Thread: Please Help!

I am becoming quite frustrated with my razor.

I bought it in a bundle online including a badger hair brush, TI Le Dandy razor, TI strop paste (small white tube), and I think an executive-shaving short strop. It all came in a rosewood box with brass inserts which was very lovely, I still have it, but thats irrelevant. I don't think it was quite shave-ready out of the box but as a complete newbie I obviously thought it was and started shaving. I felt I had good levels of success but from seeing other posts and videos I think it could have been better. I loved it nonetheless.

The problem came when I tried to sharpen it with the TI strop paste. It just didn't work. The paste went everywhere and the razor didn't get any sharper. So I sent it away to be honed (The Invisible Edge I think) and it came back in better condition. After a shave or two it felt quite blunt and was tugging on my whiskers, almost more-so than before. Naturally I thought I'd buy a hone (Norton 4k/8k) but it didn't work so I bought a norton Flattening stone and used the grid technique to lap it down. Thats seemed to be a success and I tried to hone the razor with no success, so I bought a Nagura Matsunaga stone for slurry. Following the usual trend of events, it too was unsuccessful. I am now considering buying a 600ish grit and 1k stone to set a bevel thinking that the tools I am using are not right for the job, because what I am doing doesn't seem to be working. On the other hand I could just be doing everything wrong in which case getting someone else to hone it from scratch to sharp might be necessary.

Anyone got any advice? I want to keep going at this but I have heard that some people just don't pick it up .

I have several ideas. First off you might want to consider using tape. It will save your spine while you are grinding away. The next is find a mentor in your area to give you some hands on time. Failing that, because some of us live in very remote regions, pick someone whose videos you will learn from, and stick with that one author. There are many roads to success and if you try to get directions from too many people it gets confusing. I used this guyhttps://www.youtube.com/user/gssixgun/videos I would not use a 600 grit hone to set a bevel in your case. !k will be fine for bevel setting. 4/8K will take your bevel to shave ready easy enough. It sounds like you may want to look at the stroptober thread as well.

The invisable edge had the razor shave ready ,, as a new shaver almost all your problems are coming from technique, stropping ( which is why your edge failed so quickly) and honing needs to come later after you learn how to shave and maintain your edge with just leather. Refreshing then . The bevel has already been set , you more than likely rolled your edge stropping, and always remember , honing is easy till it ain't! Until you know how to shave you won't know if the edge you put on your razor is good. Technique has a lot to do with how your razor will shave, and your razor is a good one that had been honed properly , it's a learning process. Tc

Unfortunately I don't know anyone who shaves with a straight razor, so I'll have to use more videos for now. I watched gssixguns videos and liked them, but he made everything seem so easy! I've been using black electrical tape but forgot to mention it.

Thanks for your help

So should I get it re-honed and leave my hone stored for a while? What are the common stropping mistakes? I felt I was using the right technique such as: slow, low pressure, flipping over the spine, 25 strokes in each direction before and after shaving.

Thanks

Hi MC. Welcome to the forum. There are plenty of people here that will help you get beyond the new stage of real shaving.
As TC said, find a mentor. This link should get you to the advanced search of community/memberlist/advanced search. Then put your town and see who pops.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/memberlist.php?do=search

There are quite a few member in the UK. You may want to strop a little more. Sending it out is the best solution. Honing can have a very steep learning curve, how steep has so many factors. The cost of hones actually makes no sense if you only have one or two razors, unless you are really interested in be self sufficient. I'm sure that turn around time is pretty short for you. Many guys have two razors so they always have a sharp one on hand. If you look through the threads on stropping I think you will find that a lot of guys strop between 60 and 100 round trips before shaves.

I only have one razor, Le Dandy is by no means an expensive one from what I can tell but I wanted TI to start, so I'm approaching the point where another hone will mean I've spent more on the hones than the razor. You were right to mention the self-sufficiency, I travel quite frequently and sometimes it means I won't be able to send away for honing so ultimately I would like to be able to do it myself. For the time being though perhaps I could buy another razor and have them both honed. Would you recommend simply stropping and re-sending when it tugs, or would you add an abrasive strop paste onto another strop as well? If so which grit would you select?

Is it worth me buying a sacrificial razor? If so how how much would you spend? Honing butter knife steel would be cheap but would I learn from it?

Thanks in advance everyone

As a fellow newbie I would just say to really review your strop technique. I'm only about 15 shaves into my journey or so. One thing I found helpful for me is that I strop before and after my shaves. I think it's easy to make a lot of laps on a strop but doing a lot of correct laps can be another thing! I still find my self restarting from zero from time to time because of one bad lap. I thought I had completely ruined the edge on my first razor because I rolled the edge so poorly on my first strop attempt. After practicing my stroke and really making sure I did it right I about crapped my pants at how well my razor whisked off my whiskers. Your razor will let you know if your technique is right. Good luck to you.

Xtrmln, thanks for the advice. I want that for my razor! I will need to get it re-honed and really focus on my stropping technique.