I have had this lovely Japanese razor for some time now, but was never able to get a good shave off it. It just wasn't sharp enough, or smooth enough. I felt I was wasting it, just letting it sit in my display case...so the other day I decided to fix it.
I got out my hones:
A coticule/Belgian Blue Whetstone combination and a Shapton "Ha no Kuromaku" 12000 grit ceramic waterstone, and went to work.
Because I was noticing some micropitting on the blade under magnification, I followed the advice of Bart on SRP in this thread, and used a progression of Coticule with slurry, BBW with slurry, and then Coticule with water. I finished with 5 laps on a Chromium Oxide pasted hanging strop, then 50 on linen and 100 on shell. The edge I got was insanely sharp, but not very shaving smooth. I went back, and added the Shapton after the coticule. Again, to the strops fo a total of about 200 laps, and the shave.
Results? My best straight shave to date!
Using the Japanese straight is tough--the grind is assymetrical, meaning one side is concave and one is flat. Everyone says you are supposed to shave with the concave side against your face at all times, so you have to really contort to get the blade in all those tight little places on your face. Kind of not very fun. But the results were great--very smooth, and very comfortable. So, shaving with a lovely tool that I honed myself = an awesome day.
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