Thread: Greetings

From Istanbul, Turkey.

Here's my background:

I grew dissatisfied and more importantly bored with standard mach-3 type wet shaving, and bought a shavette (that's what the barbers here use, out of sanitary considerations I believe) When I got the hang of it, I searched for a real razor, and after much difficulty, found a new dovo, along with a very crappy strop. It didn't shave half as good as the shavette, so out of tremendous ignorance, I attempted to hone it on a who knows what grit oil stone, using an arbitrary angle, thereby ruining it beyond usability. So I turned to the internet, read some stuff, and found classicshaving.com. They were out of nortons, so I thought I might get by with a yellow coticule, and bought one along with a chinese 12K, a four sided TI strop and dovo pastes. Of course it didn't help my ruined edge. In the interim I had done further reading, so I contacted Howard at the perfect edge, and described my situation, and bought what he recommended: a 1200 grit DMT stone and a belgian blue. After three attempts from the DMT up, (DMT->blue->yellow->pasted strops->strop->newspaper, I don't use the chinese because I think it needs lapping.) I got a shavable edge. It passes the thumbnail test after the 1200, I rely on visuals through the rest of the process (the only attempt when I passed the HHT, I ended up with a truly terrible "shave", worse than my previous which had not passed that test, so I concluded the HHT was rubbish). When I am finished, I cut a bit of the dead skin next to my fingernail, now it cuts skin like butter. Under a jeweler's loupe, the bevel looks polished and shiny, and the edge straight. The shave was acceptable, not as good as the shavette, but with much less irritation.

My question is: how do I improve upon this? I have never seen a properly honed razor, so I don't have a point of reference. I plan to buy a presharpened razor as a second razor off clasicshaving.com, but that will have to wait, for I am already way over my initial intended budget. I perhaps have to lap my stones, but I will have to go with sandpaper; what grit paper should I use?

Thanks a lot.

For lapping, check this out: http://straightrazorpalace.com/basic...ing-101-a.html

Josh suggests lapping with 300-400 grit paper. I admit though that I used 60 grit a few days ago then smoothed them on my 1200 and got good results. It's not a suggestion, just a data point

Try doing some research on this honing thread index: http://straightrazorpalace.com/basic...faq-index.html

From my experience, a razor that completely passes the thumbpad test like a DE blade does (on a moistened but not wet thumb, gently press down on the blade and feel for stickiness) will shave well.

What has helped me is the progression that Josh Earl suggests in his Coticule Chronicles thread. After setting a proper bevel and smoothing it with the 1200, go from coticule with slurry>blue with slurry>blue with water>yellow with water. I also found that spending a good amount of time on the blue with plain water really helps out a lot.

In the future, post this in the basic honing section. You'll likely get faster and more knowledgeable answers in there.

Last but not least, good luck, and welcome to SRP!

I'll check these out, thank you very much.