My Dovo 6/8 extra hollow was getting pretty tuggy (I figure I borked the edge on the strop). I had tried a pasted strop, but it didn't quite bring it back, so I decided that I would give it a few laps on the Spydercos.
I basically did 15-20 laps on Medium, Fine, then Ultra Fine (all dry, as recommended). Here are my thoughts:
1. The motions take a minute to figure out. Stropping technique doesn't seem to translate all that much. It takes slower, more deliberate motions for me right now. Not to mention, due to the width of the Spydies, I'm making the X pattern. Kinda wish I went with the Norton's for that reason alone.
2. The feel of the stones is pretty remarkable. Even the Medium feels really smooth. It's easy to tell when you're making a bad stroke, too. The feedback seems instantaneous. I mostly found that I picked up the edge and dragged the shoulder, which actually make it tougher to stroke. I think this was me trying not to put any pressure on the blade, and over-correcting.
3. Too my surprise, after the Medium, I was shaving the back of my hand with relative ease. I was too scared to try the thumbnail or thumbpad tests, so I went by that and trusted that I was making progress. In hindsight, that was probably not super-wise, but the results were luckily very good.
4. I shaved with it this morning (after stropping on my TM Linen & Latigo). The shave was very good - no dragging, but it's still a noisy little sucker. I would like to get to the point where even my hollows don't cry out when I shave (like Joel's Kron Punkt in his recent shaving video).
Thoughts? Comments? Snide remarks?
I basically did 15-20 laps on Medium, Fine, then Ultra Fine (all dry, as recommended). Here are my thoughts:
1. The motions take a minute to figure out. Stropping technique doesn't seem to translate all that much. It takes slower, more deliberate motions for me right now. Not to mention, due to the width of the Spydies, I'm making the X pattern. Kinda wish I went with the Norton's for that reason alone.
2. The feel of the stones is pretty remarkable. Even the Medium feels really smooth. It's easy to tell when you're making a bad stroke, too. The feedback seems instantaneous. I mostly found that I picked up the edge and dragged the shoulder, which actually make it tougher to stroke. I think this was me trying not to put any pressure on the blade, and over-correcting.
3. Too my surprise, after the Medium, I was shaving the back of my hand with relative ease. I was too scared to try the thumbnail or thumbpad tests, so I went by that and trusted that I was making progress. In hindsight, that was probably not super-wise, but the results were luckily very good.
4. I shaved with it this morning (after stropping on my TM Linen & Latigo). The shave was very good - no dragging, but it's still a noisy little sucker. I would like to get to the point where even my hollows don't cry out when I shave (like Joel's Kron Punkt in his recent shaving video).
Thoughts? Comments? Snide remarks?
