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Ivo - the dry human hair is tougher than copper wire of the same diameter - but when wet it is much softer. Hence all the hullabaloo about lather, softening the beard, method shaving etcetera. Of...

Ivo,

Don't know if it helps, but when I have my barber shaves in India (with my Henckels JT-1 - equivalent of a Dovo Shavette), the barber "strops" the blade on his palm a few times before...

Josh - great counterpoints, let me address each point one by one:

Your first and second points I completely agree with - it is entirely probable that with the advent of the synthetic barber hone,...

From the Wikipedia page on skin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermis_%28skin%29 - "The outermost layer of epidermis consists of 25 to 30 layers of dead cells."

If you are removing any cells...

My honing technique is very simple - if I am creating a new bevel, I do it with a Shapton 2k. Then Shapton 4k, then blue Belgian with water, then coticule with water. Up till this point, I use...

While we are at it, let me play devil's advocate for a bit. And let me put in a disclaimer - what I am going to argue is merely for the sake of argument. I don't mean to imply that anybody's honing...

An interesting thing to consider is that no commercial blade (Merkur, Feather, Derby - whatever) fails the hanging hair test, the modified armhair test, the "original" armhair test, or whatever. Some...

The modified armhair test, as Dylandog put it, is far more reliable. In fact, if you wave your razor a centimeter away from your arm over your armhair and you hear a quiet raspy sound and the razor...