It seems that you are the goto person when it comes to strop pastes. I have a norton 4/8k and have a Chinese 12k on the way. I want some paste to put on my homemade balsa paddle but it seems that the best CrO is only available through you. I've been thinking of using a .5 micron and either a .25 or a 1.0 I'm still not sure which is neccessary. Classicshaving has the diamond pastes but I've heard they're too rough. I want to use 2 pastes but not sue which to get. What are your recommendations and do you have CrO available?
OK well that definitely isn't Karasu. Heres a silly question, have you lapped the hone? Perhaps try it again.
Thanks for the pics, that looks interesting eh. I would love to get a microscope to examine my hones and blades, but just can't justify the expenditure.
Can you send me a pic. Will be interesting just to look at. Not so sure it would be the bad Karasu, So should be able to tell the difference. Also unless you paid an arm and a leg for it, I doubt it to be Karasu.
P.S Depending on the size of the spots, that hone may have been very close to a Karasu strata. Thats a good thing, coz Karasu is rare and damn expensive.
Now were getting somewhere. You want a better edge than that from a 30k Shapton!? I don't think your going to get that from an Asagi. They happily replace 16k's not so much the 30k. The black spots, shouldn't be harmful, they usually help the hone cut faster.
I did take your advice and go from hone to strop. I shaved with the razor again this morning (straight off of 50 passes on the dry Nakayama and my horsehide strop); it produces a shaving edge. However, I would consider it to be on the low end of the spectrum. I definitely made it clear to So that I would be using this stone as a final polishing stone for razors. He understood that. I told him I wanted a J Nat that would provide an all around better edge than a Shapton 30K. Really, there is a lot of debris throughout this hone. Black specks (fossilized plant matter?) as large or larger than the pyrite clusters. I'll talk to So. Thanks.
