Thread: Straight Razor shaving for three months but cannot get my razor sharp again.

From what i've researched, I thought that the 8000 is really only starting to establish an edge for shaving. I've seen a lot of videos using 12000 and some going to 16000 then using microfine abrasive powders before stropping.

My take on it,for the first year,just concentrate on your prep, your angles,your stropping.
Do not even think about hones, sprays, pastes.
Having blades pro honed is cheap,you will never reach the leval that a pro who hones day in and day out has,is just not going to happen.
Once you have the above down pat,you can keep a blade going for a very long time,I still get fantastic shaves from blades that have not been honed or even touched a stone in two yrs.

Originally Posted by Robbied

From what i've researched, I thought that the 8000 is really only starting to establish an edge for shaving. I've seen a lot of videos using 12000 and some going to 16000 then using microfine abrasive powders before stropping.

I wouldnt say that the 8k is the coarsest stone to establish an edge (if I interpreted your post right, which I might not have done). When you come up to 8k and finer you do more polishing than you do sharpening. Most sharpening takes place from the lower grits, such as 1k.

This is to my understanding and I might be wrong.

You can shave perfectly fine off an 8k stone. I love my old Sheffield razors at that level and often I simply use an 8k shapton (I do not use a Norton anymore) to refresh all my razors, for extra smoothness I might use an Escher after the 8k and very rarely a 16k or 30k hone (those are mainly for other people).

many older people only ever used a barber's hone or a coticule

enjoy,
jim

Likely culprit was the stropping...a simple re-hone will get her as good as new...

From what I've read the TI's can need a hone from factory the same as dovo's. Get it pro honed and you should be able to maintain it from there.

At an 8k level you are shave ready. The rest is just refinement but for most beginners technique means the 8k can be a harder edge to shave with than an edge with the extra refinement. It all comes in time.