Hello there! I've been lurking for a few weeks now, pretty much since getting a new straight razor as a Christmas gift. It's an "art of shaving" model made the T-I - the one with stainless scales (but carbon-steel blade -- go figure!). Anyway, I shaved with it for a few times when I first got it, and found that I really enjoy the "experience". But I noticed that I was getting some razor burn. Once I stropped it, it was worse. I suspect related to not being "shave ready" when I got it. I foolishly honed it on an extra fine stone I have, and stropped it, and was still able to shave, but was using a lot of pressure and a pretty steep angle.

At that point, I hadn't totally given up, but was considering buying a second razor -shave ready, and would send this one off to a hone-meister to be done right. That's when I messed up...

The razor slid out of the leather pouch, and hit my bathroom floor. When I looked down, I saw it had partially opened. When I picked it up, there was a slice mark in the side of the stainless scales, and a pretty good nick in the blade -- although I was surprized the nick wasn't more severe, considering how bad the slice in the scale looked. What was also odd -- I would have had to put a LOT of side pressure on the blade to get it to deflect enough to go anywhere near the sliced-spot on the scales!

Anyway, I ordered up a King japanese water stone -- the 1k-6k combo -- and lapped it along with my other sharpening stones. I used the bread-knife method to slowly take the chip out of the blade. This blade was not totally straight but has a slight smile to it -- which I maintained during the process.

Now I have re-set the bevel, and have been taking my time to hone on the 6k side of the King waterstone, with several re-lappings of the stone. I am using the rolling x technique to maintain the bevel along the entire smiling edge. But I am becoming frustrated at one thing ---- the blade is sharp enough to pop hairs easily at the toe and heel, and maybe 15mm or so along the blade edge from the tip and from the heel. But the middle part of the blade doesn't seem to want to get keen. I don't have a microscope or any way to look more closely at the edge, but the bevel looks nice by eye. I am not using any tape and did not use any during the bevel setting, either. I am trying to use light pressure since blade is 5/8 and full hollow, I don't think deflection is the issue. Can anyone give me some pointers? I can't seem to find much about how to get past this when I search these forums, and I have read the Wiki a few times over.

My feeling is that I need to get the entire length of blade sharp enough to at least shave some arm/hand hairs before stepping to a finer grit than the 6k. Also, I have not overhoned and have not created a "wire edge".