Short rating of the stone / shave ? (englisch)

DEUTSCHE VERSION / ENGLISH VERSION

Short Rating of the Stone / Short Rating of the Shave

 I wasn’t sure if i want to implements something like a “rating” of stones here on my site. But reading some posts on the well known shaving boards i really liked the idea to show something like a “short evaluation” on specific stones. I will also add a overview of the evaluated stones here.

It will look like this here:

Short Rating of the Stone:
Hardness Level (9/10)
Speed Level (8/10)
Polishing Level (8/10)
Difficulty Level: medium

Short Rating of the Shave:
Keenness Level (8/10)
Smoothness Level (9/10)
AS Burn Level (8/10)

Short Rating of the Stone
I decided to create an evaluation on the following parameters:

Hardness Level:
Values 1-10 (1 soft – 10 very hard)
Actually a factor which was can be measured with different methods created by MOHS or Brinell or also with a scratch test of the surface. How this is done on detail check Henks Bos Grinding and Honing Part 1&2. What i want to write down here is more my personal evaluation on hardness which is nothing measurable.

Speed Level:
Values 1-10 (1 slow – 5 medium – 10 very fast)
A factor which is also a bit on the soft side, because depending on hardness of the razor and the type of metal was used the values cant be taken over for all available sorts of steel. But this should show if we talk about a fast stone or if we talk about a very slow stone, nothing more.

Polishing Level:
Values 1-10 (1 hazy finish – 10 mirror polish)
A factor which evaluates how well a stone polishes. As a reference i would like to set a Naniwa Specialty 10 K as the Benchmark. There are not many natural stones which leave a “mirror like” finish but some reach these properties. Actually on most natural stones you’ll find very fine scratch patterns resulting that the abrasives within naturals are not all the same in their size.

Difficulty Level:
Values 1-10 (1 easy to learn – 10 very hard to learn)
A factor where i wanted to rate how easy or either difficult it is to learn the stone. This is also a “soft” factor because this mostly depends on the experience of each individual person. But i think its possible to give a rough estimation if the stone is usable for beginners or i would prefer to propose this one being used by a more experienced person.

Short Rating of the Shave
I decided to create an evaluation on the following parameters:

Keenness Level:
Values 1-10 (1 not keen – 10 very keen)
A factor which is not easy to avaluate in any way. This because it depends also on the razor beeing used and on personal tecnique beeing used. Besides these things it has something to do with daily personal condition. So here i will add my personal feeling how keen the shave was on a specific day. It wont be something like a big test over years with a daily shave, building a average number of all the shaves.

Smoothness Level:
Values 1-10 (1 harsh, uncomfortable edge – 10 very smooth edge)
A factor which is also a very personal interpretation how a edge can be. It shows my personal view which of the edges i created felt the smoothest during the shaves. This level is based on my personal experiences using a lot of stones and doing a lot of shaves from those edges. In the End ist nothing more then a personal preference.

AS Burn Level
Values 1-10 (1 heavy burn – 5 medium burn – 10 nearly no burn)
A factor which includes also factors being based on the knowledge of the person doing a shave. If i rate a stone with a 10 which implements there i no AS burn, it surely could be that someone just started shaving is using a wrong angle with his razor. This could result then in a much worse evaluation on the shave.

	ID	H	S	P	D		K	S	AS
Colorado Slate (135x65x35mm)	XX	9	8	8	M		8	9	9
EGS La Lorraine / Rouge Du Salm (125 x 30 x 15mm)	24	5	7	10	E/M		7	7	8
Thuringian Bout No.4 (130 x 108 x 24mm)	XX	7	4	8	E		7	10	9