Thread: ATG Blood Bath

I have a theory:

That edge isn't honed right. If it is honed perfectly you can act like an idiot and not get an ounce of irritation- notice I didn't say not cut. You can cut yourself if your super careless with a perfect edge, but you can be a cowboy with a super smooth refined edge and not get irritation. I'm not there, and I didn't see you hone- but I'll put my money on this:

"Stropped the smiling edge 100 times and here we go."
"My other str8s I hone 12k then diamond 0.5 and 0.25 on the wool felt."

That's a lot of stropping. .25 and .5 micron diamonds are super small and sharp- they cut very deep for their size and my guess is you don't take ample precautions earlier with the stuff (it's kind of like handling lead paint- your finger pads, tools (razor) all need to be decontaminated before the next stage. a couple tiny diamonds get on your clean leather and it's game over. 100 strops with errant diamond particles can cause edge damage that'd make the bevel's edge look like a bandsaw. get new leathers, rehone and reattempt. only 5 passes tops on felt with that diamond stuff too by the way, in case you weren't already aware- it's like caulk, fine for painted board seams, but it's not a board replacement- little or none. The blades are about the same width so your technique shouldn't be 100% to blame- even a bad angle shouldn't tear your skin up- that edge is full of teeth. You can get new leathers- get a scope and look at the edge, or strop the hell out of a good shaving razor and see how it performs to test this.

Other theory would be that the water was too cold- goose pimpled flesh isn't smooth at the hair follicle- take a sharp edge over a bumpy surface and one of the two has got to give as far as the blood on your neck.-that could contribute- but it's the edge, as you said your whole face feels like that and you didn't cold water atg your whole face.

good luck