Sharpness & Lathering Techniques?
I recently received a straight razor kit for christmas. I'm very excited to begin shaving well with it. I had a few questions to clear up a bit of confusion.
First, is the lather. I have a badger brush, shaving soap, and a wooden bowl. Soap and bowl are from a local soap shop, not sure what it's made out of. But I can find out. The problem is that the lather is dissolving much faster than I think it should. The first time I tried creating lather is was very bubbly, which dissolved very quickly after applying to the face. Since then I've refined my technique to create much finer bubbles which seems to stick around a bit longer. However, it's nothing like what I'm used to... commercial gels. The lather from the gels is much denser and lasts much longer. The lather doesn't need to last this long but I was wondering what others experiences were on this topic. Is this just something that I should expect?
Now for the bigger problem. The sharpness of the blade is, well, like a two-three week old safety razor. It's nearly painful to shave areas that have thick hair. The blade was just recently honed (two weeks ago). I think I'm doing the stropping process correctly. 20-30 on canvas then 20-30 on leather (no paste) in the X pattern. I'm keeping the strop taught and only applying a small amount of pressure as the move the blade across. I learned my current technique from the straight razor place DVD. So how do I sharpen this up? Or is this also something that should be expected... I'm almost sure it's not.
Thanks,
Brian