DJKELLY said:
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 don't think the sharpening lady at Dovo uses the HHT. During the last get together with some straight shaving pals, Leo De Brouwer, write of a well-known book about straight razor shaving (in Dutch) attended as well. He has visited the Dovo factory, in company of a few resellers of Dovo razors. (His first question to the guys from Dovo was: "who of you shaves with a straight razor?" No one answered affirmatively.) He saw the lady, she really exists and hasn't been doing anything else for over 20 years, he told us. She sets the bevel, "removes the bur" with the wet cowhorn, but she sharpens on Red Dovo paste. Leo was formal that the video doesn't show the entire procedure.
In any case, the way they sharpen at Dovo has little bearing, with what we're trying to go here: squeezing that last bit of keenness out a Coticule. There are far easier ways to achieve that, Dovo red paste being only one option. The only thing is, that I haven't found an option that's so wonderfully smooth and discerning between whiskers and skin, than that ultimate Coticule edge. But the Dovo factory edge is nowhere near that league. Understandably so. They need to get a shaveable edge on quickly and economically.
As to my current hypothesis why the cutting trough soap on the hone trick works for me: I think one of the main problems to get past a certain keenness limit on a hone (any hone) is caused by the very thinness of the bevel tip and the fact that it rests on the entire bevel side. I think this causes all kinds of interference and fluttering of the very edge while it passes over the surface. The soap potentially aids with 2 problems: it fills the gaps, providing a less interfering surface, and while cutting through the soap it might be a stabilizing factor against flutter. All very hypothetical, but it offers a possible explanation why it only works under very precise circumstances: the edge needs to be maxed out on water so it can gain that little extra during that limited stroke-count the soap provides the proper conditions. That also explains why the edge reverts back to the water sharpness level. Obviously, that is a very good edge in its own right. I've shaved with Double Arrows carrying such a Dilucot edge left by finishing with only water atop every hone in the Vault.
Tomorrows test shave will tell me if these edges, produced with the soap-trick, have something extra to offer. I know both the Dovo Silversteel and the Double Arrows quite well. If there's a
noticeable difference, I'll
notice it.
By the way, my soap is a mixture of tallow and glycerin based shaving soaps. If this whole idea lives up to its promises, I'll try it with other soaps as well. I suspect that creams won't work.
Kind regards,
Bart.
