Thread: Newish to straight razors

Well after hearing good things about straights online and liking knives as well as having shaved a couple of times with a knife when I was 17 I thought straights would be good for me, especially as I have sensitive skin and it responds poorly to repeated shaving.

So I got the full norton water stone set, and a swaty, and some strops. And while I can shave with it, it does not seem especially close and my skin does not seem to like it all that much.

I have been mostly using some old razors got from eBay(I like restoring and repairing such things so thought that would be good) but didn't do much better with the new Timor Blue Steel or Dovo Best Quality.

Ideas on where I am going wrong?

I will save you some trouble and go ahead and ask for some more info as those who may answer your question will:

What grits do you have and how are you using them? Progressive? Pyramid?

Do you have a bench mark shave ready blade? Something from a honemiester?

Are you lapping the hones?

These things will help folks figure out where you are going wrong. THAT being said, the biggest single mistake folks make is not getting the bevel set correctly before polishing. Ebay blades tend to have varying degrees of hone ware and are more often than not uneven and present advanced honing challenges. Not to say you aren't totally up to the task, just sharing what little I know. Hope this helps till others can chime in on the problem.

Good luck!

The thing is that I was as much wondering if it is a honing issue, or a shaving technique issue.

I am also thinking about going down to the barber shop on friday, I have off from work and if the owner is there, he is in his 80's and I know would be happy to simply talk about straight razors with me.

Talk to the barber, take your blades with you and you may come home with more than you bargained for. Nothing like face to face contact with people and my guess is that he will love talking to you!

Originally Posted by PonderingTurtle

The thing is that I was as much wondering if it is a honing issue, or a shaving technique issue.

Well, nobody can answer this without being a psychic. I would say it's both. You could start by telling us more - the questions were good.

Originally Posted by PonderingTurtle

I am also thinking about going down to the barber shop on friday, I have off from work and if the owner is there, he is in his 80's and I know would be happy to simply talk about straight razors with me.

Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea.

Old razors from Ebay need to be honed aggresively. The edge has oxidized so the steel is soft and will not hold an edge. The old steel needs to be removed by honing. Use the Norton 4000 for that task. 50-100 roundtrip laps should remove the old steel and establish a new bevel. Then a little bit of time on the 8000 should polish the edge to shaving sharp, 15-25 laps. Then strop and shave.

Look at the pyramid system of honing after that and perform conservative pyramids if necessary.
Make sure those Norton hones are lapped flat.

Hope this helps,

Originally Posted by randydance062449

Old razors from Ebay need to be honed aggresively. The edge has oxidized so the steel is soft and will not hold an edge. The old steel needs to be removed by honing. Use the Norton 4000 for that task. 50-100 roundtrip laps should remove the old steel and establish a new bevel. Then a little bit of time on the 8000 should polish the edge to shaving sharp, 15-25 laps. Then strop and shave.

Look at the pyramid system of honing after that and perform conservative pyramids if necessary.
Make sure those Norton hones are lapped flat.

Hope this helps,

Oh I honed them quite a bit starting at the 250 norton water hone, in part because when getting the tarnish and rust off I slipped with the dremmel and put some small chips in the edge, and needed to hone those out.

So I think I am doing OK with the EBay razors, they are certainly working about as well as my new ones.

I worked on a different one recently by going from a double sided norton india stone I have had for years, to a surgical Arkansas stone to the swaty hone and it seemed to work OK(or as well as anything).

It is that I am not at all sure if it is that I am not quite getting a good enough edge on them, or my technique while shaving is the problem.

The Truth is PT, it could be either your edge or your technique or both. The only way to know for sure is if you have a honemiester put a true shaving edge on one, or better two, of your blades and eliminate that part of the equation. You are diagnosing with too many variables in my humble opinion and it would greatly help to establish a control. There are so many places where you could get hung up at first for instance:
-stropping incorrectly
-bad angles when shaving
-bad lather when shaving
-incorrect blade pressure when shaving
-incorrect blade pressure when honing
-incorrectly lapped hones
-incorrect bevel setting
-bad steel that just won't hold an edge
-bad bevel polishing
-incorrect beard prep prior to shaving
-over honing
-not keeping the spine of the blade in contact with the hone (incorrect honing)
-incorrect grit progression

Eliminate as many of these as you can and evaluate. It is going to be a labor of love, and it will be worth it. BTW I applaud you for jumping into the deep end right away! You are in for a good ride! If I can help you with any of this please let me know, I will be happy to send you a shave ready blade for a refundable deposit or evaluate an edge that you have put on a razor and give you feed back. Send me a PM if you are interested.

Best of luck and keep us up to date!



-Rob

Well the only hone I have lapped was the barbers hone, as it did not seem reasonable to me to lap a hone right out of the box.

I needed to lap my nortons right out of the box and I think most would say that you should. The 4k in particular seemed to need a lot of lapping before giving me a good surface to hone on. I lap all my hones before each use which may be excessive but atleast I know they are flat. I do the pencil grid and lap against a polished marble tile with 320 grit wet dry and then 600 grit wet dry for anything over 4k grit wise.

YMMV as always.