Polishing a turd

I've been meaning to write this little article for a while now, because, looking back, the single biggest obstacle to achieving my current shaving proficiency was a little-discussed phenomenon I call "polishing a turd."

P.A.T is when you go to your polishing hones before you've set a good bevel, so the edge is the wrong shape, but it's a REALLY SHINY wrong shape.

The truly evil thing about a polished turd is that it feels sharp, whisks arm hairs off like a lightsaber, and you will actually get one or two good shaves out of it, which makes the problem really non-obvious & hard to identify. There have been several threads here about the need for stropping mid-shave. I am here to tell you that my beard is the absolute worst-case scenario steel-eating nightmare from hell, and I do not strop mid-shave. If your edge is noticeably deteriorating as you shave, I'm willing to lay odds you're shaving with a polished turd.

Another way to achieve the dreaded polished turd is to fail to touch up enough. Linen is such a great edge restorer that I can use it to keep an edge going for probably a lot longer than I should. The less often you touch up on the hone, the more work you have to do when you finally DO touch up. If you fail to thoroughly undo all the damage you've done (for example, by only using your 12K hone to touch up), you might end up with a polished turd.

A polished turd might actually be sharp over some parts of the edge, but dull over others. When you shave with it, your fingers unconsciously pick up all kinds of bad habits to get the rotten bugger to shave, such as shaving with slicing motions. Then someone like Glenn hones a razor for you & you nearly cut your own head off with it. (Ask me how I know).

The sexy finishing hones seem to get all the love. People start threads about whether the Shapton 16K is better than a natural Japanese stone. But the poor unloved bevel-setter is the most important stone of all, because without it, all you will get from your $200 finishing stone is a highly polished turd.

You should be able to shave right off the 1K bevel. I wouldn't recommend actually doing it: you'll get the worst razor burn you can possibly imagine, your face will look like 5 lbs of bloody hamburger. But you can do it. If the blade won't shave, you don't have a good bevel yet. Don't try to move on to the higher grits; you'll end up with a polished turd.

This has been a public service announcement of the Polished Turd Prevention Society. Remember kids; friends don't let friends shave themselves with polished turds.

:roflmao:tameshigiri:

That sir is funny.

Oh that was a good one :) I'm lucky I guess as I started with a great lower end set of stones, 8k and below. So I was able to work on getting my edges set right early on. I had to shave off my 8k as thats all I had :p

do you answer to 911 calls? just in case I find a polished turd around here.

The Hazmat team will be deployed shortly.