Thread: New to sr shaving

Hello and welcome. If you've got a 1500-grit hone you can set the bevel, and you'll just need a Norton 4/8k and a strop and you'll be good to go. Razors have a built-in honing guide, the spine. The spine and the edge should ride the hone together--the bevel-setting stage is where you make sure that's happening. Once you're sure of that (once the blade is sharp enough to shave arm hairs) then you can move on to the 4k and 8k grits. I recommend following the pyramid honing instructions in our wiki, under razor care/honing. That was how I had my first honing success.

Your Torrey is a good razor and should shave well for you. For your first shaving attempts, you should send it out for a pro honing, so you'll know what a properly sharp razor feels like. That knowledge will help you learn razor honing as well.

Where do you live? With any luck there is a meetup or member nearby.

You can get off to a fine start with a blade and strop set from whippeddog.com. Larry there specializes in blades that may not be pretty anymore, but still take a good shaving edge. Last I knew, his kits ran about $55.

For answers about restoring or not, explore our wiki (the Library link above) and check out the Workshop forum.

Best wishes to you.

thanks for the quick response. I'm in Florida just outside of Tampa. I was reading and everyone seems to rec Lynn for a good honing I am thinking about sending it to him the blade looks nice only real tarnish is inside the scales where its hard to get to but its got a bit of a curve near the end I would feel better knowing some one who knows his stuff approved it. I'm just to new to trust myself. i did take it to a Knife shop near my house to be honed and the guy was about to put it in some machine with like a small belt sander in it and just said no thanks and took it home. I'm going to head over to the site and check out those kits now. thanks again

Originally Posted by KDiMan

. . . i did take it to a Knife shop near my house to be honed and the guy was about to put it in some machine with like a small belt sander in it and just said no thanks and took it home. I'm going to head over to the site and check out those kits now. thanks again

Good calls, both !!!!

Larry at whippeddog.com will be an easier sell to your wife, than SRD. There's nothing wrong with a sharp vintage razor and a Poor Man's strop.

Charles

Good call going for the vintage blade, I think, esp when you say you liked the history. That's like 80% of the fun for me. If all my razors were new I'd be way less interested. You could buy a Norton 4/8 to go with your 1500, and you could shave off the Norton 8, but you'd probably need to know what you're doing and what a really sharp razor feels like. I know you probably want to start right away, but I'd send the razor for a honing, I wouldn't start this whole journey with a razor I didn't know was shave ready.

Once you've done that; and got a strop (I'd say buy a good one, but my son uses his leather trousers belt; and has done for about 8 months or so) we'll advise of where to from here. That may mean buying a second razor and a finishing hone. Really, I'd say the minimum (for me) would be two razors, a nice strop, a Norton 4/8 and a Shapton 16k. Also you need good soap or cream, not canned stuff. Also a brush, but a supermarket (cheap) one is fine, really.