Mixing It Up...

It could be a touch of variety, it could just be random flailing...

The past couple of weeks have been kind of an adventurous period.

For example, last week I went on a little trip with the wife, which ended with about 8 hours of department-store wandering, and I got plain old exhausted. When we got home, it was time to shave and you know what? I just wasn't up for stropping, brush-whipping lather, and the whole bit. So what did I do? I broke out this bad boy:



Yep! The $1 plastic Dorco razor. I loaded it with a "Swede" and for lather mixed up some T&H 1805 cream in my palms and went the quicky route. Results? A nice, smooth shave with just a couple of weepers. Sad, how easy that was. But no fear, I'm not moving away from straights...but I might try some more dorect comparisons of my straight shaves and DE shaves.

In other news, I've thrown a few more blades on my Ippon Matsu nashiji. Sadly, I think I'm ready to deliver a verdict: not a finisher for razors. It's just too soft...as I was honing, even with no pressure, it just kept releasing fresh slurry and I was never able to hit the keenness I wanted. I'm not giving up totally, I have some unorthodox ideas on how to get this stone to work for me, but I certainly can't say "This hone is great!". It's pretty though, sho' nuff.




So then, last night, I had some razors to touch up and looking over my hone shelf I thought "Hey, let's give Japan a rest and head to the Olde Worlde!" I got out a nice little Coticule and decided to give it a try.

The razors were in decent condition, so I decided to try the Dilucot method from Coticule.be.
I proceeded as per the instructions, dulling the blades then going into slurry. I monitored the edge closely, and when it seemed to hit a keenness plateau I tried finishing on water and I'll be honest, I didn't like the feel on either TPT or AHT. So I put on one layer of electrical tape and gave the razors about 75 very very light x strokes to set a secondary bevel, just to see how the stone worked.

The shave was simply not good. It tugged, left behind a lot of stubble, and thus necessitated extra passes resulting in irritation. I can't figure out where I went wrong, either. Each step of the way seemed to hit the right notes...I guess I'll just ahve to try it again.

Who knows...but now that I can sit in my workshop without drowning in my own sweat, I'll have more chances to play around.

Then there was the box of old NOS razors I got...selling them, I was asked to hone some and just because of time constraints, I decided to see what the absolute fastest, simplest finishing work I could do was--and it was diamond paste on MDF. Hands down. 10 strokes on 1.0 micrometer and 5 strokes on .5 micrometer gave a superb edge on those razors. Granted, they were close already, but for finishing that was really something else.

So there's even MORE to play with...

So how's by you?