Thread: Strop expert advice/opinion wanted. *not* stropping advice

Ok....I'm about to piss some people off.....so I need everyone to chill out and take a deep breath. Trough a misguided attempt I tried to get my straights HHT Sharp all the way through. OK BREATH EVERYONE AND CHILL OUT...... I got the 1/3 of my straights closest to the tang HHT Sharp but the middle and top part are not. Now....I just shaved last night and it Shaves great. But I'm worried that even though it now Shaves like a dream.....that maybe one side being sharper than the other is improper honing and I don't know what that might lead to so can someone instruct me on how to fix this so I don't hone like a jack ass again? Thanks guys. Remember....lots of love, don't be mean lol.

It is a matter of practicing until you have uniformity in your stroke and pressure .... or the lack of pressure. Honing is a learned skill with a lot of nuance. It is easy to demonstrate a technique and difficult to explain or demonstrate the nuances. You have to get the feel of those through your hand. I used to have the same problem but as I gained experience it got better. The 1961 barber manual PDF excerpt on honing and stropping gives some good technique to making sure you're getting the entire blade where you want it to be. Here it is out of the SRP Wiki help files.

Probably the way you are holding your razor or pressure you are applying. It's just unequal so that's the result you get. The old test mentioned many times is use a magic marker on your razor and as you hone it should come off evenly. That's how you will know.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Probably the way you are holding your razor or pressure you are applying. It's just unequal so that's the result you get. The old test mentioned many times is use a magic marker on your razor and as you hone it should come off evenly. That's how you will know.

I will definitely be doing this next time! Now....Lynn honed it....4 Shaves later, I wanted HHT Sharp so I honed it (Yes I now know it probably already was HHT Sharp from Lynn I just didn't know what I was doing) now its definitely shaving great but I still want to play! Should I just leave it alone for another 6 months or should I keep practising?

Originally Posted by grant9908

I will definitely be doing this next time! Now....Lynn honed it....4 Shaves later, I wanted HHT Sharp so I honed it (Yes I now know it probably already was HHT Sharp from Lynn I just didn't know what I was doing) now its definitely shaving great but I still want to play! Should I just leave it alone for another 6 months or should I keep practising?

What I did was leave the Lynn honed ones alone, they didn't need any help. I got vintage ebay and antique shop razors and practiced. Only took a hundred or so.

Think I should get a cheap $6 razor and try to get it shave ready?