Thread: A little confused and needing help

Hi all,
im new to straight blade and a little confused. For reference im just did my 1st shave and it went piss poorly but I had a ton of fun so im ok with that! Haha. hand technique will take awhile. I picked up a Portland razor co siren 1/4 hollow which was honed to shave ready right in front of me. I'm reading all these posts and I'm confused on if I should be "refreshing" the blade. Obviously my skills on blade maintenance are almost zero. I have a 2.5" strope and i practice my technique with a butter knife. I know to strope before every shave but I keep reading about refreshing or using a finishing stone is that the same as honing or am I supposed to do it regularly and get my own stone to do it and how often. I live in a city that doesn't have a honemeister so when it's time to get it honed I'll have to take it to where I bought the razor( 2 hours away)
im am quickly falling in love with straight razor shaving even with the 4 nicks I gave myself today!
Thanks all
Chuck

At this point you need to get your shaving technique figured out and your stropping. You may need a blade refresh sooner than later, but unlikely after one shave. So some key points for your technique, skin tight with active stretching and holding, blade angle nice and low, lather wet and it is never too soon to map your whisker growth. You will need to strop between shaves, now this is where is gets really confusing. On the linen you need to strop between 0 and 60 round trips and on the leather between 40 and 100 round trips. Some never use the linen and claim great success and others believe in it. Some strop a little on the leather and others a lot. Right now you need to work on steady even strokes with nice gentle turns that flip on the spine, no lifting of the spine during passes, no downward pressure on the stop either. There is a ton of variable mileage around here and a lot of stuff is experimenting to find what is best for you. Most importantly have fun and enjoy your shaves.

Appreciate it and I do 40 on the linen and 70 on the leather but my question is is the refresh something I am supposed to do myself and if so what do I need to do it or does it also need to be done by a pro?

Ideally you would do it yourself. Easier than driving 2 hours. Many use a balsa strop with pastes.

True story, the most inexpensive maintenance tool is a pasted strop. I like CrOx for a quick refresh. They seem to work best as a little bit often, as opposed to trying to strop back a dead edge. It's hard to be able to tell when to usr it in the beginning, because you are not sure if it was a dull edge or your technique was just a little off. There has been much controversy as to how much is too much. Many claim you can use a small amount on a strop daily and everything is just fine. You can also touch up with a barbers hone or a 12K or other finisher. Unless you are restoring a touchup will often be all that is needed.

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.