On the brink here. It was shaving arm hair 3 hours ago.

Joe,

I feel your pain. That was my experience early on too although I wasn't quite as . . . uh . . . persistent. I did find that putting it away for a couple days helped relieve the frustration and sometimes my next attempt worked.

My breakthrough came from going to Denver when gssixgun visited. Seeing him do it and asking questions about the fine points of his technique helped immensely!!! My biggest learning was that I was taking the mantra of "no pressure" at the bevel setting step way to seriously. A little more pressure at that stage saved 100s and 100s of strokes. After that, "no pressure" is critical.

I also found that on the finer stones, I was sometimes lifting the spine just a little on my stroke away from my body. Every time I did this, it probably ruined the previous 10 or 20 strokes.

If you could take Lynn up on his offer, I'd bet it would be worth your time (think about all the time you have already invested) and very enjoyable.

Good luck

I feel for you to bro. I took a dulls 1964 communist razor and made it a killer, then went to refresh my schulze,a killer, and made it dead (not really but it shaves like a casterated mule now).....Honing is quite the fickle mistress.

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Originally Posted by regularjoe

Pixelfixed, you read my posts! lol. JimmyHAD, it's still shaving arm hair. lol. It just won't shave facial hair. It'll pop arm and leg hair all day. In certain portions of the blade it'll fell them without noise. But it won't shave...not a lick. I'll do some more fighting with it tomorrow, and then post a pic of it. I spent some time talking to Randydance on Skype this evening, and he gave me some pointers. And told me some things that I hadn't really thought of. And yeah, I have put IMHO great edges on a few razors in a little bit of time. But I'm not gaining any repeatability, or efficiency. So I went a little crazy, but you all are quick to jump to the rescue for sure. Thanks so much!

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If it will pop arm hair and still won't shave, maybe it's not the blade but your shaving technique that's at fault. I took the first Razor that I had honed to Larry. I had never owned a shave ready blade and I wanted him to evaluate it and fix the edge. To my great surprise he told me that the razor didn't need any work at all. Then we talked about shave technique and things started to improve for me very fast. I've managed to shave myself for a month now without blood and can do 3 passes without irritation. I've only been shaving for 3 months, so this is accomplishment is making my hatband tight.

I may be way off base here, but since you sound very frustrated I thought I would throw this out there.

Setting a correct bevel is 90% of a good edge. As others have said, learn to recognize a proper bevel and invest in a good stone.

For me, working my stones is zen time for me. I don't focus so much on the end result, but more on the journey and what I am doing. Once I learned good technique and had the right stones, it just seemed to come together.

Thanks Crotalus. Never hurts to throw something out like that, because originally it was what I was hoping for. I had that happen to me too, right about the same time in my SR journey. And I'll admit that on a few occassions it most definitely was a lack of skill in shaving that caused my frustration. But this razor wasn't sharp. It was cutting arm hair, I'm assuming because of a toothy edge. At any rate, tonight is the shave test, and I'm hopeful.

Jerry: If you'd have typed that in capital letters, underlined it, boldfaced it, and wrapped it, it still wouldn't have enough emphasis. Recognizing a proper bevel is something I'm still working on, and getting better. But it must be considered that you can polish a dull edge just as nicely as you can polish a sharp edge. It came down to putting the microscope away, getting a big bright light, shutting my mouth, and opening my ears and eyes a little more. I'm still by no means confident, but I'm learning. Randydance is giving me pointers, and advice on skype also. Somehow words have more weight with me when I hear them instead of read them. Gotta work on that too I suppose. So all that said, it's good I had a little episode, because it forced me to recognize my own inability to fix this with reading and will power. Most people wouldn't beat their fists against the wall for four months before asking for help. lol. Anyhow, thanks to all!

No where near the hone artist I strive to become in a few yrs,but what helps me in the quest is to look at taking a blade from dull to shave ready as about 250 points (maybe more) of actual contact,all of which need to be perfectally executed.From the first stroke of the bevel set,to the last stroke on leather.
Faulter on any of them and you have failed,JMHO:)