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.