I need to guard myself or I will gush over this hone! The shave was superb! Excellent level of sharpness and quite nearly all the smoothness of a coticule edge. BBS and very very little irritation! I went into this fully expecting to be underwhelmed. Told myself that it was being over hyped because it is a new find. I was wrong. This hone is the real deal. I am looking forward to trying many more blades on this hone. It isn't a replacement for my beloved coticules, but as a last finishing step it is superb. I did not have any of the water beading issues. The feedback, for lack of a better term, seems to have more draw than I am used to. Many coticules feel creamy to me under the blade. This hone feels like the change from going from a cordovan strop to a latigo strop. Not wrong, just more draw. This may well be because the hone is fresh from lapping. By the end of the session I could already feel it smoothing slightly. My advice would be to lay hands on one of these rocks before they are widely discovered.
What?Special stone should be used with a thin oil for a low number of laps.
I honed two more razors today: Two C-Mons— both 5/8s.
I used the same progression I normally use (Chosera 1k, norton 4/8k) but used the Apache as the finisher. Water only, no slurry as I had done with previous honings. 30 laps & x-strokes (total). a half-dozen laps on a ChromOx bench strop; 50 linen/100 leather.
a VERY sticky edge (TPT); popping arm hairs across the entire edge. I shaved with one of the CMons tonight (the one pictured below) and found the edge to be velvety smooth. So far I've been getting very satisfying results with this Apache stone. Its neary the same width as my Escher so I'm accustomed to the 'long & narrow' stone. If these results continue to be as consistent as the past several days though, I may consider looking at getting one a bit wider.
I used the same progression I normally use (Chosera 1k, norton 4/8k) but used the Apache as the finisher. Water only, no slurry.
One solution, Mike….Get 'em while they're relatively cheap!You're killing me with this stone Kevin...my A.H.A.D. clock is ticking...