Thread: Can a razor be to sharp ?

Hi,

I'm fairly new at straight razor shaving and my experience is mixed at this time. I have a Dovo Soligen's best and a week ago I figured it must not be sharp enough since it pulled a whole lot. I didn't sharpen it out of the box. I bought some Diamond paste at .50 Microns and applyed it to a Thiers-Issard large paddle strop.

I then went on to gave the razor 10 passes (both sides) on the diamond followed by 20 on the strop...

Now I can't shave without cutting my face a lot. Can the razor be too sharp ? I have a strop paddle treated with 3 microns. How can I get out of this situation ?

Thanks for the help...

EDIT: I just completed shaving this morning and cut myself badly. The razor "pulls" and seem to not want to go ATG at all. I tighten my skin a lot. I don't know what to do...

Yves

Hi yboivin. There are a lot of variables involved in your question. In most cases, I don't thing that 10 passes on a pasted strop would over-sharpen a razor. Especially at that fine grit.

If you didn't have your razor professionally honed in the first place, I bet it was never actually sharp enough to shave with. Maybe you got lucky, but the consensus on the forum is this: New razors are almost never shave ready.

Originally Posted by yboivin

Hi,

I'm fairly new at straight razor shaving and my experience is mixed at this time. I have a Dovo Soligen's best and a week ago I figured it must not be sharp enough since it pulled a whole lot. I didn't sharpen it out of the box. Lucky that it ever shaved.... I bought some Diamond paste at .50 Microns and applyed it to a Thiers-Issard large paddle strop. Great idea for after the razor has been honed

I then went on to gave the razor 10 passes (both sides) on the diamond followed by 20 on the strop... Great exercise for your arm muscles does nothing for the edge

Now I can't shave without cutting my face a lot. Can the razor be too sharp ? I have a strop paddle treated with 3 microns. How can I get out of this situation ? STOP !!!!!!
Thanks for the help...

EDIT: I just completed shaving this morning and cut myself badly. The razor "pulls" and seem to not want to go ATG at all. I tighten my skin a lot. I don't know what to do... STOP !!!!

Yves

You need to have the razor honed, and set up for shaving, it was sheer luck that it ever shaved at all, most don't in fact you're only the second person on here that I have ever heard that shaved a Dovo from the box (Go buy a Lottery Ticket)
If you know how to hone get to those stones if you don't get it out to one of us that does, Floopyshoes / Dan is in Canada he would be the first person I would PM if I were you...
I know he is busy with restore work but maybe he can slip in a honing for you....
There are quite few others here in the states that do honing, Mike Ratliff, Kenrup, Joshearl all come to mind
And of course "the Honemiester" himself Lynn but we know how busy he is

I can do the honing for you also but as busy as I am with restores, I can't promise a fast turnaround for you, and I know if I were you I would want my razor back fast

The first step of honing is commonly referred to as "setting the bevel." If you don't know what this means, do a search on the list for it. Basically it means the removal of the metal from the edge of the blade to create the actual cutting edge with the proper angle. AFTER that is done, progressively finer grits are used to make the edge sharper. Your paste is only used as a finishing step. It does not come close to setting a bevel or creating a sharp edge.

Consider a piece of wood cut with a chain-saw. It would be useless to try to initially sand it only with 2000 grit sandpaper. This is kind of the equivalent of what you did in trying to sharpen you blade with the paste. You definitely need it to be honed first.

I want to thanks everyone for responding. My question now is how to get out of that situation. I have 4-6 microns, 3 microns and 0.5 microns pastes on Thiers-Issare paddle strop.

How sould I use these to renew the edge to an acceptable sharpeness ?

Thanks !

+1 Glen

To the OP (original poster) - I'm not sure about a razor being too sharp at all.

I think it's more of a case that a razor may have a wire edge or micro-serrations that can cause facial trauma.

I'm from the stance that - once a razor has reached it's peak on the hones/strops/pastes, it can only get so far and anything after that only serves as damaging or ruining the edge. (making it too fragile)

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by yboivin

I want to thanks everyone for responding. My question now is how to get out of that situation. I have 4-6 microns, 3 microns and 0.5 microns pastes on Thiers-Issare paddle strop.

How sould I use these to renew the edge to an acceptable sharpeness ?

Thanks !

I agree with gssixgun, get Dan to hone it for you. After you use the newly honed razor a few times, then you can start using the pasted strops to keep up the edge. When I strop a razor in my rotation, I give it two or three laps on the rough side of my strop that is pasted with .5µ diamond paste. Then I strop 30 to 50 times on the finish side. When this no longer brings the edge back, I will hone it. For your situation, after stropping with the .5µ strop and the edge isn't up to speed, I would suggest going through your pasted strop. I suggest doing four or five laps each starting with your coarsest paste. I have razors that see a hone maybe three times a year. I have others that get honed every two months. I would anticipate once you get your stropping technique down, you should be able get three or four months on a honing job.

Originally Posted by yboivin

I want to thanks everyone for responding. My question now is how to get out of that situation. I have 4-6 microns, 3 microns and 0.5 microns pastes on Thiers-Issare paddle strop.

How sould I use these to renew the edge to an acceptable sharpeness ?

Thanks !

There are two choices from where you are at:

Send it out or give it a shot and then probably still send it out.

The greatest difficulty is that paddle strops work best when you already have a good blade angle on your razor. If you don't have that, then they won't help you make one, because of the pliability they have. So If we assume that you are in pretty good shape with your blade angle we can proceed.

I would look up the thread from Joshearl, on pyramid honing. It is a complete tutorial on how to hone using this method which I think is the easiest and best way to go about it. For our purposes I would treat your 4-6 micron side as the 4000 and your 3 micron side as the 8000 grits. I would then put your razor through a full conservative pyramid with one change. Triple all the numbers of laps on the hones. Then try shaving again and see where you are at. If there is no change or heaven forbid the shave gets worse, I woudl say we ae in send it out or get a hone territory.

Good luck!