First of all, I am not talking about being over-honed. I'm quite clear on what that means. I'm just speaking in practical terms.

The reason I ask is that I'm a little over a month into shaving with a straight, and my razor is therefore not quite as sharp as when I received it. It still passes the HHT, but isn't quite as aggressive in the way it pops a hanging hair.

However, I find that I'm getting a much closer, and much more comfortable shave.

It goes without saying that the better shaving is largely due to increased skill on my part, but I can't help but wonder if a lot of folks simply get their razors a little more sharp than what is really practical.

Unless I'm very much misinformed, 100 years ago nobody would have honed up to 16,000 or polished the edge with carefully refined diamond strop paste. They would have had the razor honed up on a coticule, and left it at that, using a barber hone (around 12,000 according to the wiki) for touch ups.

Also, just thinking in terms of geometry, it seems to me that if you hone an edge up to 16,000 or 30,000 and then strop it with a pasted strop, what you're really doing is simply rounding off the edge you just worked so hard to create, probably taking it right back down to barber hone level.

So, thoughts?