that is what is going on. Something is, though, and it would surely seem to be mechanical. In the Dovo video, the honer makes super rapid half strokes and drags the edge through the horn. She then goes back to the hone. I bet she has more HHTs than all of us combined. I think it is just a method of speeding up the development of the edge with fewer strokes. It would appear that the newly added soap to the hone surely has no dulling effect and for maximum keenness the surface has to be dialed back a bit.
 
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