Thread: Get a razor honed by a guru. Really. I mean it.

I've now been through one complete cycle with the razor that Glen honed, so I'm ready to post a few conclusions:

-- Glen's edges start out much sharper than mine, and remain shaveworthy nearly 3x as long.

-- However, I really do have a barbed wire beard, it's not a figment of my imagination. Even Glen's edge only gets me 8 3-pass shaves.

-- Linen is a nice burnisher, more effective than leather, but by the time I need it, all it's doing is delaying the inevitable touch-up by 1 or 2 shaves, so I can easily live without it. Men with less destructive beards probably get more mileage out of it.

-- The Chinese 12K is a really nice finisher, and 50 laps are sufficient to do a very good touch-up. The Swatys & the Lithide hone are pretty good finishers, but the Chinese 12K is better.

-- All in all, this experiment was a success. Having a meister's edge to use as a benchmark helped fix several problems with my own honing.



My shave log is included below for completeness.



Shave 1: no stropping (Glen did that already)
Blade is sharper than any object on this planet has a right to be. Hairs jump in half of their own free will as soon as they touch the edge. The edge is very "sticky" & "grabby" though--you get cut if you touch it to your face the wrong way. IDK how to use something this sharp. Shave is mediocre, mainly b/c I'm afraid of the razor.

Shave 2: 50xleather
The edge has calmed down a bit & is more like what I'm used to. Still nicking myself but shave is better.

Shave3, 2 days growth: 50xleather
Now the edge is how I like it. BBS both ways.

Shave 4: 50xleather
I'm still cutting the crap out of myself, but getting a good shave.

Shave 5: 50xleather
The blade has now dulled to the point where my freshly-honed edges were recently. I got a great shave, BBS both ways, but my long strokes don't work anymore; the blade gets stuck, like an axe sticking in a tree. I have to use short, choppy strokes. I predict I'll get 3 or 4 more shaves before I have to hit the linen.

Shave 6: 50x leather
Blade has definitely peaked. This shave is perfect.

Shave 7: 50x leather
Still perfect.

Shave 8: 50x leather
The very beginning of deterioration has begun. It's still a very good shave but I can feel a little stubble ATG.

Shave 9: 20x linen + 50x leather
The linen restored it to the point where I can do long strokes again. This is a very nice shave, but not perfect ATG. So the linen did not completely reverse the damage.

Shave 10: 20x linen + 50x leather
I still have my long strokes but I now have a mediocre shave with pulling & razor burn. I can feel that the blade is dull with my thumb.

Shave 11: 50x Chinese12K + 50x leather
Now we're back to the shave of kings

JohnnyJ,

Have you tried any tyes of pastes? I know that the finish coming straight off a 12K chinese is pretty dang good, but you can easily follow that with chromium oxide for a much better shave. I have granite and glass surfaces that I stick newspaper (or whatever kind of paper, really) on and then I load it up with a chromium oxide bar. A little dab 'll do ya. That gives a much finer finish. Or a chromium oxide hanging strop does fantastically, as well. It's something that you could use a little more often than the chinese 12k and keep your razor "peaking" longer.

All that aside - have you consider using the linen side of your strop sooner in your cycle? It would seem that if you can't do long strokes on shave 5, then why wait 'till shave 9 before you actually use the linen?

Ben

Hey Ben,

Trying the linen sooner indeed seems like a reasonable thing to do. Regarding Cr02; I used to use it & I like that smooth, silky edge very much. It does indeed provide a very nice shave. The problem I ran into with it is that the frequent touch-ups needed due to my beard from hell would eventually result in a badly rounded bevel, requiring me to reset the bevel about once per month. I suppose this could be solved if I were to hit the hone for a few laps before the Cr02, but I would have to make sure to undo all the rounding from the previous polishing. It seemed easier to stop using the Cr02 & eliminate the rounding altogether. Guys with less destructive beards don't seem to have this problem.

Addendum: Note to Jimbo:

I just used this razor to shave my head. Now that I have collected my data, this blade is going to be my dedicated head-shaver. having a 12K edge rather than an 8K edge seems to make a big difference for head shaving, since the blade encounters less resistance, which removes the temptation to add pressure. I am still using the DE for the back of my head, but I have progressed to using the str8 for the top & sides.

I think the other key to learning how to head-shave is to do most of it with a safety razor so you can start with the easy bits & slowly expand. (That's pretty good advice for face shaving, too).

I'm assuming that the problem with the rounding of the bevel is coming from a hanging strop? Have you had the same result with a paddle strop? Just curious....

Hey Ben,

The Cr02 is on a loom strop set as tight as it will go, so there isn't much flex, but any soft & compliant surface is going to round the bevel to some extent. You can see this quite clearly in Seraphim's microscope photos, where he put a couple sheets of paper underneath his 1um lapping film.

What I would notice with the loom strop is that each time I touched it up with the CrO2, the touch-up would be less effective, and would last for a shorter period of time (because the bevel was becoming more & more rounded). At this time, I was touching up on the CrO2 exclusively--not using any hone at all.

I use linen and leather every time I shave. 10 laps on Cro Ox every 10th shave. My razors seem to stay very sharp with this method. My beard would be considered thick and tough.