Victory is mine (at least a little bit)

[tadamsde]

I just finished my first straight razor shave folks!!! But that is not all. I also finished my first straight razor shave after my first honing!!!! It felt good. It was not a close shave, and I may have seen a little blood, there was definitely some beard-tugging happening as well. But who cares, I did it (please excuse the over-excitement, I am just very happy right now)!!!

Anyway, I do have a question. So I bought the razor (A Dovo Bismarck 6/8 with bone handle) off ebay and it had never been sharpened before. So it was pretty dull. I worked on my hone (norton 4/8k) for about an hour and finally got a nice bevel going and was able to pass the hanging hair test. However, the bevel did not go all the way to the heel of the razor. And at first it did not go to the toe, until I started going diagonal to the edge of the hone. So my question is, how do you get the heal of the razor sharpened (especially when you are dealing with a not perfectly flat edge like the one that comes on the bismark (you will notice a curve in the toe and heal))? Is there some kind of trick (rocking, pushing the heal first down the hone, or something)? Anyway, if you know what is going on let me know.

Oh also, I think I suck at stropping. For one, do you strop on the ultra smooth finished side, or the softer side of the strop. I have the Dovo extra wide strop, so mine has a reddish side and a tan side. But stropping did not seem to do much for me, and I think good stropping might help with the tugging of my beard and just make for a better shave. Anyway, I need some advice.

Thanks for reading my post. Needless to say I am very excited right now, but I still definitely have some fine tuning to do. I would love and appreciate any advice. Thanks. Take care.

Tristan