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I use a stainless steel straight razor and recently honed it for the first time using a coticule. The next immediate shave gave me a terrible red burn that lasted up to three days. I tried to do it a second time and the same thing happened. I stropped before the shaves as always. Any ideas of what I am doing wrong? Thanks
I find that excessive use of a pasted strop will leave me with razor burn. Also, you are probably putting too much pressure on your skin with the blade and scraping your face, which means your razor was probably not sharp enough to begin with, which means either your honing or stropping is lacking. Also, you may have gone over the same area of skin too many times. This may have been necessary (in addition to the preceding) because you did not do an adequate pre-shave face prep, or you used an aerosol can shaving cream. Any combination of all of the above can lead to razor burn.
First time razor sharpener? Or are you proficient with your rock of choice?
I don't use stainless, but i know from knives that they have abrasion resistance. Which would make it more difficult to hone. Therefore it would probably take longer. Assuming your stopping is good then my first guess is what happened to me: I had the problem with not having the bevel completely set, so the coticule was just polishing the upper part of the bevel and not actually improving the edge. So it feels like you shaving off the 1000 grit! From what i know stainless razors take longer to set the bevel because of the abrasion resistance.
I recommend going back to 1000k or heavy slurry on the coti for a while or 2000k sandpaper if you don't have the first to options. Until you can pop hairs off the arm with little pressure.
Hope someone else help too, hopefully someone with stainless razors.
Nathaniel.
This is my first time to hone, I've just been going off what I have seen from videos. I use very nice shaving cream and proper prep each time. In some cases I do go over some spots more than once, and my pressure could be a little off. However, before attempting to hone I had no such problems
Do both sides of the blade make the same sound when stropping or does one side sound a little louder than the other ?
Well, if prior to your honing the blade shaved fine and now it won't you know it was your honing that caused the problem. So now you have to figure out what happened. First I would check the bevel if that was damaged you will need to reset it or you're wasting your time. if it's OK then you need to examine the edge and decide how to properly hone. We have threads and videos about that all over the place here. Maybe you should send it out and practice with something else?