Thread: A little confused and needing help

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I have been doing this for a little over five weeks now and never had to refresh my blade (it had to go back for honing because I chipped it). In the beginning my shaves were poor too. They were not uncomfortable, I nicked myself a little, but they just weren't close. I tried different soaps, different blade angles and different stropping techniques still nothing really helped much.

In the end the single biggest thing that helped the closeness of my shave to the point where I don't need to touch up with my DE razor, was pressure. The chances are you are pressing on too hard, once you start letting up on the pressure you will get closer shaves. I know that seems contrary to how it should be but I believe that when you press on too hard you lay the whiskers down and slice through them rather than cutting them at the base.

Also what RezDog says about pasted strops is a good cheap and easy way to start as it uses similar techniques to stropping so it's not a totally new skill to learn. YouTube is your friend there are a ton of videos out there on this.

Good luck and have fun.

I noticed thatg my stropping was a bit poor when I started out, and it is still not perfect.
I would go for a few more shaves and see how it goes, after I did that myself I actually managed to get a microscopic nick in the blade, but I could feel it during the shave, so I sent my razor back to get honed after that.

Canuck, you asked this same question in the hone section of the forum. Please feel free to ask any questions but please ask them once.

Ok, sorry about that, learning my way through the forum.

For the first 6 months, I refreshed with CrOx once a week and refreshed with a 12k once a month.
It didn't always need the refresh, but a sharp blade was one less thing I had to worry about.
After a year, I could tell when a blade needed paste or a stone just by the way the shave felt.

If I use the paste do I need to buy a second strop for the paste or I put it on my current strop on the linen one? I currently do 40 laps on the linen and 70 on the leather.

you really should get a separate strop. Once pasted it is forever pasted. Bench strop are available a a very low cost and is my preferred method for a pasted strop.