Thread: My Learning curve - so far....

Thanks for the advice folks, and Jack, thanks for the long thoughtful post.

My current philosophy with the GD, is that it is something worth playing with to see if I can use it to help learn it all, stropping, honing and shaving - assuming I can get the first two to work. With all respect for your advice, since I am not working this week and can only shave so much, figured I might as well work on the other skills. At this point, I consider the DG something of a burner to help out my skills and no big loss if I damage it .... again!

With all that in mind, and again on the theory of "what the heck" knowing I have sharp razors coming, I decided to give the CrOx on balsa a shot. Don't have any diamond paste or spray. No chance I'll try anything but careful stropping - for a while on a quality sharp razor. But, I did 15 light pressure round trips on the balsa after making a paste from the crox stick I have and spreading a thin coat over the whole surface (well flattened on my stationary sander). I then did a total of around 75 strops round trip on my wood backed leather strop. _ Well, much to my surprise, I got a pretty respectable shave out of her this morning. Very clear improvement over yesterday. Nobody more shocked than me! Did a pretty good cycle of WTG and another pass attacking the weird grain as best I could figure out how. Not the best shave ever, but not bad at all. Pretty pleased at this point!

I did receive the two razors from Whipped Dog this afternoon and took a brief look at them. Very pleased with my purchase! They are clearly very nicely sharpened - much more than my GD and perfect for my current needs. I plan, for now, to keep one as is for reference and the other will be my daily shaver with only careful stropping. I highly recommend Larry at Whipped Dog. He done me OK!

Per Elucid :
"First know that while Gold Dollars can be made to shave, they are fraught with problems most novice honers are not prepared to deal with. So if you want to hone it, you may have to repair it first." I did lots of reading online about them and quickly realized that mostly they can be made to work, but some rework is likely needed. Mine clearly needed the shoulder (I guess that is the stabilizer) close to the hinge is in the way of honing and may be causing a twisting during stropping. That is why I ground down that part. The blade will also hit the scales when closing if not careful, so I have to figure out how to repair that.

"Post some photos of the razor on both sides as close to the bevel and edge as possible and the stabilizer." I'll see what I can do and post later. My grinding job ain't pretty, but the stabilizer is not much of a problem now.

"What brand of stones do you have?" I have a DMT diamond plate that is coarser than my King 1200 waterstone. Also have a Norton 4000/8000 combo, a 6000 (I think) King and a 12000 stone of unknown brand. Also have a combo oil stone and a number of other diamond plates, slipstones, etc. I used to do lots of woodturning and woodworking, so my shop is pretty well equipped, and I have done lots of sharpening of knives, chisels, blades, etc. but nothing as delicate as a straight razor until playing with this GD. Currently passing part of my time doing some finishing and building of electric guitars. BTW, over the years I have taken a several sharpening classes including a couple of hours of instruction from a few rather famous world class woodturners. Lots of simple things can be mysterious until you spend time thinking about them, and it all helps with the razor, but I obvious am nowhere near competent in this arena yet. Oh yea, and I am a bit of an anal retentive engineer by education.

"Do you have magnification?" Not much - a good 10X loupe and a so-so lighted 10X magnifier and a few misc. cheap magnifiers. I have been looking at the edges with the magnification I have, and it is good enough to see if I am getting from 4k to 6K or 8K without leaving much trace of the coarser grit, but it would be cool to see a better picture of the edge. Gotta put on my thinking cap to figure out how to get use of a decent microscope.

"What kind of strop do you have?" I have a 2" leather strop that came with the razor and is of questionable quality. I am a bit afraid of it. I made a couple of strops that are about 3 inches wide and a bit over a foot or so long by gluing some leather to a flat board and sanding it flat. I have been using that mostly. Also have some balsa wood that I used a little strip of for the CrOx I spoke of earlier.

"What brand of Chrome Oxide do you have?" Not sure. I have had it for probably 30 years as part of a set that included white, green, black and red/brown. I used some of it in the past to polish edges and actually to polish really hard wood that was being turned on the lathe (a trick I learned from Del Stubbs in a woodturning course).

"Is the spine and edge flat?" It is now - actually the edge is pretty good, the spine had a bit of a bump that appeared to have been worked on a little. I did a little more work on the spine to remove the little bump and polish it up a little. Appears to be pretty flat now, but I think that is worth a double check since I mostly focused on getting rid of the remains of the bump.

Eddy - gotta work on that hanging hair thing. Still haven't managed that but intend to try it on the razors I received from Whipped Dog today and see where they are for reference. I was able to readily cut hair from my arm hair about 1/4 inch or more pretty well with the GD so I feel like it is drastically better than when I received it. Quite satisfying - but not content yet. I'll probably keep working on the GD a bit just for fun (I actually like sharpening things when I am in the mood and have time on my hands), but I am excited about having a quality razor with a sharp blade from Whipped Dog in hand for use in "honing" my shaving skills.

Thanks for everyone's support and advice. It is truly appreciated, and I can't wait to get together with some locals soon.

Jerry