Thread: Hello from Indiana!

Just wanted to say hello. Been looking and reading articles from this site for a couple weeks now. My son and I are ready to jump in the world of straight razor shaving. Will be getting a razor next week. Looking at old vintage razors. I'm thinking about doing the restoration on the blade myself. I use to polish agates (rocks) so, I think I could use a polishing wheel on a dremel and use some of my grits that range from 200-20,000. I have cerium oxide, tin oxide, aluminum oxide to get a good mirror shine. I do have a good hone. It was my grandfathers possibly my great grandfathers. I reworked the hone flat. Thinking it is between 6,000-8,000. It's smoother than a baby's butt. I still need to get the rest but I'm hoping to learn how to restore and sharpen my own razors. Looking forward to asking questions and getting help from all of you on this cool site. Thanks!

Welcome C8D,

You've landed at the right place to learn the old art. You'll find the attitudes and the quality of help simply amazing.

Your experience with polishing compounds is cool. The less happy news is that it likely won't be of help in restoring a vintage blade for at least 4-6 months. I ignored those that told me to learn the shave first, then take on honing. I suffered greatly for it. There's a reason my screen name is Pinklather. Strops still cower when I walk in a room. I endured sub-standard edges for about 5 months. At best I could get sharp, but that's still not even close to 'shave ready'. Your skill and comfort at working w/ your hands WILL become quite valuable in razors too, but allow yourself and your son to learn w/ a really shave ready edge. Guys with great talent at honing knife blades also have a hard time hearing this perspective, but I think you'll find it a widely held position. As your shaves come up to speed, your talent will kick in, and you'll have a wonderful time rescuing vintage beauty. You'll thank yourself if you get a good edge to learn with and learn the shave first.

I hope to see threads about your early shaves soon. You're guaranteed to do better than I did.

Best of luck & have alot of fun in the process.

Welcome aboard. Where in Indiana do you live? I am in Jeffersonville, in the southern part of the state. You should be able to find a few affordable blades in the Classifieds here. Start with something that is shave ready and then you will have a bench mark to compare your progress against.

Greetings and welcome to SRP. Everything Pinklather said is spot on. I've bought razors from him and he obviously knows his stuff. If you and your son start with shave-ready blades you'll be ahead of the game.

Look into blades from Whippeddog.com; Larry there specializes in putting shave-ready vintage blades into the hands of beginners at an affordable price. This means the scales might be ugly, the blades might have spots on them, but the edges will be everything they should be. These razors could be good renovation projects later. It's great that the two of you are starting out together; I think most of us learned this in isolation.

Post a picture of your hone over in the Hones section; maybe someone can ID it. There were hones mined in Indiana once upon a time.

Good luck with it all!

Originally Posted by whavens

Welcome aboard. Where in Indiana do you live? I am in Jeffersonville, in the southern part of the state. You should be able to find a few affordable blades in the Classifieds here. Start with something that is shave ready and then you will have a bench mark to compare your progress against.

Live in Lafayette. Purdue Country! I should have mentioned that I wanted to polish a vintage razor myself then have it honed by someone that knows what they are doing. I found razors at a shop that are going for 10-20 bucks each. Thought about picking up several to clean up, send a couple out to get shave ready and have a couple to learn to hone on. Does this make since? Going the right way with this? Thanks guys.

Crazy, that makes a lot more sense than the way *I* did it (good knife sharpener who thought he could hone razors! Bad cop, no doughnut!) LOL! Now I have a pro honed razor to see how it's supposed to be and am slowly learning the true art of honing razors.

Welcome and enjoy!

John

Post pictures of the razors you're thinking of and we can chime in about whether they'd be good candidates.

Will do! Will be heading over tomorrow to take another look. They are going to think I am odd for taking pics. lol Oh well!

Well, maybe if you tell them you're getting second opinions they'll cut you a better deal. We're not allowed to discuss values here, but it doesn't hurt to be better informed about which is probably the best out of a batch of blades.

Take along a hand lens and look very closely along the edge. If there's any pitting there, forget it. Sometimes you can hone past that but it's not a good gamble. Pitting up away from the edge is just a cosmetic issue. Also look at the spines for signs of wear. Your best luck would be to find a blade with little or no hone wear, but even hone wear is fine. You can review the basics of a straight razor in our Wiki; that'll help you too.

The most important things to show in your pictures will be both sides of the blade and any markings, front and back, on the tang. If there's text, get a good enough closeup for us to read it.

Have a good time! I'll watch for pics.

We won't hold the Purdue thing against you, not even us IU grads. It's good that you have a few in mind already. I think you will find that this hobby quickly becomes a passion. but what a great one it is. Good luck, and keep us posted on how things go.