Thread: Antique shop shaver

Hello! My name's Ben and I recently started shaving with a straight razor. I'd been interested in them for a while and recently found an old Twin Works razor at an antique shop in near mint condition. Got myself some hones and through trial and error ended up with a Kingstone 1000 grit and a Norton 4k/8k combo stone. So far I've got an old re-handled Boker Tree brand King Cutter, a Joseph's best that I need to re-handle and that I'm having a little trouble honing up and my Twin Works. My strop is a Roma, and I'm a little unclear on it. My first strop had two sides, one rough one smooth and I put black stropping compound on both sides, worked fine. This one has two different leather strips which are nearly identical, is that for two different compounds or should I keep one clean? All my razors and equipment (Less the Norton stone) were bought out of antique shops, and I've spent less than 200 dollars for a life time of shaving blades. I'm very satisfied.

Sounds like some good razors you picked up and razor porn is always appreciated.

As for the strop, you should keep one clean and the secondary strop for your chromium oxide to refresh your blade when it starts to loose it's edge. Ten passes on that Crox strop and then about sixty on your clean leather and you'll be set for a while. After the crox treatment, you should only have to go back to the crox strop once every two weeks or so.

No idea what kind of stropping compound I have. It's black hard tarry stuff that's really a bugger to spread. I haven't had much trouble keeping the blades sharp, but my Joseph Elliot's Best Silver Steel is having some trouble finding an edge on the heel and toe of the blade. It smiles a little as I've seen they tend to do in pictures. And the scales are loose so the blade is knocking against them. Gonna have to re-scale it, not sure how I'll get the pins out but I'll prolly just give'r on that one.

A recommendation. Send your nice razor out to a honemeister (can be found in the classifieds) and purchase another razor to develop your honing skills. That way you will have one that you can use to compare your edge with one that is done correctly.

Welcome to SRP. A lot of info in the SRP Wiki here and the 1961 barber manual excerpt on honing and stropping here will help in getting the smiling blade tuned up.

Careful stropping on your compounds!

If you are using abrasive compounds you could over do it on your edge. Usually, most folks strop on linen and then plain leather and only go to the pasted strops for touching up a failing edge.

Not sure what you are using as a compound, but if it is black emory you could be taking off a lot of metal that you don't need to.

Best Luck!

-Rob