Green Compound on cardboard or newspaper?

Hi, just got a J.C. Henckels from Ebay, so it's a cheap way for me to get into straight razor!

I ordered a leather strap but it's not here yet, I do have some chrome oxide. I'm wondering if I could put some on a cardboard or newspaper to refine the edge?

The razor came OK sharp with a tiny nick visible under direct light, I re-honed & fixed it using 600 -> 1200 diasharp diamond stone followed by 6000 waterstone, then stropped on newspaper. It came out not too bad and past the hanging hair test. However, it's not as sharp as my feather DE razor yet and I felt there was quite some drag during the shave, and virtually impossible to shave against the grain, although that's probably also because of my technique since it was my first shave... :P

Welcome to SRP

If the razor is passing the shave test at 6k. Try the crox on newspaper, balsa, or cardboard from a cereal box. Really whatever is handy. Aiming to get a straight razor as sharp as a feather blade will leave you suffering from HAD.

Jonathan

thanks. tried it on packaging box, didn't notice it to be much sharper, maybe a very slight improvement, most likely my technique was better than yesterday.

Don't eat cereal, also don't have any balsa on hand. so probably try CrOx on newspaper tomorrow and see what happens. I have feeling that a leather/linen strop w/ CrOx is going to improve the sharpness, can't wait for it to arrive!

When I receive the strop, should I move down to 1200 -> 6000 -> CrOx on linen/leather -> pure leather or I can just start from CrOx on linen or leather? As I mentioned earlier, the razor is passing the HHT but I feel that it doesn't pop off as cleanly as I've seen on some youtube videos.

I would try clean leather strop first. That should improve the smoothness. If that doesn't do it you can try going down. If you start from the lowest grit you have, you are not going to be able to know where the issue was. I've done that many times myself, just start over. But when you see what gets you to where you want to be, you remember that for the next time. just remember strop always after any grit or pasted strop.

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Originally Posted by shinew

Hi, just got a J.C. Henckels from Ebay, so it's a cheap way for me to get into straight razor!

I ordered a leather strap but it's not here yet, I do have some chrome oxide. I'm wondering if I could put some on a cardboard or newspaper to refine the edge?

The razor came OK sharp with a tiny nick visible under direct light, I re-honed & fixed it using 600 -> 1200 diasharp diamond stone followed by 6000 waterstone, then stropped on newspaper. It came out not too bad and past the hanging hair test. However, it's not as sharp as my feather DE razor yet and I felt there was quite some drag during the shave, and virtually impossible to shave against the grain, although that's probably also because of my technique since it was my first shave... :P

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Slow down my friend if you want this to be a enjoyable experience.

You are wanting to learn to hone and shave at the same time...please don't. Learn to shave, then hone. Please send this razor to a veteran/pro honer as it's exponentially harder to learn to hone than shave. Once you know how to shave, you will know if your edges are ok.

Diamond stones are for edge correction and generating slurry when it comes to honing a straight, not for actual honing. While a 6k can be shaved off of if the razor is in experienced hands on the stones, most of us hone to at least 8k.

6K to crox is a pretty big jump and you'd have to work the crox for a long time to smooth out the 6k scratches.

Yes, you can strop Chrome Oxide on cardboard or paper with good results. Your results will vary depending on your experience and the quality of the Chrome Oxide, not all Chrome Ox is the same.

Was the edge of your razor sharp at the 1200 plate?

Sharpening is done at bevel setting, which would be your 1200 plate the rest is polishing for comfort, though you are making some rather large jumps in progression. It is not surprising you are not getting acceptable results, unless you spend a lot of time on the 6 and 30k, Chrome Ox.

What brand is you 6K and has it been lapped smooth.

Good idea, I think i'll start from CrOx and spend more time working on it first to see how it goes since i'm jumping from 6000. I'll get another stone in between if I really see the needs. I did about 50 strokes on an 8x3 cardboard.

Euclid440, no the edge was not razor sharp after 1200, I spent quite sometime on 6000 and it made a big difference. I'm using King waterstone.

The last shave(2nd) was actually not bad, it's not as clean as my best DE shave, but was not too far off in terms of closeness. What's different however was that it irritated my skin alot. I think shooter's advice also makes sense, but I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, I think I'll work it out, since I'm really not too far off, but we'll see :)

Just want to report back that stropping on newspaper with CrOx has helped a lot. I did about 150 stroke on the CrOx covered newspaper followed by 50 strokes on newspaper without CrOx. The hair was finally "popping off" the edge of the blade for the HHT instead of being "dragged off".

My shave today was also one of the closet shave I've ever had! Although my skin was still pretty irritated after the shave, not as "painless" as with my DE razor yet and I spent a lot longer for the shave. But at least I was able to shave against the grain without cutting myself. And I really like how straight razor has almost infinite adjustable angle during the shave... so I imagine things could only get better from here.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've learned quite a bit already during my short journey into straight razor shaving.