Thread: 5 Shaves under my belt...Blade dull already?

"It's easier to keep your blade sharp than it is to sharpen your blade". Every razor is different and they get dull at different rates depending on the beard they encounter and potentially technique but not as much as encountering the hairs. I keep a natural combo bout belgian in my medicine cabinet and at the end of every week give the razor a few licks to keep it sharp.

Hopefully it is not overzealus stropping.

I strop perhaps 15 on the linen if I even use the linen and then about 65 on the leather. A lot depends on the draw of your strop, mine is getting nice and broken in so it has a fair amount of grab. Your milage may vary. Try stopping about 100, shave and see....... If it works next time try 75.

Go slow at first on the strop, keep the spine against the strop at all times. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Be patient with stropping and it will come to you.

I ran into the same situation when I first started straights. It was stropping, pure and simple. For me, I was being too delicate with the blade on the strop and therefore not getting as much out of the laps I spent on the strop.

To fix this I read several threads on stropping, particularly from Sham (Hi_bud_gl) and Davis (AFDavis). Then on recommendations from them and Glenn I chalked my canvas and added intentional pressure to the spine of my razor as I stropped. With 50 laps on chalked canvas and 100 on leather my edge came back and I had happy shaves for about two more weeks (15 or so shaves).

Now a days I strop 30 canvas (no chalk) and 50 leather before each shave and my razors last about a month before needing touched up. I use no pasted strops or sprays.

If you're putting too much pressure on the blade as you strop then what helped me won't help you...but I'm pretty sure your issues are related to stropping. I also think your razor's probably not so far gone that you can't strop it back to shape based on your descriptions.

**My Stropping guides: Hold the strop just tight enough that sags about a strop's thickness in the middle. That's taut. Apply pressure only to the spine, and only enough to cause about a 1/2" depression of the strop when it passes the midway point. Go slow and steady. Starting out it took me several seconds to finish each lap. Now my entire stropping routine takes less than 2min, but that comes after learning muscle memory.

Hope it helps.
Peace,
Jim

For me as a beginner this is an interesting topic.

My straight razor is DOVO's Prima Klang. Up until now I use my leather/canvas strop according to the information I got during my two day course "classical shaving".

After each shave I do not use my straight razor for two days. Minutes before my next shave I do about 30 passes on the canvas and 60 passes on the leather.

When shaving the blade "feels" as sharp as the first time. Since the beginning six weeks ago I shaved some fifteen times. I must admit that I am not fully smooth afterwards but that's just a lack of practice. For me the results are better than expected. But there is a long way to go for that excellent shave.

I wonder how long it will take before I get the feeling my Prima Klang is blunt.

In March I will join a day course "sharpening a straight razor". I will share the details on this forum.

It's actually quite interesting to see all the different ways people care for their razors, I started with just following what some said and found what works best for me.. and I'm still changing it from time to time as I learn more..

For ME , the regimen is:

Before shave
20 Passes Linen
60 Passes Leather

After shave
20 Linen
20 Leather

Plus, I have some pasted balsa, about once every other week (I have a few razors so I rotate) I do 5 passes on green paste, then 5 passes on red paste and then 50 linen and 100 leather, seems to keep my edges pretty well.

Again that is what "I" do YMMV

I'm in exactly the same situation.
Thanks for starting this thread, and many thanks for the kind responses.

We have all been through it when we started, it is an art that does take patients and skill to fully enjoy. It's funny to say now because i made some of these very mistakes year ago but every element of straight razor shaving adds up to how a shave goes. Each step is vitally important to a great shave starting with a properly honed razor, to proper stropping and stropping enough to get the blade straight, beard prep, technique during the shave, and after shave care.

You can't shortcut any of the steps NOT one. It's like a symphony each of the instruments together perfectly in tune and right on the mark make for wonderful heavenly musical experience, but if you have one instrument in the group out of tune, off beat, etc.. it will lessen or kill the enjoyment.

Which brings me to two points.
1. Will you always get that heavenly experience, of course not no two shaves will be the same but they will get progressively better and consistently better as you become more experienced, even the best of us have a crappy shave here and there no matter how experienced we have become.

Will you ever get that perfect shave? I believe we all continue to chase that perfect shave which is why we are always trying new hones, new strops, new creams, new blades, different techniques and the likes we get dam good one's but a perfect shave is one that you treasure.

2. What experience brings is the ability to know which of those instruments are out of tune, and which need to be corrected when things go out of sync, in the beginning it's hard to tell I'm under stropping, or my cream was to dry, or I rolled my edge. In time you will learn how to know what to tune to get a good shave, and what works for you.

Cream you can experiment with, stropping you can always try and correct, technique we are always learning and looking for new and better ways. Honing you need a benchmark, you need to know what a blade should feel like and that in and of itself can be a challenge, one easily corrected by being sent out to a credible honemeister.

Step back and learn to tune your instruments with patients and you too will one day enjoy the daily symphony that we have all grown to cherish in our shaving time.