First razor & first hone/touch up
I just wanted to post this for people to have a reference for their first. I searched for this when I was going through my first experiences but many of the posts had problems they run into with great suggestions from members but no resolution in the end :(
i received my my first straight. A dovo 5/8 best quality which was supposed to be professionally honed but as I read in another post by Glen there were no signs of it being honed prior to shipping except that it was opened but no letter confirming and no sign of it on the razor and at any rate it barely passed a HHT-0 with a calibrated hair! The razor was tugging and I had irritation. I do have a lot of experience with a shavette and just felt the razor was not sharp enough (even after stropping).
I said to myself-"self, you ride a Harley, are a military veteran, and are married (scariest of them all). Don't be a wuss. Grab that razor and try to sharpen it. What's the worst that can happen? Send it out to get honed anyways?"
So I sat down with a cup of coffee and a Chinese whet stone (aka Chinese 12k) and spent some time trying to get the thing sharp. With all my experience with knives and from watching Lynn and Glens videos along with coticule.be videos I was able to refresh the edge to pass a HHT-4! That stone was very forgiving of my newb mistakes and it put a very very sharp and smooth edge on the razor. Hopefully when the time comes I can repeat this.
The shave was excellent and irritation free and I stropped afterwards and checked the edge and it was still passing the HHT-4! the result was a DFS (almost BBS all over!) and I am very excited about maintaining this edge and eventually venturing into bevel setting and possibly beyond. I treat my razor very different now. It's a ultra sharp razor that I put on/refreshed and I just look at it with pride and satisfaction along with that Chinese stone. What a stone! Very forgiving because it's slow but it handled the job extremely well and pretty quick for a newb.
My goal is always and has always been a consistent BBS shave and that is my next goal I am tackling. Thanks to everyone here that helped convince me a bit ago to go from shavettes to straights and thanks to all the guys that put up videos to help the rest of us.