Thread: any advice???????

Originally Posted by dappa12

bought a brand new straight and it was tugging and pulling so i decided to try honing it on a 4000/8000 hone. alrite so i gave it about 10 minutes on the 4k maybe 100 laps and about 20 on the 8k. then i stropped on the canvas and leather for about 20 strokes each. so i prep my beard, and everything try the razor out and...........to my astonishment most of the hairs were still left on the skin..........tried a second pass and same thing. At this point my skin started turning red and I was feeling the razor burn so i finished off with my safety razor. So any advice? Was it an overhoned razor?

That was me last month - except I decided to hone before even trying the razor, as it failed the hanging hair test.

I'm pretty sure I ended up overhoning, I had the same thing as you - I went through the motions of shaving but most of the hair was left behind.

I made sure I got rid of any wire edge by very lightly running the blade over the wooden part of a pencil. You are supposed to use a matchstick for that but I didn't have any. (Alternatively you can just back-hone to remove a wire edge.) Then I did some "pyramids" of honing as recommended here. That got it shave-worthy if not the perfection I was hoping for.

Further improvement came when I stopped trying to hone the hell out of the blade, and instead started stropping more and working on my shaving skills. I kept feeling the urge to hone more but I resisted and it paid off. Shaves just kept getting better and better.

Doing hundreds of laps on the hones and 20 of stropping is completely the wrong way round. You need to do the minimum amount of honing needed, and do 50 or more laps of stropping before each shave.

Use the marker test to see if your honing is working on the whole bevel. Once it is, hone on the 4K until the blade passes the thumbnail test. Then hone on the 8K until it passes the thumbpad test. (Do not use the thumbnail test once you've started on the 8K side.) There are guides to these tests on this site.

If that seems complicated or doesn't work for you, try doing "pyramids" (again, guides are on this site.)

You should get to the stage where you can shave hairs off your arm. Don't think the hairs will "pop" off as soon as the blade touches them at a height above the arm. It's great if that happens, but don't make that your target, just get the blade to where it can shave.

Then do 50 laps stropping on leather and do a test shave. Hopefully you will see improvement.

Edit: But yes, if you can get someone to make your razor shave-ready that makes things easier and teaches you what to aim for in future. Go to someone who KNOWS how to sharpen straight razors, not a knife grinder.