I conquered the Imperial!

Well I put the cursed thing in it's box for a few days but got the itch to hone yesterday and figured why not play with that? I had nothing to lose.

So  I dulled it on glass and put it on the oiled cretan with slurry. Lots of circles and half strokes and X strokes and it didn't seem to be doing ANYTHING( no surprise, I still dont' get this stone) so I switched to my BBW on my Nouvelle Vein coticule
                                                                                                                                                                                                 Used a  slurry and went to work. this BBW is magic because very quickly it was shaving arm hair! SO a few more X strokes on slurry.
Then ,since this was an experiment, I decided to take out my not often used Welsh Thuringian slate hone and make slurry with a BBW bout! Never did that before and it worked great. Made a great purple slurry and went to work with X strokes, only adding water to keep the slurry from getting too thick. Keenness went up here as well. Nice. Went to a slight dilute at the end and stopped when the stone started creating a suction on the blade. That seems to be the cue that it's time to go on



 So then I switched to the Jade coticule

Made a light slurry here and did a normal dilute. went great and it was getting keener very quickly? What the hell? One thing I did do was to make SURE the edge was undercutting everything and that I was sharpening the edge, not the bevel. Whatever it was it was finally getting sharp.

Dilute onto about 20 laps on plain water( never rinsed the coti though, just the blade) and then switched to my Les Lat bout for 40+ laps on water( it is very small) I LOVE this bout and it was making swarf off water! Excellent. I thought about putting on another finisher but decided to jsut shave with a coticule edge, which I haven't in a long time.

Under the scope was this beautiul, sandblasted coticule edge that I love so much. 30 on linen and 50 on Buffalo 20 on palm and then put it up

SHAVE REPORT:
EXCELLENT! Did  a full pass with it and it was most awesome. I finished the second pass with a Flaschner I am testing but I could have finished with the Imperial as well. FINALLY!It held the edge for the whole shave no problem.
Wow, that was close.:)
Just about tossed the sucker.