I am struggling with my La Lune stone, and more precisely, with correctly using the nagura stone. Unless I am mistaken (and I might very well be), I am trying to do a tomo nagura.
I have the La Lune base stone, and a La Lune slurry stone, which should be the same. These are natural slate stones, and it might be that they do not come from the same vein, and one of them could be harder than the other. However, the color of the two stones is very similar – and there is much less variation between them than between the stones I see on the pictures on the website. By default, I would assume that they are identical in hardness.
The issue I have is the following: I cannot manage to create a slurry with the slurry stone without scratching the bigger stone. The slurry stone has been chamfered and I see no sharp edges, so I guess that this is user error on my side.
One known unknown: I have no clear idea on how much pressure I should use. If I use very little pressure and put the slurry stone on on of its flat sides, I seem to get an aquaplanning effect where the slurry stone seems to glide on the underlying stone without producing any slurry (I have tried this for a couple of minutes, so I don't think the issue is impatience on my side). If I increase pressure or put it on one of its edges, I do produce slurry, but I get scratches on the underlying stone (there are also some visible scratch marks on the slurry stone).
I tried to use dish soap to break the water's surface tension, without much success. I also thought that, maybe, prolonged exposure to water might make the stone softer, so I tried to soak the slurry stone longer (I tried leaving it 30 minutes in water before using it), but this does not seem to have had any noticeable effect.
Sure, I can use a diamond stone directly on the base stone and produce slurry in this way, but it's a shame to have a slurry stone without being able to use it.
So, what am I doing wrong?
Pinging @gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social
Improper handling and storage was surely done on my side since I received it (I was impatient and didn't properly remove the smush from the wrapper, and letting it lie around since then without any protection probably didn't help), and the scent strength was clearly stronger when I used it for the first time. If there was improper handling before, I really couldn't tell 😅
On the other hand, I tried to find a matching perfume dupe – Magnificently Dubai is not very spot on, but I like it even though it isn't that close 😎