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

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.