Newbie Experiences and a coupla questions...

(Warning: Long, boring story ahead - please feel free to skip to the questions at the bottom!)
On a bright snowy Sunday a couple of weeks back, my hair was getting a little shaggy, so I popped in the local $10 haircut place to find it packed with screaming tykes and harried mothers. Upon hearing the wait was over an hour I popped in the upscale barber next door and figured the $30 haircut was worth not having to wait. The barber finished off the cut with what I know now to be a shavette on the back of my neck. All day I marveled at how smooth it was and got the idea of getting my whole face to feel that way. So after poking around and eBay for a bit (and nearly springing for a Zeepk kit) I found this place. A little lurking gave my enough knowledge to buy a decent razor off eBay, and place a decent size order from classicshaving - strop, Norton, brush, soap, and perhaps most importantly, a styptic pencil. After a few disastrous attempts at honing my razor and shaving myself I ordered the Lynn Abrams video, which was an epiphany. One lapped Norton (whomever suggest lapping on the ceramic range was a genius! - just keep an eye out for the wife), a few pyramids (starting from 15 strokes), and several hot towels later I can shave with the grain, and get my face almost as smooth as the ol' Mach 3 Turbo did against the grain. Which leads me to the following questions:

1. When I go against the grain, the razor grabs the hairs and pulls, which is painful and not real productive (my beard hairs are pretty thick). I don't think the razor is quite sharp enough. I have literally honed the living daylights out of this razor - several hundred strokes on the Norton. I got the radioshack microscope, and it doesn't appear to be overhoned at all. I can rarely get it to pass a hanging hair test (although there's an excellent chance I'm not quite doing that right either). The razor is an old Giesen & Forsthoff from Solingen - and appears to be pretty hollow. Do I need a finishing stone/paste to be able to go against the grain, or is there possibly a problem with what I'm doing with the Norton.

2. How do y'all use that Radioshack microscope - I put the razor on a table an try and hover over while keeping steady enough to focus. But I keep bumping into the blade, possible screwing up my fresh hone-job.

3. The major difference between the straight and the Mach 3 is that I'm having trouble getting the last bit of hair around my mouth and under my nose. Being able to better go against the grain might solve this problem - is that the best way to get in there?

P.S. SuperGlue works wonders for razor bites. (There's a product out there called Vetbond, which vets use in lieu of stitches on pets, that I may try, since I can't find surgical superglue at a reasonable price to the public anywhere).

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Originally Posted by fatman

2. How do y'all use that Radioshack microscope - I put the razor on a table an try and hover over while keeping steady enough to focus. But I keep bumping into the blade, possible screwing up my fresh hone-job.

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At above 20x magnification, your muscles can't stay steady enough to stay in focus. Put the blade on a flat surface and simply rest the clear stand-off on the bottom of the scope body down onto the blade face and surface. I say both because it is impossible to have it any other way, as you're trying to center the optics over 1/2 blade, 1/2 contrasting surface to view the edge.
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Originally Posted by fatman

P.S. SuperGlue works wonders for razor bites. (There's a product out there called Vetbond, which vets use in lieu of stitches on pets, that I may try, since I can't find surgical superglue at a reasonable price to the public anywhere).

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My father was a funeral director and always used Aron Alpha glue to close small incisions during embalming. I don't think its much different from normal Krazy Glue. I use it on cuts all the time and I've never had a healing/infection problem. In fact, when I use Krazy Glue to close the wound, then apply triple-antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid to cover it, I almost never have a discernable scar, regardless of wound size. And note, I have had quite a few over the years. Coordination has never been my strong point...

Sounds to me like you need to work on your honing skills to get that razor in good shape.

Evenness all along the edge is the most important part of honing and why I like to promote the Rolling Hone Method where you slowly roll the contact upt the blade from heel to tip throughout the honing stroke.

The other thing is to start with some pressure and ease off to very light at the end of the honing session. If you haven't already tried a medium pyramid, then you should do that because simply going 3/3, 1/3, 1/3 over and over WILL overhone your edge. You can find it here. I'd say go up to 10 laps on the 4k side. That should get you cooking.

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