Thread: When to hone

Well, last month I decided to stop rotating razors and shave with a single professionally honed razor, brush and soap. Reason being that I was getting very varied results and I couldn't get my technique to work right.

Now my issue is the the shave is not close. I have little to no irritation but not sure what to do. Additional passes = cuts so not sure how to find right balance.

So I got wondering if I dulled it without knowing. Maybe rolled during stropping or something.

Or am I just a carpenter blaming his tools?

Not hard to dull your edge with incorrect stropping. Trashed my first shave ready razor before the first shave. As your technique gets better, so does the shave count between touch ups. Not uncommon to get 50 + with just a strop.

My rule of thumb has been that if refreshing the razor with 25 strokes on a chro/ox pasted strop + 80-100 strokes on leather doesn't work. Then I hone.

Was it fresh honed when you started and how many shaves with it since honing. Have you used crox. How many laps stropping and have you tried doing more.

It was fresh I would say 15 shaves or so. No crox. Linen 20 and leather about 50-60.

Same here, you can go for a long time like this

Originally Posted by quicksilver

My rule of thumb has been that if refreshing the razor with 25 strokes on a chro/ox pasted strop + 80-100 strokes on leather doesn't work. Then I hone.

Look at the edge with magnification, what do you see?

I never let my edges get too far. I like the edges I get right off the hone. So the moment it loses the slightest bit, I return to a finishing hone for just a few passes and I'm right where I was again. Once a razor is honed and finished it never sees an 8k again unless something goes wrong.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Look at the edge with magnification, what do you see?

As Marty says...1st step take a look at the edge. If there are no major problems the my recipe is 40-60 laps on a real linen strop ( I use one that is rubbed with a lead bar).. then 150 -300 laps on good leather. Works every time for me!

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Look at the edge with magnification, what do you see?

Under 10x, Nice clean bevel no chips or dings. With maybe some convexing, i am unsure.

Need to verify with higher magnification.