Thread: 'Normal' maintenance schedule for a straight?

That's an interesting idea. Once I'm confident in my honing skills I may try that. Like Larry said it can't hurt anything.

And thanks to those who chimed in. It helped me get my bearings a little bit.

You guys forgot the RAD factor.....If you buy a new razor once every other week and it comes shave ready you may never have to do more than strop and shave. I have actually stopped buying for as long as a month and I still own no paste :<0)

Touching up a razor to keep it sharp is far easier than getting it there in the first place.
However, that being said, if you can't maintain the razor sharp with stropping you should be a little bit apprehensive about going to an abrasive media be it hones or pasted strops.
Their effect on a razor is at least thousands and probably million times larger than that of a strop, so that much larger is the damage you can inflict with them vs. with a strop.


What is most important is to use your head. I'm always a bit nervous when I read blanket advice like "it can't hurt".
I think you should try to understand what is gong on, what you intend to do, why you intend to do it, what do you think will happen, and then check if you are correct. It's not rocket science, just dragging a piece of steel over a rock, but you should be deliberate rather than chaotic.

As to how easy it can be I can relay my first experience: my first touch up was extremely successful - I just put the razor (dovo micarta) on the hone (a thuringian) and drew it across without any pressure whatsoever probably about 10 laps, I didn't think there was anything that had happened because I didn't feel anything happening, yet when I tried it the razor had gotten sharp. The razor had been previously honed by Lynn, so it really was properly done and it didn't need fixing anybody's mistakes, hence a touchup was straightforward.
But honing a factory Dovo and ebay purchases was completely different animal. Not the least because back then nobody talked about establishing correct bevel, it was more or less a given that if you hone for a little bit on the 4k norton you have that done.

Originally Posted by coryschmidt

That's an interesting idea. Once I'm confident in my honing skills I may try that. Like Larry said it can't hurt anything.

And thanks to those who chimed in. It helped me get my bearings a little bit.

If you're just starting out, forget about honing and pastes etc., until you've got all the fundamentals of shaving firmly established. Your actual shave, lathering, and what many take for granted, good and proper stropping habits and technique.

I didn't pay close enough attention to stropping, and when Phil at Classic Edge had a look at approx. half my blades, which at that time was about 6, 4 of them had rolled edges and needed to be fixed. There will be nothing more frustrating than shaving with a rolled edge and not understanding why the shave isn't delivering. There's lots to learn just in the basic areas before you necessarily need to spread your focus to honing, at least that's my opinion.

Also, from my understanding and experience, there's honing, and honing done by the pro's. Again, this is my opinion, but I've had razor's delivered that were honed by the previous owner from E-Bay, and while for them that may be fine, from my expectations they were terrible edges. I don't even bother now, if I get a new razor it immediately goes off for a pro-honing. Cause the fact is, unless you've honed hundreds, if not many thousands of blades, the edge just can't compete with someone that does this every day. And for the money I invest in razors, I want them to be as perfect as possible, so they go to a pro.

Like I said, my opinion.

That won't stop you however learning to hone with some practice razors. Laurens, a member here, uses Gold Dollar razors to learn on. The idea being, while they are nice looking blades, and they can take an edge, the basic story on them is that the geometry is not consistent with them, therefore they're a challenge to hone. What better way to learn the different nuances of blades then practicing on those, or some blades that you don't mind hacking apart.

Either way, don't "practice" on any of your new blades...there was a new member here awhile ago, it was both hilarious and sad, who purchased a limited edition TI, and then proceeded to hone it almost on an hourly basis, until he got mad at the honing mentors here, decided that everyone here was full of sh&t and left, to return a year later and tell everyone that he had the secret to honing and he never told us....I think he had issues!?!

Mainly, enjoy the hobby and remember there's no rush....cheers!

coryschmidt.

The below is what is use for my rotation razors. It is on the side of 'little and often'. It is probably a tad too much, but it works fine for me

My daily stropping is sixty (60) passes on linen and sixty passes on tallow tanned leather (I use a Neil Miller modular padddle strop).

After seven (7) shaves - ca. 10 laps on a hard leather paddle strop dusted with 0.5 micron CrOx. Test shave & repeat if needed.

After ca. twenty-eight (28) shaves - ca. 10 laps on a Naniwa 12k SS (SS = Superstone). Test shave and repeat if needed.

'Harder' steeled razors (e.g. Thiers-Issard C135) might need a few more laps; 'softer' steeled razors (e.g. my Dovo Best) are fine with the above.

After a year of shaves, I reset the bevel (Naniwa 1k SS) and go through linear sequence of 3, 5, 8 & 12 k Naniwa SS.

As I have said above, this 'system' works fine for me (I like the maintenance side of straight razor usage ).

Have an experiment and see what works for you : experimenting is one of the things I really like about straight razor shaving. What works fine for one person may not be optimum for another

Good luck

Have fun !

Best regards

Russ

Many thanks for all the replies. I'm a software engineer so my analytical tendencies are bleeding into the straight razor arena. :-)

I think I've ironed out some of my earlier issues and reduced some variables. I struggled with blade angle initially which I'm sure caused my razors to dull prematurely. I also assumed that I didn't need special beard prep if I shaved within 5 minutes or so of getting out of the shower but once I started doing a hot towel treatment a few weeks ago it's made a huge difference. I was feeling pulling on razors that were expertly honed (not by me) which just confused me and skewed the baseline, plus I'm sure it didn't help keep the edge nice and sharp. I'm pretty confident that my stropping is fine as I don't see a huge drop-off in sharpness between shaves now.

Since my original post I received a Dovo from thesuperiorshave.com and shaved with it yesterday morning. Splendid shave by the way. So now I've been reminded what a good edge feels like and as long as I'm consistent with blade angle and beard prep I can tell when an edge is losing its sharpness. And now with some idea (although a very small sample size) of how long folks go before having to hit the hones I have more confidence that my technique, after a few months of refinement, isn't too far off.

Lastly, I do enjoy the satisfaction in straight razor shaving but I frequently fall back to the programmer in me that feels compelled to refactor, refine, and make things as efficient as possible. Thanks to Phrank and Phatman for the reminder to have fun with it.

Next up will be to tackle the honing. I have plenty of practice razors for that.