Thread: New member - challenged honing

Exciting day today. I received my new to me Henckels razor from Dylon @ Holly4's and I also received my Dovo red and black razor paste. Let me point out that the size of the package for that Dovo paste is hilarious. It is smaller than the size of a box of matches. I can say though that so little is used that I am sure it will last many years.

After watching a couple of videos on how to perform a hanging razor test I was able to perform the test properly. My old razor was only able to cut a hair maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 times. The razor from Holly4's cuts them on a regular basis. It is the rare exception when it could not.

I took the red and black Dovo paste and applied to each side of the balsa paddle that I put together a couple of days ago in an x pattern across the paddle. To make a long story short after about 10 minutes of stropping on the balsa paddle I can now get the old razor to cut hanging hairs on a regular basis.

For me at my unskilled level I was unable to sharpen my B J Eyre razor to a level that it could perform the HHT reliably from the Norton 8000 stone. 10 minutes of the balsa paddle was able to do for me what I could not accomplish with hours of work on the hone. There is no question that I needed the hone to remove the original damaged areas of the razor and take out the chips and corrosion that was there and sharpen the blade. I could not however complete the process on this razor on that hone.

I think that pretty much wraps up this thread for me. Now I can focus on learning how to shave with the straight razor.

Ed

Congratulations on your progress to date. The more you do it, the easier (and better) it gets.