Thread: SOTD - September 3 - September 9

Thu:

Rooney's finest small style 1
Harris Arlington soap
Bismark strop
7/8 square point Heljestrand
Harris face milk
Czech & Speake No 88

I'm back

Did my standard setup but with the newly cleaned, polished and honed Tonsorial Gem. Had to be careful around that cut as it still hasn't healed completely. The gem needs a bit more work on the hone as it pulled even during the with the grain pass, but it gave me a nice clean shave, which is a welcome change from my electric shaver. I'll give it another shot tomorrow after some more work on the hones.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

I'm back

Did my standard setup but with the newly cleaned, polished and honed Tonsorial Gem. Had to be careful around that cut as it still hasn't healed completely. The gem needs a bit more work on the hone as it pulled even during the with the grain pass, but it gave me a nice clean shave, which is a welcome change from my electric shaver. I'll give it another shot tomorrow after some more work on the hones.

Hold off the hone until you strop it and shave again. I find that the first shave off the hone might not be the best.

Thanks for the tip, Rich, but the shave was inferior even compared to first shaves off the hone of my other blades of that type. I'll give it a run of 1-5 1-5 1-5, 10 passes on the coticule and try tomorrow.

Fri:

Same setup as yesterday, but the blade was given 30 laps on translucent arkansas and water.

Result: meh. It's definitely not as sharp as it was yesterday, but it's certainly acceptably sharp for shaving; sharper than I can get it with the 8k norton, and about as sharp as the I can do with the 8k shapton. It passed the armhair test indistinguishably from the King hone, but just doesn't shave as well. Tonight I'm gonna re-do it on the "B" side of the hone with oil, and see what happens.

The one intriguing thing is that it did a better job of shaving these two impossible patches on my throat that I can't get BBS with any razor, not DE nor Feather nor quinquenovacular monstrosity. This edge didn't get BBS there either, but it got a lot closer than anything else gets without serious coaxing.

I'll see how it goes tomorrow with the translucent+oil.

Originally Posted by mparker762

Fri:

Result: meh. It's definitely not as sharp as it was yesterday, but it's certainly acceptably sharp for shaving...

The one intriguing thing is that it did a better job of shaving these two impossible patches on my throat that I can't get BBS with any razor, not DE nor Feather nor quinquenovacular monstrosity. This edge didn't get BBS there either, but it got a lot closer than anything else gets without serious coaxing.

I'd like to comment on this: I had the same result with a 7/8 round WKC honed by me. Passed arm hair and HHT easily, but when I started shaving it was obvious that sharpness is not comparable to what Joe Chandler or Bill Elis achieve. Nevertheless, I got a closer shave on those patches on my throat without nicks and "serious coaxing" than with anything else I have tried. I attributed this to better angles, and more skin tolerance to the duller blade.

Do you think we need to raise this issue in the shaving section?

Cheers
Ivo

ps. I didn't shave today, expecting some new blades and decided to let the stubble grow so I can enjoy even more. Plus, I am going rock climbing tonight and there you are odd if you are old enough to have facial hair and shave

This issue has come up before both here and on other forums, and a discussion on this over on SMF is what triggered the translucent acquisition. Some experienced straight shavers poo-poo the notion, others have noticed similar affects. I think it's a matter of edge texture (the shape, size, and depth of the microserrations). I prefer the razor finished with a roughly 1 micron finish (either 1 micron pasted paddle or 15k shapton) than with a 0.5 or 0.25 finish. The finer finishes seem to slide over my lathered beard without cutting very well, whereas the coarser finish pulls a bit more but shaves more as well which I consider an acceptable tradeoff; I see this behavior with DE blades and with the Feather AC, so I'm pretty sure it's not my honing (smooth-finished blades cut my unlathered beard surprisingly well, which is the other reason I'm pretty sure it's not my honing). For several weeks now I've been finishing and refreshing my blades with a King barber hone that is pretty certainly no more than 10k-12k, but is a very slow cutter that would leave fairly wide but shallow serrations. So the translucent is an experiment to see what really wide (~5 micron) and really shallow serrations are like.

I'm not sure it was clear in my earlier post, but the shave is every bit as close as I normally get, it just took a little more work and pulled a little more, but it was as good as I usually got before I acquired the shaptons and king hones.

If the oil doesn't improve the sharpness then I'll try dry honing, if that doesn't work then I'll sharpen a few kitchen knives on it and try it again since arkansas stones benefit from a break-in period. I'm just gonna keep a stropped King-finished blade at the ready on those mornings where I'm playing with an Arkansas-honed razor.

Hot shower

3/8 Dorko
proraso pre shave
silvertip badger brush
Cedar & Lemon shaving cream

Old spice..

Hot Shower

6/8 Dovo Special
Vulfix 374 silvertip
Tony Miller strop
Tabac Soap
Tabac AS

Gotta love that Tabac.


Terry

Hot Shower

5/8 Henckels #451 (only razor I own so far, not having money really sucks)
Red Imp Strop 30 linen 50 leather (only strop I own so far 12$ ebay, cleaned up well but really wish it had a handle)
Kingwood Silvertip (stole it from Ebay 20$ best piece of gear I got, great brush)
Colleen's Orange Patchouli Shaving Cream
Colleen's Orange Patchouli AS

My wife loves the Orange Patchouli. I can not wait for Christmas. I am hoping to get all kinds of shaving goodies.