Thread: Honed my first razor!

I've been shaving with a straight for 3 weeks now and feel as though I'm at least starting to get the hang of it. However, despite having bought a wapi from a honemeister it never shaved comfortably, pulling and dragging quite a lot. I'm thinking that I probably rolled the edge in my early attempts at stropping, as well as putting a couple of small nicks in one of tony's beautiful strops .

I bought 3 wapi's last year on ebay so that I had razors to practice honing and re-scaling on, given that they were relatively cheap.

Yesterday I dug my 4k and 8k waterstones out of the tool box (I'm a woodworker), lapped them down flat with a granite slab and some 320 and 400 grit wet and dry paper, and honed my first edge. On the current razor I did the conservative pyramid and on the fresh one I used the full pyramid.

I'm not sure that I'm understanding the TPT well, but the little slices it made in my skin went from being slightly jagged to almost completely smooth, which I think is good. Please tell me if otherwise. I then stropped 30 laps on the linen and 50 on the leather.

The proof, as they say, is in the shaving. I used one razor on one side of my face and the other on the opposite. Both of them gave a better shave than I've had up until now, with the previously honed razor giving a slightly superior shave. There's still some dragging, particularly around the chin area, but the shave was smoother and more even than before.

I'm going to run them both over the conservative pyramid again today and see if they come up any better.

So, a good experience so far, and good to know that I'm at least on the right track to being able to keep my razors in decent shape.

Second day, just run the conservative pyramid on both razors, stropped and shaved again. Best shave yet.

Definitely much less drag than any other shave, still some around the beard area, but I'm now starting to realise just how smooth a straight shave can be.

Tomorrow, I'll run another conservative pyramid and see if I'm getting any closer to a truly sharp edge.

J.

I am like you fairly new at the honing thing. I have had really good luck using a diamond strop after doing the 8k. Some of the heavyweights might weigh in but there are a lot of people who like the Chromium pasted strop to finish. I use a 0.5, 0.25 diamond to finish up and I love the results. You are a woodworker so I am guessing that you have a pretty good set of hands that are sensitive enough to learn quickly. One thing is that all you hones must be flat, really flat which is why I went to the strop instead of all the hones. There are many ways to get it done and each has it's advantages.


Hope that helps,
Richard

Originally Posted by mr_magicfingers

...
I'm not sure that I'm understanding the TPT well, but the little slices it made in my skin went from being slightly jagged to almost completely smooth, which I think is good. Please tell me if otherwise. I then stropped 30 laps on the linen and 50 on the leather.

Usually you'll notice a "grabbing" or an "electric" type sensation with the TPT. A damp thumb helps. A little practice on a DE or similar edge will show you the rough feeling you are shooting for. One reference here. Another reference here.

Congratulations on your continuing improvement!

It sounds like you are on the right track Justin! The chin is considered by many to be the most challenging area to shave so just keep at it.

David

Thanks for all the advice and for the barber manual, that's a great reference.

Going to give them their third conservative pyramid this afternoon and see how they are then. I'm enjoying the learning process and it's giving me a great deal of satisfaction to get progressively better shaves with an edge I've sharpened myself.

Cheers,

J.

Are you still getting your razors significantly sharper?

Hi Lee,

After 3 runs through I've got the razors to a point where they shave better than anything I've had before. Some of that may also be my technique but I can now shave my chin smoothly (mostly) and the rest of my face well. Not BBS yet, but now I don't even pick up my DE to polish off the last little bits.

I'm stopping with these two for now and just using them. I have another wapi that I'm going to take from scratch and instead of using the pyramid just work through the stones the way I would with my plane blades, trying to be more analytical of how the edge is building. I think that's a better option in the long run as I'll learn to test the edge better rather than randomly doing pyramids.

I want to get a pasted strop to go the next level, or a barber hone etc, but a pasted strop is probably cheaper, plus I have a friend with one that I can try and see what difference that makes.

I'll keep posting as I get used to honing better.

Cheers,

J.