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!

Gotta

Just snagged this awesome 5/8' Gotta from $30! Crazy. They're going for 150 right now and this should be an awesome blade. Sheffield + Soligen

Japanese unicot

Been awhile but i've been honing and shaving religiously, just not posting. Become enamored of the unicot technique for getting that perfect edge every time, just by putting a layer of electrical tape on the spine for creating a micro bevel. the great thing about it is that it works SO consistently.

It's a coticule technique but today I decided to try it with my Jnat stones. this '65 russian has been a pain in the ass and today I realized why, the bevel is REALLY uneven and it probably has a warp to it as well so I took out the cretan hone to do some bevel correction

 dry rubbed the cretan with it's own slurry stone making a powder first, THEN adding a few drops of water to make the slurry. works really well this way.I love this stone, it is SO versatile. It can reset a bevel or take a blade to shave ready. Crazy.
SO lots of half strokes and pinpointed honing to correct the uneven bevel.
 Finished on water just cause it was fun.

Then onto my Nakayama 2

started with soft uchi slurry and circles. then onto chu nagura slurry and X strokes then Oozuku slurry and more X strokes. Things were picking up well and it was getting keener with each slurry change( oozuku slurry stone below)

finished on clean water and X strokes to polish up the bevel as much as possible before moving onto the micro bevel.

Next up the Oozuku stone and tomonagura slurry made with a DMT. I've taken to this method more and more lately as the DMT lets me use the exact stone's slurry instead of guessing which stone- bout or base stone, make the slurry.
30 X strokes here to finish the polish then add one layer electrical tape and re build slurry:
30 X strokes here as well then rinse all and finish with 50 X strokes on pure water.

40 laps on linen 50 on Buffalo strop and 20 on palm:

Shave report;
Freaking PERFECT!  Didn't know if I had over done it but it was a perfect just about one pass shave. Had brought out my Wade and Butcher pure wedge and did use it for the second pass but it didn't hardly pick any hair up!

NICE! Also taped the W&B and did 30 x strokes on the Escher followed by 30 on water and it was as keen and QUIET as could be. Great fun!

New blade

Just got this beauty on ebay for $26!! Crazy. A 1966  Soligen 6/8 blade that's shoulder less with some work done on the heels Underside jumps and a half hollow. Pretty much all my favorites; plus the scales say Pax as well as the pins are solid. We'll see how it shave tomorrow but I'm betting on good!

Been honing ALOT, just not posting a lot. did a lot of one stone no slurry honing and found it worked pretty well with coticules but not J Nats. Still haven't Mastered the Escher by a long shot but I'm coming up with some pretty keen edges pretty consistently.

THe Jnats seems the most consistent and easy to use and the uchigumori is almost always a winner finisher. Morgans' Asagi the same way.
Can't wait to shave tomorrow!


SHAVE REPORT: AWESOME! NOT ONLY IS IT A GREAT SHAVER BUT THE EDGE WAS EXCELLENT. NOT PERFECT BUT DAMN NEAR. SELLER SAID HE FINISHED ON A THURINGIAN  AND IT FEELS THAT WAY. I WILL PUT A FEW STROKES IN ON MY ESCHER AND SEE HOW IT GOES TOMORROW. LOVE THIS BLADE THOUGH!

Dueling Russians

Decided to do a side by side honing progression comparison with just ONE difference, the finishing stone.
Plus I decided also to shave off the stone, no stropping, to see if I could tell the difference in the finishers.

Both russian 5/8's with hollow ground about the same age 1960's

start:
cretan hone with DMT slurry ( I am really digging this as a low grit stone one day I will try to shave off of it)
 Welsh Thuringian with DMT slurry  also digging this stone with tomo slurry.brings up keeness very quickly

Russian 1 finisher= La Veinette coticule on water
Russian 2 finisher = Escher on water

first off neither was great with no strop. so 20 laps on buffalo then

La veinette russian. strop make a  HUGE difference. typical coticule smoothness.
Escher on Buffalo strop . Also very nice after shaving a bit with no stropping. Couldn't really tell the difference !

will strop them properly today and test again tomorrow.

Kinfolk re do

I think I used the Arkie, which is turning out to be quite the finishing stone, too early in the progression yesterday and the edge didn't hold.

SO: re dull and
 Norton 4  k lots of circles, half strokes and X strokes. Not so keen, weird and after I got it pretty sharp did a few more laps of it dulled? on a 4k? strange. SO

Cretan hone on BBW slurry circles and push strokes surprisingly keener

Norton 8 k X strokes. definitely advanced the edge

Arkansas with dmt slurry x strokes and sharper still

WT with DMT slurry , edge went BACKWARDS  so this is less fine than Arkie.

Back to Arkie, edge back :))

Escher on slurry , 20 laps then finish on water 20 laps

buffalo 50 laps
palm 20 laps

then I re did another russian like this



Cretan on dmt slurry = 3-4 k


BBW on BBW slurry= 4-5 k


Les Lat Coti with slurry and then water = 6-8 k


Translucent Arkansas= 8-10 k


Escher on Water = 10+ k


we'll see tomorrow.
I like using the natural stones as much as possible. the synthetics just feel icky and get so nasty as you completely opposite the natural stones. The exception is the Chosera 800k. I love that stone, It feels like its a natural one

SHAVE REPORT:

THIS WENT PERFECTLY! ONE HALF PASS AND I KNEW IT WAS KEEN! VERY NICE!

Kinfolk bevel reset and translucsent Arkansas

One of Morgan's blades he's never sharpened, a 5/8" Kinfolk.Decided to play around a bit here too:

Chosera 800 with 600 grit slurry  LOTS of circles, half strokes, push strokes, X strokes, etc. This took far longer to even nudge arm hair than I expected.
Used the thumb nail test instead and then it grabbed all along the edge I went on

Cretan hone on DMT slurry( another experiment)
circles 5 laps, then 30 push strokes then 20 X strokes
got much sharper much faster!

Translucent Arkansas hone with slight dmt slurry
this got sharp FAST! wow,I've never really used this before in a progression and have read that it's a low grit stone but it sharpened the blade fast! lots of X strokes

BBW on slurry: 3 sets of circles. edge went BACKWARDS!?!  The arkansas is a finer edge for sure. back to the arkie for 20 laps of  x strokes on water. back to KEEN as well.

Vintage La Petite Blanche coticule with les lat slurry X strokes  for 20 laps, rinse blade 10 or so more laps then on water 20 laps
very keen

feel like I shouldn't go on but want to use a finishing stone so
Uchigumori on water
20 X strokes doesnt test well, this could be a first for this stone

oozuku 20 X strokes on water. edge back up

30 linen
40 buffalo
20 palm

see tomorrow.

SHAVE REPORT:


ALMOST THERE. GOOD BUT NOT GREAT.STARTED REALLY WELL BUT COULDN'T DEAL TOO WELLWITH THE CHIN STUBBLE. THINK IT NEEDS TO BE SHARPER SO BACK TO THE 8 K THEN THE SS 12 K SYNTHETIC AND THEN ONTO THE ESCHER. 


VERY HAPPY THOUGH CONSIDERING THIS THING HAS NEVER BEEN SHARPENED! I THINK JUMPING TO THE TRANSLUCENT ARKIE TOO SOON THROUGH OFF THE PROGRESSION


PS
TOUCHED UP THE '55 RUSSIAN ( BRIDGE MODEL) WITH OOZUKU WITH TOMO SLURRY FOR 20 REPS THEN 30 REPS ON WATER AND MAN IT WAS PERFECT THS MORNING! SHARP AND SMOOTH.