Thread: Maintaining the edge between honings

Being new to straight razors I don't know what to expect regarding a learning curve on different things. My shaving is getting better. My honing with stones seems to be getting better. However, maintaining the edge with a strop doesn't seem to be working for me. The only time I have been able to get the razor sharp enough to give me a nice shave is to use a stone or two plus a strop between shaves. I can do a few strokes on an 8k then a 16k Shapton glass stone then strop and the razor shaves great. But, if I only use a strop I can't bring the edge back to what I like. Is this normal? I understand the stropped edge will be less "shave ready" than a just honed edge but others say they get many shaves between using any stones. I have considered two reasons for my problem. 1. My whiskers damage the edge enough that a stone or two is required to repair it. I doubt this is the case though. 2. My stropping skill needs improvement. This makes more sense to me. This leaves me to the question of strops to use. I have bench strops of various grit sprays down to .1 micron. I have a kangaroo strop with no compound or spray at all. The roo strop alone doesn't seem to do anything to improve the edge. It is wonderful for smoothing and refining an already super sharp edge but may not be aggressive enough to help my razor's edge after shaving with it. If I first use a strop with .5 or .1 micron CBN spray then use the roo strop that seems to work the best. For now anyway. So, even if I don't use stones I seem to need a coarser grit strop to improve the after shave edge. I do have a hanging strop with no abrasive on it but haven't used it for a while. I will try using it by laying it flat on a stone or strop. I can't even come close to using it as a hanging strop. I haven't been able to get the motion down.

I did get better results one time by shaving then putting a strip of electrical tape on the spine to raise the angle just a tad and then stropping. This ensures getting good contact with the edge apex but I don't think this is a preferred technique. It may work short term but it will result in more work needed when re-honing the edge. I guess that's ok though. But putting the tape on the razor each time is a little inconvenient. I would rather improve my technique for the long term anyway.

I'm getting better at the whole straight razor thing but know I am still definitely a beginner. Do you guys think what I'm going through is about standard and I'll get better with practice or am I doing something wrong? And if I'm doing something wrong, how can I improve. Tanks for any help.

Jack

PS
I have two razors. One is one of the "sight unseen" razors on whippeddog.com. The other is an old Boker a friend gave me. I had to make a handle for it and do a lot of work on the edge. It was dull and had a couple of tiny nicks in the edge. Again, I'm a newcomer but I really think the Boker is much better at taking a great edge and holding it better. Better blade steel would be my opinion if this were a knife. I assume this might be the same with a razor. My honing/stropping skills being weak though I can't count on my evaluation that much. Any ideas on this?

Wow, you have a lot going on here. You should be able to hone and use a razor at least 25 shaves before needing a touch up. Which would be 5 or 6 strokes on your finest grit hone. I say 25 because that is the lowest amount I can recall hearing about. I go much farther than that. I would say work on your stropping with plain leather after about 25 laps on linen or what ever you have. It looks to me like you have so much going on your missing a basic somewhere. Stropping appears to be it.

Consider the basics: Shaving damages the edge a little; stropping corrects most but not all of that damage. The damage accumulates until we perform maintenance honing or we wait until it's bad enough that we need to do a real touch up honing.

Your experience suggests that either you are not stropping properly or(and) that the edge is not quite there in the first place. It's fairly easy to find if it's one or the other, not so easy if both are involved. Since we can get at least two or three good shaves from a truly shave ready edge without stropping, simply try that second shave off the stone without stropping again. If the shave is better than you've been getting, you know that you need to work on your stopping skills. If, on the other hand, that second shave is much worse than the first you know that a borderline edge is the problem. Chances are that the bevel is almost but not quite perfect and that your intermediate and finish work has simply pushed to the edge to the barely shaveable point. If that's the case then any little bit of damage will pull it back over the line.

I'd put my money on stropping as the culprit though. Since you put so much emphasis upon pastes and strop "grit" in your description - thinking of stropping as "grinding" -, I'd guess that you are applying down pressure when you strop. You need only enough to keep the blade flat on the strop, no more. Stropping is polishing/burnishing, not grinding. You might want to change something in your stropping method to, in effect, start over. If you are stropping with a motion away from and back toward yourself, try changing to a side to side motion. Just do something to get away from any bad habits you might have developed.

The next step would be to try to locate a mentor in your area. There's nothing like a little one-on-one instruction.

Good luck.


rs,
Tack

I agree w/ the replies, it's probably a stropping problem (as w/ most of us early on).

But an additional thought, just in case: Post-shave edge care. If your edge isn't clean and dry when you put it away, or if it's exposed to a lot of humidity, that edge can really degrade fast between shaves.

(And, of course, a mistake cleaning & drying the edge is just as destructive as a stropping error! Makes you wonder how we ever manage a shave at all.)

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.

I'm going to speak in layman's terms (not from the perspective of an expert) to your concerns. You have figured out a way to get the razor properly sharpened, even if it requires frequent honing. Read about what other people are doing on the forum and if it sounds like a good idea, try it. The electrical tape protects your razor against hone wear so I recommend sticking with it.

Occasionally I try something else when my shave results don't seem up to par. I have the Shapton stones you have but lately the razors don't seem as sharp as they used to be. This weekend I got out an old barber hone (probably the equivalent of 6000 grit) and used it instead of my Shaptons to touch up a few razors. I have gotten a couple of really nice shaves. Maybe the razors needed a more aggressive finishing job than fine tuning with an 8K and 16K Shapton this time around.