Thread: Straight Razors Dull Despite Little Use

Originally Posted by rickytimothy

I look forward to the zen-like state I'm going to get into in the future when I finally have a feel for this.

There will come a time once you have a good handle on it when you.will get sort of lost in it. At least I do. I find it very meditative.

Also once this time comes you will find you listen to people's methods and some you will say...


Then others you will try just to see what they know and incorporate some of it into your method or at least your memory banks. From there you will perfect your own method.

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

If it's a 1k/6k combo don't soak that stone. It will not only make it not flat it will make the 6k side crack/craze

Right on. Two dissimilar stones glued back to back potentially swell or shrink at different rates, and obviously this can cause problems. The best thing that can happen is that they split apart and you end up with two separate stones. The worst? Cracking. I avoid ALL combo stones. Not soaking and only honing one razor at a time ought to help mitigate all that bad stuff.

Originally Posted by rickytimothy

Well put. This is exactly what I was complaining about, basically. In the normal world one of two things is normally true:

1. You can make a decently accurate guess at how well someone knows what they're talking about by what company they work for, what degree they have, what rank they have, etc.

2. There is some level of consensus on how beginners should approach learning a subject, or some level of consensus on a general approach that works well.

In razor sharpening there is absolutely none of any of that, which makes it almost impossible to parse information as a newcomer. Most of the masters don't really have credentials, and the one well known sharpener who has a degree in metallurgy has disputed methods, there's no working eye test for which sharpeners are good or bad over the internet, no one agrees on what terminology to use for honing techniques, and despite the apparent simplicity of the concept of sharpening a piece of metal, every single step of the process is hotly debated. On top of that, there is some instructors on youtube who unironically don't know what they're doing, and it would be hard to tell which is which without already being a master of the craft.

I do agree with everyone's general sentiment that it's the kind of thing, where if you do it often enough, and try enough techniques, and really sink in some time and effort, eventually you will just develop a feel for the stone, and things will fall into place naturally. That's exactly the approach I plan on taking. It's just a really absurd sounding learning environment. It kind of reminds me of cooking, where there is 800 slightly different ways to cook scrambled eggs, all of them work, and lots of cooks will totally slander other cooks method as total garbage.

If I were teaching this to somebody, I would probably try to frame it as "Sharpening is all about feel, and trial and error, it is essentially not teachable at all except for mistakes you can avoid making." "The reason the terminology sounds so confusing and contradictory is probably because it doesn't matter, they are all going off of feel, it's not a rubik's cube." Trying to describe what your muscles are feeling would be necessary, but is extremely difficult and confusing, so it makes more sense to simply explain that it can't be explained.

I bookmarked that link and I'll take a look shortly, I have lessons with knife guy tomorrow so it will be nice to finally see someone, if not a master, at least who is familiar with sharpening, to show me what he does in person.

Within the community of recognized honemeisters, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO YOU FOLLOW, as much as that you DO follow SOMEONE. You will get usable edges with consistency. Once you master that style of honing, THEN experiment, try other methods, buy more tools. So just pick someone, buy the stones or other stuff that he uses, and use them the same way he does, until you get the results he gets. It might surprise you how quickly you get those results. The more details he shares with you or has posted on the various forums, the more closely you can follow and the sooner you "get it". If I shout someone down, but his edges are usable, what difference do my rants make? My arguing will not make his edges suck, and will not make your edges suck, either, unless you make a big deal over disagreement and multiple possible alternatives to his method. Pick one way, follow it, ignore all others until you are getting good edges. Pick, and follow. Follow in detail, no substitutions, additions, or omissions unless your guru has done it that way and liked the result. The closer you follow, the more likely it is that you will get the same results. Pick, follow. It's that simple.

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

Within the community of recognized honemeisters, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO YOU FOLLOW, as much as that you DO follow SOMEONE. You will get usable edges with consistency. Once you master that style of honing, THEN experiment, try other methods, buy more tools. So just pick someone, buy the stones or other stuff that he uses, and use them the same way he does, until you get the results he gets. It might surprise you how quickly you get those results. The more details he shares with you or has posted on the various forums, the more closely you can follow and the sooner you "get it". If I shout someone down, but his edges are usable, what difference do my rants make? My arguing will not make his edges suck, and will not make your edges suck, either, unless you make a big deal over disagreement and multiple possible alternatives to his method. Pick one way, follow it, ignore all others until you are getting good edges. Pick, and follow. Follow in detail, no substitutions, additions, or omissions unless your guru has done it that way and liked the result. The closer you follow, the more likely it is that you will get the same results. Pick, follow. It's that simple.

Sure thing, will do. I have a Norton 4k/8k combo stone, but it's a very well recognized stone, so if it was going to have issues with cracking it would be known by now. The 1k is just a cheap 1k.

I do believe that a huge part of the reason my edges have been bad so far has been due to bad razor geometry, bad stropping, bad shaving, etc, so if I play around with this Daisy that appears to have good geometry or Paul's perfectly honed razor, it shouldn't be as bad even as a beginner.

Reporting back after some lessons with knife guy (Joel if he ever decides to make himself known around these parts.)

I feel like I learned a lot of useful little things. For example, when people have previously tried to describe to be "feel for the burr on the other side of the blade," it turns out I was radically overestimating how prominent that would be. I blunted the edge slightly, asked him to sharpen on the 1k until there was a significant burr, and then pass it to me to feel. I could barely feel anything, it was to the point where if he lied to me about which side the burr was on, I would have probably believed him. After substantially more sharpening on the same side, I began to be able to feel the burr myself, and even at the point where he described it as just wasting metal with how much time he spent on one side, it was still barely detectable, but present to my sense of touch. It was also nice being able to see how exactly he moved his finger pad across the bevel as he felt for the burr.

There was lots of other little interesting details as well, such as how he noted the visible disparity between the width of the bevel on one side of the razor vs the other as he sharpened one side at a time (I could not detect this myself, and previously assumed that so little metal must be being removed by sharpening that it wouldn't be detectable with the naked eye anyway.) He pointed out that he doesn't time the honing or count strokes, he mainly goes off of burr, or alternatively off of how light shines off the spine/bevel as it becomes increasingly polished.

Other things: Apparently he taught himself originally by learning to straight razor shave, then buying stones + over a dozen low quality razors with varying issues, practicing on each one of them with videos until he could get a decent edge on every single one of them. He also primarily shaves with straight razor, so he is familiar with what a good edge feels like as well as looks like.

Valuable experience. I learned a lot.

Okay, good. That sounds like maybe he'll be a good teacher for you. On the bur, if your fingers are wet it makes it harder to feel it. You can also use a Q-Tip or a cotton ball and drag it across (rather than down) the edge. It will catch on the burr and pull strand out of the cotton. You can use the same trick to test for microchips but that is like...lesson 8 or 9 so. Stay tuned!

I just had a shave with the Daisy razor, as freshly sharpened by Joel. Wow, I have been missing out. This thing in its current state is at least 4x sharper than my other 2 razors.

So many "tricky" areas of my face that caused me significant grief previously, it just slices right through like butter, painlessly.

I can definitely say I understand what a sharp straight razor feels like now. I should have as well when you sent me your razor, Paul, but my technique was likely so poor at the time that it would have been hard to appreciate (also it was quite a while ago too.) I can also say with full confidence that if I can figure out how to maintain an edge this sharp, I will probably straight razor shave for the rest of my life.

Well, now that you have experienced it the next part is maintaining it. Stropping is probably the A, #1 most important part of straight shaving and maintenance. It is even more important than honing a blade to a keen edge. It doesn't matter how well it is honed if your stropping rolls the edge or fails to align and polish it correctly. Not just you you; I mean "you" in the second person indefinite pronoun sense. Maybe to say "one" would be more accurate. If "one" were to ask me what is the most important thing to learn first with straight razor shaving I would say stropping above and over even the shaving itself.

Watch the video from the shave library. Read some posts about it. Even ask for guidance from your knife guy being aware that his way is one way. The main universal thing I think everyone will agree on is you do NOT want to hear is the sound like ripping paper when you strop. That is the sound of your edge scraping the strop and rolling in the process.

If you are happy with the edge he did for you then thats great.

But IMO if he is using a burr method then he is knife sharpening a razor. When honing a razor we dont use the burr method. Now i will admit that when i have a razor that i restored and the edge is blunt and needs lots of work to just get step one (bevel set) then i do occasionally work up a burr on 1k. Then work the other side the to a burr. Then kill the edge and start honing properly.

Im not knocking his edge as you say he shaves with a straight. Maybe its a combo of sharpening and honing that he does. As long as the end product is keen and smooth.

Creating a burr deliberately is great for knives because when it breaks off there can be a microchipping effect which is desirable for slicing tomatoes etc. Your face, not so much.
Of course restoring a razor will likely create a burr at some point but once the edge is shave ready any touch ups after that will not involve creating a burr.