After my post last week on how fustrating i am finding honing, last weekend i read up on honing techniques by folks on here, srp and other sites which included some vendor sites, and i thought, lets have a go at something different, so the first thing i did was get out my diamond plates, which are 200, 300, 400 & 600, now as i said in my first post, i am very weary of these as i have not used them much, and when i have used them i always seem to go to far with them, but after reading the posts of using them to form, not set a bevel, off i went slowly, managed to get 2 straights with a nice straight bevel using the 300 & 600, then i went to work on the niwana combo to set the bevel, passed the tnt, and moved to the other side of the stone with a slurry, then watered down the slurry and did something else i read, after thinning the slurry right down to just water, i dragged the water off the stone, and finished honning when the stone was more or less dry, this is what i read on another forum, then before i went for my c12k, i read somewhere to throw the dt into the progression, which i did, again with a slurry down to nothing, onto the c12, this time with no slurry, again picked up on a forum, run it on a chrox strop and finally a good stropping, now for some strange reason when i finished all this i could feel this razor was sharp, not like anything i have achieved before, used it tonight, and i have to say i was very nervous as i knew it was sharp, i had a few nicks, but what a tremendous shave, even my chin area is smooth, now i dont know much about honning, and what i did may be wrong, but it worked a treat and i have not honed a razor as sharp as this before, or had such a good shave with a self honed razor, 1 question again though, out of the current 4 honed razors i have, 3 are self honed and have always given me a good shave, but they are no where near as sharp as this razor, would you let it go, or re hone the others razors like this, for the record, the 2 razors i honed the new way were a ern and a esse, i now look at the 14 razors i have collected without so much dread.
Changed things around!
- Thread starter taffy
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Good news. Glad it worked out for you.
BTW - here, feel free to use any of these that you need..........................
BTW - here, feel free to use any of these that you need..........................
I would say that's on the aggressive side of anything I've read, creating bevel at 300 - I was thinking if I ever got into restoring a junk razor, I'd start at 1000 and be cutting mighty fast. But what do I know 
Anyway, only other thing I'd say is that, again, what I read is that you won't need to go down much deeper than the pasted strop or C12k now that you've got it super sharp. Overall, I'm encouraged by other people making progress with honing - I'd like to get there.
Anyway, only other thing I'd say is that, again, what I read is that you won't need to go down much deeper than the pasted strop or C12k now that you've got it super sharp. Overall, I'm encouraged by other people making progress with honing - I'd like to get there.
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- #4
I have got a 1000 diamond plate, and have used this to form a bevel before, but each razor is different I suppose, I did not set the bevel at 300/600, but got the edge straight and formed a bevel, the actual setting the bevel/tnt came on my niwanas, whatever I did, its a sharp edge, I am happy with my c12, it has always worked for me!
This was a good read for me. Being new to honing and having a bunch of razors that I need to clean up and hone, I'll be using some of these tips to see what difference it makes. I've got a DMT 325 and DMT 1.2k. I've only used my DMT 1200 to start with so far but I think I'll take it back to the 325 to start and then move to the 1200. Thanks for sharing this.
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- #8
i actually think my dt is around 8, i have done some testing with this stone and compared it t the naniwa 8 and i am sure its around the same, definatly not 6 though.
