Thread: Some questions I haven't seen answered yet

Hi Guys,

I'm new to the site, new to straight razor shaving, but I've been reading these posts and threads for weeks, and for weeks working on getting my razor "shave ready." I've spent countless hours researching what to do, how to do it, and what to use. So this is where I'm at, and if any of you can shed some experienced insight to my dilemma, by all means, I'm all ears:

1. I bought a beautiful ebony handled dovo straight from Germany in a sealed box. Supposedly "shave ready". And for 3 shaves, it was.

2. I bought a $20 strop from some store on ebay. Tried stropping (probably too much pressure) and did not sharpen the razor. Probably made it duller.

3. No big deal, I also bought a Kitayama sharpening stone, supposedly with a high enough grit to get that "shave ready" edge, right? Wrong. What it WILL do is shine your blade like a mirror. What it will NOT do is put an edge on a razor that doesn't already have one or set a bevel. I imagine that under a microscope, even though I think I'm grinding away at the very edge of the blade, I'm probably not, and the stone's grit is so fine that I'm hardly taking any material off at all. And after several hours of trying, ( on a 3" wide stone, mind you, using only the weight of the razor, with the spine and blade on the stone, AKA proper form) I have a blade as sharp as it was previously, only now it's super-duper shiny.

4. So, I decided I needed a lower grit stone to set the bevel, and THEN finish it with the kitayama, so I ordered a 10 inch long by 3 inch wide Belgian Blue, 4,000 grit. I realize that most of you probably set a bevel with a 1,000 grit stone, but I thought that since I got 3 good shaves from it from the factory, that I could start with a 4,000 grit stone and just put some extra time in on it.

5. One last thing. Does the leather on the strop make a difference? What should it feel/look like? Is it soft like suede, shiny like a finished leather coat, hard like shoe leather, soft and supple, etc?

5. Do any of you veterans out there have any light to shed? I'm on a good razor, a great finishing stone, but this razor thing is tuff.

JMO, send your razor to one of the guys listed in the member services section for honing. Put away the hones until you learn to shave properly.

One thing I see a lot of noobs do is to try and learn honing and SR shaving at the same time. They both have a pretty sharp learning curve. You won't need to hone your straight for a few months, as long as it arrives in shave ready condition. You're better off learning your SR shaving skills, than trying to do both of these things at once.

To answer your strop question, you should get one with both a leather and a linen side. And, yes, the leather one will be somewhat stiff until you break it in.

Sorry to say that your eBay strop probably isn't helping matters for you.
There are good budget strops out there, but the ones from eBay aren't them...

Couldn't have said it better myself Dllandry.

a great starter strops is "the filly" from ruprazor.com. $22.00 including shipping.

thanks for the input guys. Let me say, though, that sending my razor off to someone who knows how to hone it won't help teach me how to hone.
That being said, I'm really looking for honing help from someone who understands the issue at hand.

BTW, I shaved about 3 times with the razor before it started pulling. Each time took about 6-10 minutes, no big deal, had a fine shave each time, no cuts, no problem. I don't know why it takes people so long to figure it out, not rocket science. But keeping the blade in shape is stumping me. Is it possible that the "shave ready" edge from dovo needs to be redone?

All of the above are true but do not answer you questions IMHO.

You got a shave ready razor so the bevel should be OK, so if you dulled it by stropping incorrectly all you need is to hone the edge. You do not have to reset the bevel unless you applied extreme pressure, lifted the spine off the leather while stropping or did not pull the strop taut when stropping.

As to the quality of the strop: I can only comment on it when you let us know what you bought.

Learn how to hone on a cheap and cheerful vintage razor, not on your new DOVO. Don't be tempted to buy a cheap new razor on ebay: they're made of crap metal and will never take an edge no matter how experienced your are. Lynn's DVD will teach you how, consult the wiki as well: Beginner's Guide to Honing - Straight Razor Place Wiki

and for videos by members: Honing videos - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Forget all the advanced honing stuff like rolling X-strokes etc.

Good luck!

[QUOTE=daflorc;755588]thanks for the input guys. Let me say, though, that sending my razor off to someone who knows how to hone it won't help teach me how to hone.
That being said, I'm really looking for honing help from someone who understands the issue at hand.

BTW, I shaved about 3 times with the razor before it started pulling. Each time took about 6-10 minutes, no big deal, had a fine shave each time, no cuts, no problem. I don't know why it takes people so long to figure it out, not rocket science. But keeping the blade in shape is stumping me. Is it possible that the "shave ready" edge from dovo needs to be redone?[/QUOTE]


There are about 100000 posts that would agree with you in fact the real problem is that it isn't rocket science ...

The razor was actually never shave ready from Dovo it was sharp but the bevel was not well established so it went bye bye rather fast...

A true shave ready razor has an established bevel and is very easy to touch back up..

I have written volumes on this site and others trying to help people learn the "Art" of honing a straight razor even have a channel on Youtube with Vids showing it and still we get 1000's of questions on it every week...

The only way you get good is to practice, but learning to shave and learning to hone at the same time is most often an exercise in futility...

Needless to say the razor needs a bevel set and to be honed up to a true shave ready edge...

The first time I put a hone to a razor was a small 4"-4.5" x 1" thuringian hone and a Dovo razor that was previously honed by Lynn but after a trip to Germany and back for refitting of the scales it needed a bit of a touch up.
I used the instructions on this site, I didn't do more than 15 strokes but I didn't think anything had changed because I didn't feel the edge was doing proper contact with the hone and it seemed it was just floating on top of the water.
I was wrong, the razor was sharp again. Wasn't rocket science at all!

Originally Posted by daflorc

That being said, I'm really looking for honing help from someone who understands the issue at hand.

BTW, I shaved about 3 times with the razor before it started pulling. Each time took about 6-10 minutes, no big deal, had a fine shave each time, no cuts, no problem. I don't know why it takes people so long to figure it out, not rocket science. But keeping the blade in shape is stumping me. Is it possible that the "shave ready" edge from dovo needs to be redone?

I do believe I understand very well the issue at hand - you have no idea what the condition of your edge is, how to fix it, and how long would it take to do so with the hones that you've already bought. Allmost all of your posts are speculation. There's nothing wrong with this - nobody is born already learned, it takes experience. Here's what I can tell you from my experience:

1. I have no idea what the Kitayama does
2. I know that the belgian blue stones vary a fair amount (I've had about 20 of them) but generally are quite slow hones.
3. To remove significant amount of steel with your belgian stone you'll have to use slurry.
4. To get a reasonably sharp edge with that belgian hone you'll need to dilute the slurry.
5. You will have to learn to know when you're done with a particular hone (or in your case slurry thickness) and it's time to move forward.
6. Even a cheap loupe off ebay would be helpful in getting a better idea what's happening with the edge, but it won't be a replacement for some sort of a sharpness evaluation to guide you through the progress.
7. If you have a double bevel a marker can be quite helpful.

See, not even close to rocket science.