Thread: Just starting out-need advice on my blade

Hi,

A while back I read that obsidian is the sharpest material there is, so naturally I went ahead and chipped off an obsidian from my boyhood rock collection and shaved with it a little. From there I got interested in wet shaving. I already had my granddad's brush, and then recently a friend of mine-a huge knife aficionado - was selling some straight razors and I thought why not. Long and anguish-filled story short, it was 12 dollars and made in China.

Then I bought the DOVO/Solingen 5/8 blade from AOS which they said was shave ready. It failed the HHT from the start (even rubbing the hair along the blade), but I knew that that test isn't definitive, and since I was comparing it to a Chinese knife I was easily impressed with how easily it shaved my arm hairs. Cheeks and back of neck shaved fine, I only made a half-hearted attempt at everything else and just went over it again with a disposable. I was waiting on my strop so I stropped on denim stretched over a piece of wood.

I'm pretty obsessed with my new razor, so much to my girlfriend's chagrin I've been shaving little bits of my body hair off here and there as I wait for my face to get ready again-I'm Middle Eastern so there's plenty to work with. I received my strop in the mail and stropped it today, and testing it on my arm/legs I think it definitely helped it improve from what it was. In fact, I still shit my pants with glee when I run it down an arm and see how perfectly it shaves. But just now I went for my third face shave and it didn't work out.

I'm stretching out hairs from my chest and letting the blade rest on them; only supporting the handle end for balance. Some of the hairs are able to support the razor's weight. Any slight movement will make it cut through, but otherwise some of the thicker single strands of hair are supporting the entire thing's weight by themselves. That means I need to have it honed, correct? And probably that it was never shave-ready (I can't imagine that anything I did so trivial that I can't even remember it-despite being obsessed with this damn thing over the past few days-would ruin my edge greatly).

I'll appreciate any advice! Thank you!