Thread: New to straight razors, questions about honing

Hello!

A couple of months ago, I found out there were more to shaving than Gillette cartridge razors and canned goo, so I got myself a nice Merkur DE, a badger brush and some proper shaving cream. I started enjoying shaving instead of dreading it, and as with other things that catch my interest, I started making more and more aquisitions.

It was only a matter of time before I was going to try out straight razor shaving, and now I'm just about to start.

So far, I've gotten a strop (leather/linen), a hone and two used straight razors, one in very good condition, and one in not-so-good condition that I thougt would be great for honing practice.

However, the one in good condition came far from shave-ready, so I was thinking about letting someone from here hone it for me, so I know how a shave ready blade is supposed to feel like. I live in Sweden, so any hints who can hone a blade for me in Europe?

Back to honing practice. So far I've managed to get a 4000 grit honing stone. Is 4000 grit (combined with linen/leather strop) enough to get a blade shave ready, or is that combination doomed to be lots of wasted time and no result?

My practice blade has a few very small dents in it, how much time honing do you think it would take to remove the dents with a 4000 grit stone? Also a doomed project?

I've read about honing in the forum, and looked at some videos, but I'm not really clear on the subject of pressure. I understand how to hold the blade while honing, but not how much pressure to apply.

I think that's the questions I have right now, there will probably be more later, but I'll keep the straight razor shaving on hold until I get a proper shave ready blade.

First of all....ME
I can hone and I'm in the Netherlands. If you need to get one honed for you just to make sure PM me.

Second, pressure, a video says a 1.000.000 words (according to someone because a foto says a 1000 words...) http://video.google.nl/videoplay?doc...42672864&hl=nl