Figuring out the Escher

Months after getting this very expensive, and highly sought after finishing stone, I am figuring out how to use it! Every time I have tried in the past it not only hasn't advanced my edges but many times made them worse!

I tried it with medium thick slurry, with thin slurry and with no slurry, just on water but nothing seemed to really work on my blades.
Way easier time getting a solid finished edge from my Oozuku or Nakayama stones but I was determined to figure this out.

One big help was this video from Sham, Master Honer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0kLxgkOtM4&feature=g-user-c


Sham's edges are consistently the best I've ever shaved with and it is my gold standard for my own edges. I'm getting closer.

The one thing that this video made very clear to me is that I was using too much pressure on the strokes. I already used the  balance technique as I hone with the stone in my hand but I was just using too much pressure; the finish is to polish the edge, not cut metal. So I backed off and that helped.

But what really helped( and Sham doesn't use this technique) was to apply the dilution method that the Coticule masters use. I start off now with a very light slurry made with either a Blue Green Escher slurry stone or a DMT and make a very light slurry.

Then it's about 20 laps on that slurry and I start the dilution process. Five laps and a finger drop, then four, then three then two, all adding one finger drop of water. Then , I rinse the blade and do another 3-4 laps. Then rinse it all and do between 10 and 20 laps on water only.

This has worked perfectly! Another thing I try to do while honing on this is to do my laps with the same lack of pressure I want to shave with. My ideal edge  shaves me almost effortlessly and I never have to push or put pressure on the beard to get it to shave( when the edge is right). I try to hone with this same pressure too. This has made a big difference.

Got back to my favorite Revisors today, shaved one half of my face with the thumb notch 6/8 and the second with the  regular 6/8. Barely needed a second pass but did it for fun and to touch up a few spots but man it was smooth!

  It's so much fun when you figure things out! Even the Gotta razor got a wicked great edge off this Escher technique yesterday and I had pretty much given up on that blade!

Next up is the Zulu Grey hone that's coming in from South Africa supposedly a finer hone than the Escher. We'll see!