A tale for everybody or if I knew then what I know now.
Yes, it has it all, suspense, mystery,disaster, failure and success.
You know that commercial on the tube where the guy says "I didn't take care of myself and this is what happened to be so it's too late for me but maybe you can learn from my mistakes".
So once upon a time in a galaxy far away this shaver was thrilled to get his new Livi Takeda razor. He hadn't been shaving very long and knew squat about honing and the like. But the razor was beautiful and it shaved so wonderful he thought he could hear the angels singing every time he used it (maybe it was the baby next door but who knows).
So one day about the third time he used it after finishing his shave he had it propped up to dry and was putting away his polished pewter soap dish (buzzzzz,mistake one don't use a highly polished dish it's slippery) and his hands were wet and it was like some magnetic force (I'm sure there is some natural law to explain it and one of our resident Physicists can explain it properly) why that dish went right for that razor like it was jet propelled and now the shaver had a serrated straight to use. A serrated razor doesn't work so hot.
So he decided, no problem why I'll just hone out all those chips and learn as I do that (buzzz, mistake two and three don't practice on a good razor and don't do it when you don't know what you are doing.)
So he picks a day when he has decided to devote the day to honing a few other Eboy specials with the Takeda #4 in the lineup. So after spending a frustrated afternoon messing with the junk razors he starts in with the Takeda in a bad frame of mind (Buzzz, mistake 4, don't tackle something when you can't devote full attention). So he starts in with it and boy this is hard steel maybe I should press harder, use two hands on the 1K hone hmm, that bevel is starting to look funny as is the spine oh well I'll just continue if a little pressure did that alot should correct it faster (Buzzz mistake 5. At that point GET UP FROM THE TABLE AND WALK AWAY).
Well, so what if the spine is worn and the bevel ain't so hot looking. So he continues up the progression and when he shaves with it well jolly gee it doesn't shave worth a damn, now the devil is singing. Well he ain't gonna take that where's those hones I'll teach this razor a lesson (Buzzz, bad idea #6, doesn't need elaboration)
So fast forward years later and he has this razor that doesn't shave so good but now he knows what he is doing and needs to figure out what to do with it. He can bread-knife it and lose a good chunk of it or he can try and correct as much as he can. So what did he do? You should have to tune in next week to get part two but I won't do that to you.
Well he taped up the spine with several layers of tape and went back to the 220 hone to start a secondary bevel and progressed up to the 1K and 4K and then the 8K and then the coticule and then the Escher and guess what, it shaved like garbage. Did I tell you this razor has tough steel?
So he went back to the blue belgian for awhile and spent a few hours on the coticule and guess what it still shaved like garbage so he went back to the coticule again a couple more hours and there was about a 2% improvement. So he switched to the diamond pastes and used .5 and .25 diamond. After about an hour of that wow things really started to improve but it still didn't shave very well. So back to the .5 diamond and .25 diamond for another hour or so and now we were getting somewhere, why he wore all the past off his strop and had to re paste it. Did I tell you this has tough steel?
So now it was getting close. So what did he do? He went to the CrO pasted strop and spent about 15 minutes on that. Now we were almost there. Another 10 minutes on the CrO and then he shaved again and guess what? Why he could hear the angels singing again (or maybe it was still that baby next door).
I'll bet you want to see a picture of that razor. He'd like to post it but because he's in another Galaxy the data won't transmit that far- Har Har.
So who is this mysterious shaver? I ain't talking and General Beauregard better stop spreading rumors around town or I'm gonna have to hurt him.
Seriously though, what I learned spending hours and hours honing this thing, besides staying away from these super steel razors is no matter how screwed up the bevel really is (well of course there is a limit) you can create a secondary edge on the thing and really compensate for the initial damage and it really does work.
