Thread: Hello! New guy

Those razor mfg's are good makers...should end up good shavers.

Welcome aboard and Congrats on your purchase. I would read up on the Wiki about shaving and make sure the razors are "shave ready" before you start shaving. Take some time to read and learn and you will enjoy Str8 shaving in not time.

Absolutely what Jeff said...you should send them to someone to have them honed...I mean by a pro. Please don't consider honing right now as you have enough to learn at this time, no offense, but don't know what a shave ready razor really is. None of us did when we first started.

Ha ha I was watching them for kicks on ebay. You did good,Welcome. I agree on sending them out to a pro to hone. you wont be sorry. lots of guys here do it. Enjoy them.

hello,

Im definitely sending them to a pro. All that goes into setting the edge, honing, finishing, and stropping is A LOT more complicated then I thought! Its funny, I considered myself very good at sharpening knives. Ive worked and made knives with steels ranging from 1095, 5160, d-2, 0-1, 0-2 , 154cm, s30v, vj10 and a few more but its all very straight forward. This straight razor thing from what I can see is all in the little things. Eventually I want to restore razors and have a large collection but Im going to have to make a decent investment to get started. I have just about everything I need to re-handle razors but nothing to do edge work other then a few water stones from 220-800 grit. Is there a thread on SRP with a list of the basic tools needed to start. Right now what I think I need is: 1k water stone, 4k/8k water stone, leather paddle strop, and I dont know what else. Any links to threads or web sites with info would be great! The more equipment I need to buy the more excited I get about restoring razors. Theres a lot of good people here!!!!!!

Thanks for all your info,

Chris

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