Thread: Honing the Mastro Livi way

I have owned 9 of his razors, 8 of them custom ordered. I still own and use 8. Only one I could not nor could 2 other very experienced honemeisters get a good shaving edge on. It was more the metal then the honing. The one I couldn't get an edge was purchased from a third party and sold. The 8 ordered razors came in shave ready. Just stropped them more because of habit then necessity. I did strop on his loom strop. Watching the videos really made me wonder how he could do what everyone else says won't work yet does. I feel the same way with watching Murray Carter's honing videos. I appreciate this because it makes me believe in experimenting with new techniques to see what might really produce the great edge. The fun is in the experimenting and finding the golden goblet. I do admit watching him makes me feel he is really pissed at something. By the way, his palm stropping lead me to strop on my forearm. That really does help the edge. Smooth and soft.

From the videos I have seen of his technique I think it is very much like your local barber.

Much of it is show for the customer.

I would really like to see some slow mo and see if the edge is really touching the strop or if it is just a slapping of the spine for theatrical effect.


theoretical when I meant theatrical.

He is strictly against rolling the razor over the spine. As an experiment, I do 60 laps one way only, the lap 60 one way only the other side on leather and Chrox. I find the blade stays much flatter doing one way instead of back and forth. Results may vary based on person stropping.

I can say that I too save the rolling over of the spine for my hanging strops.
Hones and workbench strops see lightly going off the hone/strop.

Flip in the air, and set down spine-first.

Still. A bunch of whacking there?

I just received yesterday one of his new styled barber notch Grifo razors with olive wood scales and I shaved right out the box and it was 100 percent shave ready a nice little razor to be fair. The vide posted in previous post with snake razor is quite a older video . I am pretty sure he only uses 3 k coticule and crox loom strop and having used this method my self the results were very good and my razors mirrored the same shave I got from Livi Grifo last night .

Compared to say dilucot edge or j nat edge and traditional hanging strop. There is a different feel on the skin when shaving but I quite like the shave of Livi method .

Originally Posted by sharptonn

With the camera rolling, likely a good bit of Italian 'showing off'?
I am not convinced that treatment would shave at all.....JMO.

There are seriously high numbers of skull handled shaving brushes posted in the Italian FB shaving groups. Heck, I am fairly certain I had not even seen one until I ventured over to one of these groups.

I had no idea that straight razor shaving needed a machisomo boost.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

With the camera rolling, likely a good bit of Italian 'showing off'?
.

His heat treat temper cycle strikes me the same. A lot of flash and wow.

Hey! It's the Maestro! Gotta do it!