Honing Rolls Razor Blades

Hey Everyone!

I have recently acquired a Rolls Razor (Viscount) and 2 blades. The blades are fairly dull and have a few TINY knicks in the blades (I have shaved off some hair from the underside of my arm, and I could feel it cut through the hair, whereas I did the same with a DULL Feather SE blade and couldn't feel a thing as it cut...maybe this isn't a good way to tell, I am not sure) and from my studies into these razors, the hone it comes with is better used to keep the blade up to par, not to recover it from an overly dull state.

I am wondering if anyone knows how to get the blades back to a shave ready state? I don't own any hones (except the Rolls, as I use DE and SE razors) and the only person I know who uses a straight, and would possibly have the skill to help is my bro in Japan. From my limited knowledge on this matter, I think the best way to get them back up to speed is to get them rehoned.

If someone could help me out with advice and whatnot, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

~Luke

I honed one with my Nortons using my fingertips. Took forever, but worked. I remember someone advised me to use stick on 3M sheets, cut out and stuck to the hone side of the rolls. They can be had in many grits. I think that would be good to try! Good Luck!

If you don't have hones and haven't honed razors you should find somebody who can do that for you. Take a look at Member Services - Straight Razor Place Classifieds for example.

I've honed few of those and they end up shaving like a sheffield wedge razors, which is what they essentially are, just with a different handle and a guard.

I also think you'll get better results if you change the original strop with leather from a real razor strop. At least I wasn't impressed with those strops but once I stropped on my regular strop (a bit of pain to do if you hold the blade with your fingers, but works well enough for testing which is what I was doing).