Thread: What's next?

Good Afternoon guys...
I have a couple questions on upcoming events. I've read a couple different things and I'm a little unclear on a firm or average time from first shave to next hone. I'm 7 shaves in things are going great, stropping feels good and still passing hair test at 3 points.
Just having some pre-separation anxiety and ideally I'd like to gear up for whatever to prevent picking up my old M3 for a week while its gone.
Paste and loom?
4k/8k and practice blade?
Thanks in advance!
Boyd

pick up a shave ready vintage from the classifieds and then maybe a coticule from Rob(ardennescoticules) or Howard (the perfect edge) and you will most likely be very good for a long time... or until RAD and HAD set in

A good barber hone and/or 0.5 CrO paste can keep you going for a long time, barring accidental damage.

If your stropping is good, you may not need to hone for 30 to 90 shaves (or even longer).

Wow, thats great news. Strop preferance for CrO?
8k hone?
Thank you


Boyd

I prefer a paddle strop for CrO. That keeps the CrOxide a long way from my plain leather strop (remember to wipe razor well between the CrO and your normal plain strop).

For edge touch-up I use a barber hone between about 9k to 12k or so. You can use an 8k but many users prefer a finer finishing hone. Popular choices for a finisher seem to be the Chinese 12k, Shapton 16k, finer grit barber hones, Spyderco UF, and Belgian Yellow Coticule. I'm sure I missed many other good choices.

The Belgian Yellow is "nominally" rated at 8k, but the smoothness level is said to be more like 10k or even higher by those who use them. Syslight was steering you in one good method. Some people do not like pastes much (including me).

Get yourself a paddle strop – leather glued onto a flat wood surface. Pasting is smearing some sort of abrasive compound onto the leather. The paste can be commercially produced like Dovo red, Dovo green, each color being a different grit, or I just use .5 micron Chromium Oxide powder mixed with a little neat’s foot oil and rub it into my paddle strop. Then when you strop on the paddle it acts like a very fine, high grit stone. Use your unpasted strop every day before you shave. Use the pasted paddle only when you just can’t get previous sharpness on your blade. Your blade will be very slowly honed each time you use the paddle, and times between required honing on real stones will be greatly increased. Don’t worry about a hone right now unless you are wanting to buy other blades and learn how to hone. If you got to have a stone, the Norton 4000/8000 waterstone is a terrific way to start. Abrasive enough to do real sharpening, and the 8000 side is where the blade will be start getting shave sharp if you are doing things right. 8000 Norton to my .5 micron CrOx paddle strop is my honing regime.

In a different thread Lynn posted an estimate of approximately 2 months in between honing for an average guy etc. I recently bought diamond spray and I am amazing how well it works. Basically apply to your linen strop, rub, let dry and strop away. I hope to go beyond the 2 month estimate with it ;-). I also got a 12k from Santa. I still have to work on it.

Al raz.

Best bet for maintaining your edge is a quality barber hone, pastes are just for smoothing an edge, get a peice of balsa wood and smear some chrome ox on it , but pastes are not necassary. You can find barber hones on ebay acouple of favorites are the swaty or keen kutter.

Thanks so much to all. I now have a decent bead on where I need to be in the next six weeks.

Boyd