Thread: Greetings from the Netherlands

Hello fellow enthusiasts!

Although I am new to all of you, not all of you are new to me. I started straight shaving in September after having mastered the basic techniques with a shavette and Merkur blades. Most every question (and there were quite a few) that popped into my mind has already been answered on this forum, but my thirst for answers has not yet been sated, hence I finally registered.

I am a 22-year-old master student Life Science & Technology (biotechnology/biochemistry) at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. I have a habit of making expensive hobbies out of generally regarded as ordinary day-to-day activities, such as listening to music and shaving. Furthermore, I'm an underpaid freelance webdeveloper (so being underpaid is a direct result of my lacking negotiating skills) and fix computer and telephone problems for my girlfriend's parents. And I write lenghty questions in the bookish sort of English which used to annoy my least favourite English teacher. Then again, he was rather unfit for teaching. The actual question is found near the bottom.

Straight shaving
When a friend of mine mentioned he had gotten a straight shaving set for his birthday, I knew I had to have one too. Finding the expenses a bit steep, I left the thought to simmer in my head for several years, until the cheap shavette option changed my mind. I still sometimes use it, to compare sharpness and shaving results of Merkur and Feather blades to my self-honed straight razors.

By now, I own two straight razors, a shabby razor that I use for testing hones for irregularities and a shiny razor shaped object. Those razors are a very nice 7/8 extra hollow ground The Crown & Sword Razor and a 5/8 magnetic Birko with a slight warp.

I wonder if this image is going to be the size I want it to be:


When I started out, I enthusiastically bode everyone to feel my silky smooth cheeks, yet I was unable to convince anyone to buy a straight razor. However, my girlfriend now shaves her legs with a cheap DE and loves the results.

Hones
I started out with a 4x10 cm coticule that the seller's website (Manandshaving.nl | scheren, scheerproducten, huidverzorging mannen, which is otherwise very helpful and nice) portrayed as all I would need, along with a canvas/leather strop, to hone razors.
No slurry stone and an inadequate instruction on honing resulted in predictably lousy results, it was only then that I started researching honing techniques. It took me over a week to get a passable edge on my razor and I never succeeded in getting an edge similar to any I saw in instruction videos.

HAD kicked in softly and I now have a slurry stone to match the coticule, a 5x10 cm Chinese 12K and a 6x20 cm BBW, as well as a paddle strop with green Dovo and red Puma paste and a nice self-made balsa paddle strop with CrOx and FerrOx.

Honing, this is the difficult part
Strikingly, the BBW gives me the best and fastest results, I cannot seem to match that with the coticule. I really like my BBW and want to learn how to use it properly. My edges are agreeable, but lack slightly in sharpness.

Robbin, who is also a member at SRP under a nickname unknown to me, has helped me greatly by sending one of his straights. I shaved with it and found it had that little extra sharpness that keeps eluding me. Next, I dulled it, sharpened it on my BBW as inspired by Bart's "Honing on the BBW" video and shaved once more prior to returning it to Robbin. Although I was quite pleased, his heavy beard experienced some tugging. He said he would take it back to his 8000 grit Naniwa SS and see if that would solve it. So far, he has not yet had the time to do so, but I will post his findings when he does.

Edge testing
I have found the HHT to be very reliable with my own as well as my girlfriend's hair and can start growing back my arm hair now that I mastered the TPT enough to tell if an edge will shave arm hair and when it gets close to shave-readiness, as well as the difference before and after stropping. Despite the HHT controversy, I will adopt Bart's HHT rating system here.

Robbin's edge popped hairs right upon touching with very little tug (HHT 4-5, I never get 5, even with Feather blades), my best try was pretty close to that with a little extra tug on the hair (HHT 4). Off the hone, my edges vary between HHT 1 and 2-3, while instruction videos show a solid HHT 3. Sometimes I get lucky with a small part of my warped edge and get that HHT 3, but the other parts of the edge stay behind. I could not tell how the good part of the edge became that good, whether it better contacted the hone or endured less pressure or something else entirely.

My honing technique
Honing is done with slowly diluting the slurry as soon as the razor will shave arm hair, although I found I could reach a near-shaveready edge on rather thick slurry. I should note that I use the C12K as a slurry stone, lacking a dedicated BBW slurry stone. On the HHT 1 level I switch to very dilute slurry, almost clear water, but find myself unable to improve the edge. Finishing on very dilute slurry on my BBW, water on my coticule or C12K does not seem to improve my edges, as far as I can tell.

The haziness of the bevel was a bit confusing on my last try. The part where the bevel was widest (nearly 2 mm) on my warped blade stayed hazy, while other parts became quite shiny. My logic tells me a shiny bevel indicates a more even edge, since the scratches on the bevel are also found on the edge. The TPT confirms that: I feel fine teeth with hazy bevels that turn intovery fine teeth on shiny bevels. Stropping removes the latter very fine teeth, but cannot compensate for the hazy bevel's fine teeth.

I solved the edge's unevenness by making wider X-strokes. At first I kept as much as possible of the razor on the hone, but I changed to wider strokes that ended with only the toe of the razor on the stone. While this solved the unevenness, it also resulted in a slightly duller edge.

The question
What would you advise me to focus on when improving my edges? In my unexperienced opinion, I do not dilute too quickly and I try to keep an even touch. I have great difficulty applying very light pressure and when I do, I slip up at times, keeping the razor at an angle which makes it touch the hone's (chamfered) edge. I read that can set me back a number of strokes, but I don't know how many.


Thank you very much for digesting the rather long text and for all the advice that you can give me!


Regards,

Laurens