Discouraged and Disappointed, pt 2
Ok. Well, things are better since my wig-out that I posted here a week or two ago.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/begin...appointed.html
I took everyone's advice that the blade was probably not in "shave ready" condition, ordered a honing stone off eBay, and put the thing aside for a few days and calmed down.
Stone arrives from Poland (!). The item itself - I haven't encountered anything like it before. Finest abrasive I've ever dealt with was 1200 grit wet and dry, but this stone makes that stuff look like gravel.
(actually, I tell a lie - I once faceted and polished some quartz at my uncle's, but that was years ago).
Anyway. I lapped it as well as I could ("our stones are already flat and lapped!" - yeah, right. Maybe I just have a suspicious nature.), honed the blade on it - probably not all that well, but well enough. Now it cuts again. Yay! A long way from being so sharp that the edge glows blue from the ambient air molecules being sliced apart, but the way I see it: 100 years ago the average bloke was using a straight razor well enough without being a barber.
I forget what I did to the strop, basically wet it with water and cleaned it from all the abuse, more or less. And stropped the blade on it several times. The leather is no longer stiff, and it kind of grips the blade like it should when you use it. The canvas side is also better - I think I scraped a (clean!) kitchen knife over it to wear it in a little. Oh - also used the knife to shave a bevel on the edges of the leather side.
Point is: I can get a shave off the razor now. Blood everywhere, still, but a little cold water takes care of that (and those "soothing alcohol-free after-shave balms" - don't believe it). There's whiskers in the soap, which is encouraging, and the result is good enough that I don't need to finish off with the new-fangled twin blade. On the easy part - my left cheek - I get that spooky-smooth result that people here talk about.
I might try the newspaper thing that everyone is suggesting.
In any event, there you go. I might lurk for a bit on these forums.
