Thread: Why is the 1st shave after honing so disagreeable?

Cool I'll try that. I have a big slab of chrome ox in paste form, like rouge, that I got from woodcraft. Maybe I'll give away 1" slices of it, since I have such an excess.

hmm, I'm not quite following. One variable would seem to be how much cro is on the strop. I don't use much but one thing I have noticed is by and large it remains green- very little to no graying from steel. If I use it on tarnish it turns black rather quickly.

This leads me to believe that the amount of material removed is incredibly small.

As has been mentioned there is very little to know sharpening effect from linen, leather it depends.

I think you just did a better more concentrated honing effort, the lack of cro has nothing to do with it.

Another thing that confuses me is some seem to imply, no, say there is a super smooth edge hiding behind the wire. I don't understand how this is possible

I don't understand it either, but my blades pass the HHT for the first time ever, and shave well right after honing. So I'm going to keep at it & see what happens.

Randy has said that the linen is strictly a burnisher, it has no abrasive properties. If that's so, it's one hell of an aggressive burnisher because it will eat your edge right off if you don't have enough wax on it. I'm going to put forth the theory that there's some magic in removing the wire edge using a hellacious burnisher, instead of, say, slicing the edge across some soft plastic. But since I just pulled that theory out of my ass, you probably shouldn't take it all that seriously.

FWIW, I don't think the magic is the lack of Cr02, but rather, the removal of the wire edge. I think the Cr02 is not removing the wire edge. But Cr02 is a wonderful polisher and I like it a lot, except I don't like the way it convexes the edge, requiring me to eventually reset the bevel.

the HHT is a point for my previous comment with your honing.

I understand hht to be shaving hair above the skin. Though now I'm typing I ask: Is it cleaving the single hair pinched between the fingers. I find there is a difference between the two abilities. I have always understood plain strops to be corrective- straightening, aligning the edge, burnishing. not as sharpeners; seems to me for a strop to be pushing you to hht it must be sharpening or... see above.

"eat your edge" is not descriptive enough for me to get it... from rolling up onto the edge before you treated to stiffen it? from the angle? or from it's prior treatment. I know nothing of cloth strops; never had one

By this point in the game, my honing is pretty consistent. It's not that I didn't get BBS shaves before, it's that (1) the first one or two after honing were lousy, and (2) by the end of the month, by bevel would be all rounded to hell. (1) was (I think) because I was removing the wire edge with my face, (2) was because that's what a polished strop does.

The HHT is when you take a long hair from your girlfriend's hairbrush, and, holding one end of it, cut it in half. It's a neat parlor trick that has some correlation to sharpness, but is not a gold standard or anything. My slightly convexed polished edges would not pass the HHT, but they were wonderful shavers (at least until the bevel rounded off completely).

Here's the deal with the canvas or linen or whatever the hell it is. It's an antique strop & was all crudded up, so I cleaned it. When I was done, there was still enough wax in it to make it stiff, but not enough to fill in the rough cobblestone texture of the weave. I stropped on it as normal (no, I didn't lift the spine, I'm pretty decent at stropping) and it completely removed the cutting edge. I mean my razor was DULL. You know that trick where you slice a matchstick to completely remove the existing edge before starting from scratch? It was like that. Like I'd used it to slice wood. I remembered that the one time I used the linen in the past before I cleaned it, it didn't do that. So I re-waxed it, and voila.

If the linen is so great, you're asking, why didn't I fall in love with it the first time I tried it? because it was smeared with jeweler's rouge, which is a fairly aggressive polishing compound. The rouge was part of the crap I cleaned off. In fact, getting the rouge off was my motivation for cleaning it. I'm sure I didn't get all of it off, but I got most of it off, & buried the remains under a layer of fresh wax. So that's good enough for me.

But the punch line is, IDK exactly what the bare fabric is doing, but whatever it's doing, it does it pretty aggressively. Aggressively enough to turn your razor into a butter knife if you don't have enough wax on it. So stropping on cloth might be similar to backhoning, which is something knife sharpener guys will do to remove the wire edge. (But once again, I just pulled that out of my ass, so it might or might not be true).

Johnny my questions are for my learning, not to bust your stones on your observations or question your skill. Good thing for me this is no more complicated than a simple hunk of hardened steel or I'd never get it

The cool thing is your linen is all refreshed and working. Hopefully I will find a nice used one soon.

I'm starting rather early this morning so i thought I'd try a simple test. I tried hht with the razor I've been using. no go. after 50 lineal feet stropping plain leather paddle it did; post shave back to no

we'll just have to see how it shaves over the next few days as this one has been fairly low on the performance scale. at 330 am its a lil early for me to feel like peering through the scope...

Anyway after posting yesterday I started asking myself why, how I became such a CrO fanboy. It would be nice to omit I think I'll lay off it for some time as well.

Originally Posted by Johnny J

The rouge was part of the crap I cleaned off. In fact, getting the rouge off was my motivation for cleaning it. I'm sure I didn't get all of it off, but I got most of it off, & buried the remains under a layer of fresh wax. So that's good enough for me.

But the punch line is, IDK exactly what the bare fabric is doing, but whatever it's doing, it does it pretty aggressively. Aggressively enough to turn your razor into a butter knife if you don't have enough wax on it. So stropping on cloth might be similar to backhoning, which is something knife sharpener guys will do to remove the wire edge. (But once again, I just pulled that out of my ass, so it might or might not be true).

The fabric is doing exactly what Randy said.
The jewelers rouge is what wipes of your wiry edges.
Covering it with a thick layer of wax, well... I think that leaves you stropping on wax instead of the material underneath it, regardless what that is. Perhaps over time the rouge will peak through again. Perhaps not. I don't think this is a very reliable method to get consistent results.

IMHO, I really think there's some glitch in your honing method and I think it would be better to prevent that glitch from happening, than trying to fix it with a wax over paste strop.

Not that I don't like unconventional methods, quite the contrary actually, but somewhere along the line of this thread, things just stopped making sense to me. Could easily be me not getting it.

Kind regards,
Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

IMHO, I really think there's some glitch in your honing method and I think it would be better to prevent that glitch from happening, than trying to fix it with a wax over paste strop.

I think the honing method might be fine, rather the hones being used are not up to the task. Maybe you mean the same thing. I have also been thinking during this thread, that perhaps its best to ditch the strop altogether and get a brand new one.

Originally Posted by Bart

Not that I don't like unconventional methods, quite the contrary actually, but somewhere along the line of this thread, things just stopped making sense to me. Could easily be me not getting it.

That makes two of us.

Hey Kevin, I didn't think you were busting my chops, I'm just trying to anticipate questions before they arise to keep thee thread down to a reasonable length. In text you lose cues like facial expression, tone of voice, etc, so it's easy to misunderstand people's intentions.

Old barber hones are indeed not considered all that great in this day and age. I am told that a Norton stone or a Coticule is less prone to raising a wire edge. I've never used either, so I don't know.

As far as unconventional...I'm told barber hone -> linen -> leather is about as conventional as it gets. The way I treated the strop is even right out of a 1960s barbering textbook: rub with a candle, smooth with a glass bottle. The cloth has a very bumpy texture, so most of the wax is filling the voids between the bumps. The heads of the bumps are still peeking through, because I mashed everything down with the glass bottle. It's possible that the remnants of ferric oxide are what's really responsible for removing the wire edge. I don't know. There must be some reason why the previous owner put it on there.

I'm going to keep at it for a while & see if the linen allows me to do touch-ups on the Lithide hone without getting a wire edge. If so, I'll ditch the Cr02 & plant the victory flag. That's all I was hoping to achieve here: to find a method of touching-up that doesn't round my bevel off. If I encounter some other problem that all of this causes, I'll report on it in this thread.

It's entirely possible that a Norton would eliminate the need to burnish the wire edge off, by simply not raising a wire edge. What can I say. I'm hell bent & determined to do this the way my grandfather did it. Consider it the final triumph of stubbornness over common sense.

Side note: I can't help wondering if linen strops fell out of use because modern stones don't raise a wire edge like that. Maybe Randy knows.

I don't understand any of this either, but if it solves my problem, understanding can come later. For now I want to see how the edge behaves over the long haul when I touch it up using hone/linen/leather instead of Cr02/leather.

I was watching Lynn's webcast last night. There's a part where he comments on the various brands of barberhones. He stated that in the old days they were merely used for touch-ups. When the strop no longer brought a razor in great shaving shape, people used VERY FEW laps on a barber hone, sort of to revive the edge a little. Lynn said that's why they all came with instructions to do only 4 or 5 laps, and that their main purpose was to touch-up an edge in between real honing jobs.

In the old days, most people didn't hone their own razors. They had a strop to keep it going and some had a barberhone to do a minor touch-ups when time was not yet due to go to town, or for the traveling sharpening guy's monthly visit to the village square.

I'm not sure whether you really know what the red compound on that linen strop is. Form where I stand, it could be anything: jewelers rouge, or DOVO red paste, or something else. DOVO red paste is rated 2 to 4 micron grit size. That is pretty coarse. (CrO is 0,5 micron) The faintest hint of any paste on a leather strop will work very well. It actually is key to keep paste very faint for best results. I don't know if the same applies to linen strops, but if so, you've thrown a monkey wrench into your honing sequence, that makes it impossible to tell what's going on, even if you manage to get a good edge out of it.

Of course, if all this happily leads to the edge you desire, who am I to question that?

Kind regards,
Bart.