After the kerfluffle in the first ILR thread I was contacted by a recent convert to SR shaving who owned a sample of the stone in question and wanted to have someone with a little more honing experience with the more established stones test it and let him know how it stacked up. I figured I may as well post it here as well.
First impressions of the stone are that it is quite dense and heavy. The stone is approximately 2.67" (67.8mm) x 1.00" (25.4mm) x 7.15" (181.6mm) and weighed in at 29.8 oz (845 grams) so the density works out to about 2.7g/cm³ - the same as a good dense Hard Arkansas stone.
I received the stone with one side marked "Lapped," but quickly determined that it wasn't very flat. Went ahead and flattened it with my trusty worn-in Atoma 400, then raised a slurry with the supplied rubbing/slurry stone (this takes a bit of doing, the stone is quite hard - I can tell that after slurry is raised a few times it's probably going to get more difficult - likely will be best long term using a corner of the slurry stone or reducing the surface area on the rub surface with grooves or such) and commenced honing a good old carbon steel vintage razor.
The stone is what I might call slow to medium speed, the slurry darkens but it does take a good while. I will be doing further tests to see how fast it can erase a standard scratch pattern that I've used to test my other stones. I'll post that further info after that testing is done.
The honing feel is pretty nice, on slurry there's a nice sensation of fairly fine abrasion, similar to what some of my faster JNats with slurry feel like, also my fast coticule with slurry. It may be that the stone is faster than it seems, in any case I will find out with the specific speed testing later. After a very light glassing of the edge I proceeded to hone the razor starting with small circles for several laps, then switched to half-strokes and finally X-strokes, all with medium-light pressure. After this I changed to light pressure and did about 10 laps of x-strokes, then dipped the razor under the faucet to begin dilution. I brought the water on the razor back to the stone and did another 10 laps, repeating this process for about 3 iterations, then washed the razor and stone, and did about 30 or 40 laps with straight water.
Washed and dried everything, then stropped 30 laps on hanging denim strop and 60 on clean hanging leather. Next I performed the HHT and got clean HHT4 all up and down the edge no problem. Following are some scope shots I took of the resultant edge and bevel. Looks pretty decent to me. First test shave later tonight.
Built-in Ring Light:
Scratch Enhancing Light:
Raking Light:
Edge Lit/Focused:
First impressions of the stone are that it is quite dense and heavy. The stone is approximately 2.67" (67.8mm) x 1.00" (25.4mm) x 7.15" (181.6mm) and weighed in at 29.8 oz (845 grams) so the density works out to about 2.7g/cm³ - the same as a good dense Hard Arkansas stone.
I received the stone with one side marked "Lapped," but quickly determined that it wasn't very flat. Went ahead and flattened it with my trusty worn-in Atoma 400, then raised a slurry with the supplied rubbing/slurry stone (this takes a bit of doing, the stone is quite hard - I can tell that after slurry is raised a few times it's probably going to get more difficult - likely will be best long term using a corner of the slurry stone or reducing the surface area on the rub surface with grooves or such) and commenced honing a good old carbon steel vintage razor.
The stone is what I might call slow to medium speed, the slurry darkens but it does take a good while. I will be doing further tests to see how fast it can erase a standard scratch pattern that I've used to test my other stones. I'll post that further info after that testing is done.
The honing feel is pretty nice, on slurry there's a nice sensation of fairly fine abrasion, similar to what some of my faster JNats with slurry feel like, also my fast coticule with slurry. It may be that the stone is faster than it seems, in any case I will find out with the specific speed testing later. After a very light glassing of the edge I proceeded to hone the razor starting with small circles for several laps, then switched to half-strokes and finally X-strokes, all with medium-light pressure. After this I changed to light pressure and did about 10 laps of x-strokes, then dipped the razor under the faucet to begin dilution. I brought the water on the razor back to the stone and did another 10 laps, repeating this process for about 3 iterations, then washed the razor and stone, and did about 30 or 40 laps with straight water.
Washed and dried everything, then stropped 30 laps on hanging denim strop and 60 on clean hanging leather. Next I performed the HHT and got clean HHT4 all up and down the edge no problem. Following are some scope shots I took of the resultant edge and bevel. Looks pretty decent to me. First test shave later tonight.
Built-in Ring Light:
Scratch Enhancing Light:
Raking Light:
Edge Lit/Focused:
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