Thread: New Razor and strop ordered!

I ordered that same strop from SRD. It's a beaut! If you keep rubbing it with the palm of your hand before and after each stropping it will condition quite nicely.

Finally got to shave with the Ralf Aust yesterday! I had been checking the edge under the loupe and comparing to my razors that I have been working on honing and found only 1 had a proper bevel set, so I cleaned that one up a bit. When I tilt the RA back and forth, there is no little white line at the very edge at any angle. With my other razors, they all looked good at some angles, but when I tilted the blades, they all had at least some of the edge showing the thin white line, meaning that the bevel isn't fully set. I used the Ralf Aust for the first N to S pass, then the other razor that had a good bevel set (Challenge Cutlery) for the S to N Pass. I tried using my G. Wostenholm Pipe on the neck since it has a smile, but the bevel wasn't fully set and didn't do much, so I went back to the Ralf Aust and that worked pretty well on my neck! What a difference a truly shave ready razor is to shave with than one that the bevel hasn't been set fully!

Well done taz575.

Forgot to add, the Ralf Aust is a full hollow ground; I thought I was going to prefer a heavier razor like a near wedge to have more weight behind it to cut thru my wiry beard, but the full hollow did extremely well! It seemed to skip and stutter less, especially around my chin than the other razors I have tried but weren't truly shave ready. I used the Ralf Aust w/o stropping it before hand and stropped my Challenge Razor and Pipe Razor on the SRD Premier 1 3" wide strop I got; I put the strop down on the counter and used as little pressure as possible, really worked nicely on the Challenge, the Pipe not so much (bevel not fully set). I tried tree topping arm hairs with the RA and Challenge before the strop and it was OK, popped a couple, after stropping the Challenge, it was cutting them much easier. So I stropped the RA and got that to tree top hairs even better than before, so it looks like stropping with the strop on the counter is working for me!

I see a lot of SR. in your collection very soon. The SAD has infected another one. Enjoy the ride.

I think the Ralk Aust makes 20 so far?? LOL. Tanaka Kamisori, Henkotsu Kamisori, both in Blue Steel, Ralf Aust 5/8", 2 Challenge Cutlery, 1 Magnetosteel, 1 Gottleib Hammesfahr, 1 G. Wostenholm Pipe, 1 Fredericks, 1 CW Sheehan, 1 Landers Frary and Clark, 1 R. Findlay, 3 Hartford Cutlery, 1 Magnus, 1 M. Jung, 1 Parker, 1 M. Aiku, 1 Hadoson. Some are near wedge, some are wider than 6/8", etc, some are smiles, some are square point, others have been honed to a more rounded point, etc. I was on a made in CT kick for a bit because I am from CT, but the other ones were because I wanted a variety to try to see what I like.

Did some major re honing on over a dozen razors yesterday, got several more shave ready! Shaved last night with the Ralf Aust and the Gottslieb Hammesfahr and a Hartford cutlery razor and got a pretty dang nice shave! One of my best SR shaves so far, but I did a lot of extra passes trying to get the problem areas, so I had some pretty good razor burn by the time I was done. Shaves at 330pm and when I woke up this morning, there wasn't much to touch up, so I did one WTG pass with the DE (didn't really do much of anything), so I decided to go to work like that to see how bad it looks at 330pm. May be able to shower/shave the night before work and still look presentable! Couple of small cuts, one from when I used my left hand to shave the right side of my face along the jaw line, felt the cut when I laid the razor on my face. Another small cut from the point of the Gottlieb Hammesfahr, didn't have the skin stretched enough. Other than that it was better feeling than other attempts. Been getting better at honing and setting the bevel as well and saw how much of a difference that makes in the shave!