Thread: Hello! New guy

Sandpaper. Lots of sandpaper. 220 up to 2000 grit.

Let me start off by saying that I'm a newb too. Been shaving straight for about 3 months. Just now am I getting decent at it. I guess the "100 shaves" to start getting comfortable baseline is pretty close to right in my experience. What an adventure!!

[Im definitely sending them to a pro.]

You're much smarter than I am, my friend. Everybody said send 'em in but I've been sharpening everything from skinning knives, to fillet knives all my life. I thought, "I can damn sure sharpen a straight razor". WRONG WRONG! I would have started off with a much better experience had I simply been smart enough to listen. Oh well, at least you are. It's a whole different ball game. It takes instruction, patience and time invested. If there is ANYONE on this site that lives close to you, get in touch with them. I was lucky enough to have Logistics help me out by telling me about the Denver Meet Up just a few weeks after I got into this. And I'm here to tell ya, a few hours of one on one instruction is worth YEARS of tinkering around yourself. Thanks again to Logistics, GSSixguns and the others. What an eye opener!

As far as basic honing stuff I'll pass on the info that I was generously provided with at the Meet Up. Get a Norton 4000/8000 water stone. BUT, make sure you get a DMT 325 to lapp it with also! I was messing with my water stone for quite some time and not getting any success. Granted, it was probably mostly me, but the water stone not being flat was certainly part of the total equation. It literally took several hours to get my Norton 4,/8k flat! Remember, the basics are huge!!

You'll be getting your razors back shaving sharp, so I'd focus more on RAZOR MAINTENANCE first and foremost. A good strop. Learning good stropping technique. I've personally found that an extra leather hanging strop with Chro Ox on it is a great edge refresher to be used sparingly and with regular everyday stropping on the plain leather strop.

For what it's worth, I found that laying my hanging strop on the table (kinda making it into a paddle strop, so to speak) helped me with my poor stropping technique to start off with (thanks MJ Hammer!). Also, I wasn't stropping nearly enough. Now I do a minimum of 50 "passes" --that's out and back -- 50 on each side one after the other. Not 50 at a time. Remember, we're evening out here.

I still need to get my DMT 325 so that's next to keep my now flat 4k/8k in shape. I made two homemade hanging strops and a paddle strop that works just fine for now. Don't forget that Cro Ox!! After the DMT, I'll try a 12K or up finishing stone.

I've gone and rambled! I hope some of this might help you in some small way. This site is a tremendous resource with an unbelievable number of great quality people. We are both very lucky to have found it. Let me know if I can be of any help with my limited knowledge -- but maybe I can save you some of the newb mistakes I've made.

John