Thread: A personal accomplishment...perhaps

Well Davis, I do qualify as a newbie by sheer lack of experience with the straight but in my heart, I am a honemeister in training. I already had some decent honing equipment for woodworking tools, but the razors have forced me to make some significant improvements in my equipment! I got a straight from a GF last spring which she picked up at an antique shop. I tried shaving with it right away but gave up when my 6000 waterstone wouldn't do the job vowing to make a good run of it when the opportunity to get the right stuff arose. I basically used christmas to get hooked up with a good new razor, brush, soap, and strop.

Since then I've found all kinds of stuff with the help of the internet and the guidance of a few unknowing honemeisters (I've been digging in the archives pretty deep ). In the last three weeks, Ive ordered or won on ebay 13 straights, three strops, a scary sharp package with some extra leather honing pads and pastes from .25 to 3 micron, the beginners barber hone package, DMT durasharp coarse/xcoarse (for those damaged razors that need serious work prior to really honing to razor edge), and I'm hoping to order one of Bill Ellis' razor restoration CD-books to get some of the skinny on repairing or refurbishing some of the razors ordered. I saw xman's W&B rebuild and would love to do the same thing to some old blades to make a new 7-day set of some kind!

I'd say I'm hooked, but that would somehow devalue the reality that I've been almost looking for fishermen to cast at me! The only challenge is trying to get my tough beard to submit as readily to my new straights as it has learned to for my old gillette sensor.

I can't wait to have a razor that's as sharp as a brand new blade for every shave, just not quite there yet. They'll split hairs above the arm, but still don't shave me as comfortably as the sensor yet. I can get pretty close over the whole face, but it takes time and repeated passes. The first pass is still not very close and there is still a drawing feeling. So I just keep honing and polishing and stropping and trying again

Originally Posted by NavyBarber

I can't wait to have a razor that's as sharp as a brand new blade for every shave, just not quite there yet. They'll split hairs above the arm, but still don't shave me as comfortably as the sensor yet. I can get pretty close over the whole face, but it takes time and repeated passes. The first pass is still not very close and there is still a drawing feeling. So I just keep honing and polishing and stropping and trying again

What else are you using other than the 6000 waterstone? Remember as well that ultra light is the way to hone, especially at tthe end of honing when it's getting ready to shave.

X

I've got the cushion, gem and lithide barber hones that I use after the 6000, plus handamerican honing pad's with 3, 1.8, 1.0, and 0.5 paste. I just got to start using the 3 and 1 mic diamond pastes, not sure how much I like them yet. The stropping/ honing surface draws so much I can hardly draw the razor down the strop, it sometimes even separates the pad from the bases magnet. The 1.8 and 0.5 glide really smooth and feel more like they're polishing than the diamond pastes.

Wow, sounds like you're in the ball park. I'd say, do the thumb test very regularly throughout the honing.

I find that the coarser grits really are necessary to create the cutting fins. After that, it can be pretty easy to wear them away too much or even completely with too much work on the finer grits. Of course, any pressure at all will amplify that problem.

If you're not using all diamond pastes, what else do you use? Are all the leather surfaces the same?

X

Originally Posted by NavyBarber

I've got the cushion, gem and lithide barber hones that I use after the 6000, plus handamerican honing pad's with 3, 1.8, 1.0, and 0.5 paste.

Say, is that the pad that has a one way grain to it? I love HA stuf, but have not gotten to that piece yet.

btw. I hate to say it, but some people can flat-out sharpen a blade. How does that Lynn guy get those edges with his less-is-more bullshit. LOL.

I don't know how he does it...and I have no idea how the rest of you guys do it with all this "no pressure" jedi mind trick stuff either...LOL. I can hone up a new razor in about 6 passes and an Ebay razor in around 10 min. I get killer shaves to die for too. I use the right amount of pressure for each stroke. Twice the weight of the blade in the beginning working towards the weight of the blade at the end, and then and only then a "light" touch pass. Maybe even two. Then I strop keeping the strop taught and a little pressure here too. Then I pull the skin HARD and shave. Killer shaves, I mean incredible. But alas...I'm so wrong! Where did I get all these nutty ideas????? I dunno! Oh yea, the Barbers Manual! Sorry, never mind....