Thread: Maintaining the edge between honings

As others have said, maybe stropping. For maintaining, the first thing I try when I get tugging is my CrOx pasted paddle, if that doesn't work then I try a few laps on my finishing stone or a Barber hone

Dry the edge well and a little mineral oil on the entire blade, tang, and metal everywhere. This will help with corrosion. A little is all you need. Put it on an old rag and wipe it down.

What everyone else said...plus there is no need to tape a spine to strop.

Oh yes, I forgot - the fact that you feel that you have better stropping results if you tape the spine is another clue that your stropping is subpar. You should not have to do that and if you did, it should make no difference. That also suggests that you might be applying pressure and perhaps even torquing the blade toward the edge.

Heh, not trying to pile on here, just trying to help!

rs,
Tack

I really appreciate all the advice. I do think stropping is my problem. I have two other personal problems I should work on. First and formost is I tend to over complicate things. Second is I always relate the razor edge to sharpening a knife. On knives a commmon practice is to raise the angle a tiny bit on the final couple of strokes on stones and/or strops. This was my thinking when using the tape. Even though the angle isn't raised very much at all I was thinking I could put a very tiny micro-bevel on the edge instead of working on the entire bevel with the strop. I need ot keep the knife sharpening techniques out of my thinking when honing razors. I'm going to read this advice a few times to make sure I soak it all in. Then I'm going to continue practicing using only the advice and not any of my own theories based on sharpening a knife.

Thanks guys.

Please let me get your input on this. I practice what I am learning. To improve in any skill I have to practice, a lot. If I only strop a razor between shaves I would only strop it once a day and some days I go without shaving. I don't think that is enough practice to improve quickly. Two examples: I have had playing guitar and playing pool as two hobbies in my life. I practiced as much as I could when I was doing each. I didn't just play songs or play pool when I had an opponent. I practice to improve. Third example: Sharpening knives. I've sharpened my knives all my life and been able to get them to shave arm hair. This test, I thought meant the edge was sharp. In the past 5 years, and especially in the past 6 months I've really "practiced" a lot. I'm talking about several hours a day just sharpening a knife only to try to cut a sharpening stone in half JUST TO DULL THE EDGE. Then I would resharpen it. Or I would continue to sharpen a sharp knive just to lower the angle and trying to maintain a consistant edge angle. This amount of practice has paid off 10 fold based on how sharp I can get knives not compared to a few years ago. I believe if I am so see any significant improvement in my stropping skill in as short a time as possible I need to practice even when I have a razor that does not need to be stropped. The same with honing using stones. If I only honed a razor edge when it needed it after 25 shaves I would never get very good at honing a razor. But I have heard one problem mentioned over and over. Over sharpening and over stropping can do damage to the edge. But, I want to improve as much as I can as fast as I can. I'm retired now so sharpening a knife or honing a razor for 5 hours a day is no problem. I have the time. I would appreciate opinions on this. I will also tell you my plan as of right now.

I have two razors. I like shaving with one of them more than the other. The one that is my lesser favorite I'm going to just use it for practicing. I'll shave with it only enough to test my progress. But I plan on honing it, testing it with one pass on my face then honing again starting with a 4k stone as if the razor had 50 or so shaves done. If I had only been sharpening my knives when they got dull I would not have seen the improvement I've achieved. Based on the time I spend sharpening just for practice I think it would take about 5 years of just touching up the knives to have put the same amount of time in.

I appreciate the advice and am going to adhere to the advice when practicing. Sorry to get so wordy.

Thanks again.