Help with Stainless Steel tips please

Hi guys,

After about the 20th try at re-honing my Dovo stainless steel Ivory micarta, I finally got it incredibly sharp. Pretty close to a disposable straight razor, and it just slices a hair on contact.

It seems like stainless steel really needed a lot more time on the lower grits of my Naniwas before I should have moved on. After really setting the bevel with Lynn's circular strokes, and with various other strokes I tried out, like double strokes on one side at a time, it seemed to have worked perfectly. I actually started every hone with circular strokes first, then regular honing thereafter. It worked beautifully.

After the 12k, I only stropped on leather, and shaved, and it was absolutely smooth and deadly on the whiskers. Until some later experimentation.....

Now here is my questions:

After the shave, I tried stropping on 0.5 micron diamond spray on a felt pad, then on rough leather, and then on smooth leather to see if I can even get it better, but I then found that the edge went blunt again, and did not come close to slicing my hairs like before. :banghead:

I tried touching it up on the 8k, 12k hone and leather strop only, but it made no difference to the sharpness. I then had to completely re-hone from 1k up to 12k and strop on leather only before I could get it back to near perfect condition....?

Any thoughts guys?

I am pretty sure it is not the way I am stopping, because I strop the living daylights on leather only with all my razors, and it just makes them better every time, so I don't think it is my technique on the leather.

The bluntness came after the felt pad with diamond spray, but I have no idea why....?

Hard to tell without actually seeing what you are doing, but in my opinion, every razor has a maximum level of sharpness that can be achieved. You can over hone with the .5 diamond paste. Normally, if I have a great shave from just the stones, I will not use the pastes or sprays with the razor. That said, my normal process incorporates the pastes and sprays to get to that point of a great shave. I always fall back to when I got really nice shaves from just the Norton 4K/8K and try to put things into perspective about what I am trying to get out of the razor.

Most of the time when you take one over, you can just go back to the last stone to remove the burr and some even use a few back strokes and this will revive your edge.

It sounds like you are getting on the right track with what you are doing. Once the bevel is set to where you need it, I would not recommend re-setting it if you simply over honed the razor.

Have fun,

Lynn

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Originally Posted by Lynn

You can over hone with the .5 diamond paste. Normally, if I have a great shave from just the stones, I will not use the pastes or sprays with the razor. That said, my normal process incorporates the pastes and sprays to get to that point of a great shave. I always fall back to when I got really nice shaves from just the Norton 4K/8K and try to put things into perspective about what I am trying to get out of the razor.

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Thanks for the reply Lynn, much appreciated!

This is enlightening to me, I really did not think I could over hone with the diamond spray, but that is why I am the newbie! Looks like this specific razor and its personality prefers the stones only, followed by leather stropping. That makes it shave very nicely. When I need to touch up in future I won't go down to the low grits again.

Following your DVD, personal advice and tips really helps a lot. Thanks for handing out all the information to all of the rest of us.

This specific razor seems to really like about 20-30 circular honing strokes on each side, followed by a few double strokes on each side to remove the burr, then normal, very slight x-pattern honing after that. Did this on every Naniwa stone up to 12k, and I did not do any pyramids with this specific razor. This process seems to work well with the Dovo Stainless steel Ivory micarta and etched blade.

I know it really does not give a true test of shaving, but this technique seemed to give a near perfect hanging hair test on all parts of the blade, and a great shave.

Glad I finally got this Stainelss steel blade super-sharp, it took long enough! About 4 times as long as it took me to hone another carbon blade to shave-ready status.

You need to be careful with any diamond media because it's hard stuff and works very fast so it's easy to overdo it. Remember honing a razor is a balancing act. You want it as sharp as possible however you don't want it so fragil that the edge crumbles when you use it.

As far as the stainless goes it often times takes a bit longer but shouldn't require any protracted honing over a carbon steel. I 've had some carbon steel razors that were way harder than any stainless.

Lastly, why were you redoing the bevel? Was it that bad?

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Lastly, why were you redoing the bevel? Was it that bad?

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Well, in my limited experience I thought it was bad enough to re-hone from 1k up, as the 8k and 12k did not help, so I guess you are right and I probably did over-do the diamond stropping and mess up my edge.

Will try the diamond stropping again on my next honing session, but this time I will only do some Verrrrrry light strokes, maybe just 10 or so.

It probably was not necessary to go all the way back to setting the bevel, but I am having such a good time with this honing business, that it was a good excuse for more honing. :rock:

yes a good exercise however remember when you hone your removing metal meaning wearing your blade. Less is always more with honing. If you have honeritis get an Eboy special and hone to your hearts content on that but not on a good razor.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

yes a good exercise however remember when you hone your removing metal meaning wearing your blade. Less is always more with honing. If you have honeritis get an Eboy special and hone to your hearts content on that but not on a good razor.

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Will see what I can discover on the old Evil-Bay, and hone that to no end for some fun experiments!

Now here is a chance for me to use what I have learned as an IT professional in the real world. The best thing to do is to get a USB digital camcorder from a company such as aiptek, they start at $20 and film yourself. Then post the video clip here and experts here can asses your technique. I say aiptek becuase the camcorder start at $20 and the USB camcorders because they are the simplest to use. I think that most people here are tech savy enough to understand what the resulting WAV or MP4 file is and how to watch it so I would not worry about that.