Thread: New guy here from California

I and welcome. Congrats on the family heirlooms. I would only worry about going up to 8k at the moment. The Norton 4/8 or the Naniwa ss 3/8 are probably the best bet. Although hard it would be good to send 1 razor off for honing. A pro will do it right first time and it will be shave ready. Learning generally means taking your time and repeated honing which will add unnecessary wear to the razor. If you want to learn buy a cheap good condition vintage to learn on not some thing as valuable as a family heirloom. Good luck

Mawson, welcome to the forum.

The biggest difference between sharpening knives and honing a razor is comfort, your tomato or piece of meat does not complain if your knife has a burr or chips, but you will notice it on your face.

There is a reason why we recommend honing a razor the way we do… it works. Sharp is easy, comfort…

If you are honing heirloom razors, at least tape the spines before you damage them.

What method are you using to determine, when the bevel is set?

Welcome to SRP and congratulations on the success and the heirloom kit.

Jumping into the deep end is fine, several of us have done so and it is rewarding once it comes together. A few things that can smooth out the learning curve: Get a reference edge to judge your edges, a DE blade, pro honed razor, or shavette will all do. Learning to shave with a straight is hard but learning to hone before you can shave well takes away or at least limits the utility of the most reliable test, the Shave Test.

Invest in good stone set slowly instead of a cheep sub par set fast. Your king 1k/6k is fine but a little soft. A 10k or 12k stone would be a good complement, also a good Arkansas stone if you already have one. A good barbers hone would be another option.

As you have found if the bevel is set the rest is just how you get to a comfortable shave. High grit stones are popular around here but there are other paths.

Getting local help is good, unfortunately local help is a little thin around here but if you do want some I would be happy to help.

Jonathan

Welcome, and the best of luck chasing this fine art. You're very fortunate to have heirlooms to work with, take care and enjoy them!

Welcome to SRP!

Euclid440- I determined the bevels were set on the 2 razors by first testing the sharpness of how they were before I messed with them did this by feeling edge grab on 3 fingers and how it shaved hair on my arm. After I then ran the razors twice just using the weight of the razor used two 90 degree strokes on my 6000 grit stone repeated 3 finger test and tried shaving hair. Honed on the 1000 grit stone doing 3 finger and shaving test every 10 strokes on both sides then every 5 strokes on each side lightening pressure then I did 20 strokes alternating each side every stroke at an even lighter pressure checking the 3 fingers making sure each part of the edge was equal in how it grabbed and shaving arm hairs. I kept doing this feeling every other stroke until I could tell the edge was staying constant this is when I felt the bevel had been set and then progressed to my 6000 grit stone for polishing.

Why would I damage the razors by not taping the spines ? I could be wrong but I would think the taping would increase the angle of the edge making it more obtuse and less sharp and throw off the original angle the razor was set at ?

Pictures of the straight razors and the leather strop with canvas backing

Sounds like you did fine. Testing on your fingers as you did is similar to a TPT.

Adding tape is a good idea if much work needs to be done at or below 1k. Mostly because we like the look of narrow hone wear. Also some new gents will grind away on a razor making no progress due to various problems. Uneven pressure and unstable contact are very common. Adding one layer of tape adds about 1 degree to the bevel, which is very minor. Some like to keep tape on all the way to finishing but I like to be able to touch up with out re-tapping.

The razor with the metallic looking scales looks rather good. The looks other serviceable, if you do any modifications on it be cautious of cracks propagating in steel that thin. Both look to have a smile, that makes some passes much easier.

Jonathan

So, the old wear the spine to maintain the angle thing is a myth and has long ago been disproven, though some folk still promote it.

Bottom line, I have, nor has anyone else… ever seen a razor that stopped shaving because too much of the edge was removed and the angle was thrown off by tape.

There are a ship load of razors that the spine have been ground down and will no longer hold an edge, plus they look like… crape.

Not to mention you were given razors that are hundreds of year old and you can ruin them…learning to hone…when you do not have to.

They are your razors, do what makes you happy, but it is not recommended for novice honers, who routinely use too much pressure and too aggressive stones learning to hone.

Tape your razors until you master honing…then do as you please, at least you will have razors to hone. You can never add steel to a razor.

The problem with the touch test, we use a Thumb Pad Test, (TPT) is that it can take a long time to learn what, a completely bevel set razor feels like.

Unless you are absolutely positive, the edge is completely set, no micro-chips, moving to higher grits is a waste of time and you are grinding away steel without productive results… a shavable edge.

Hair test are notoriously unreliable, because every one’s hair is different and will cut differently or not at all. The sample size is so small, you cannot effectively test the WHOLE edge. A razor that will not shave may still cut hair.

A better test is a visual test as shown in this thread post 8.

It makes sense to me that increasing the angle and sharpening over a long period of time would make the metal behind that edge fatter and fatter you would have to be pretty inexperienced at sharpening applying way to much pressure in all the wrong places to wear the spine down at a faster rate than the edge but you know a lot more about this stuff than I do so I will take your word on it. I understand what your saying about how I shouldn't be sharpening those razors yet and I agree, I treasure those razors and would never practice on them learning a new technique. I sharpened them 1 time with the way I am comfortable sharpening because they were painful shavers when I got them and have a good shave with both of them now daily, they are as sharp as the blades of my safety razor I used before I plan on stropping those razors as long as I can. I do believe they can be sharper and I am practicing the techniques talked about here on my pocket knives that aren't as important to me that I can make mistakes on and learn also thinking about buying a couple ebay razors to practice on and getting some new stones more geared towards the straight razors. Thanks for the link to that video showing how to check the bevel is set I will try those out.