Thread: do any of you have or use any de blade sharpeners or stroppers?

hey peeps, i'm just wondering do any of you have or use any de blade sharpeners or stroppers?
if so, which one? do you go through many blades at all and how often do you find that you need to sharpen and strop the de blade?

i've got this one dubeledge stropper on ebay which was advertised as built in 1918 which im lead to believe,
i've cleaned it up a bit with a toothbrush and looking at tips on youtube to conditon the leather strops i used my beard balm,
because what the diy homemade leather condtioner tutorials on youtube recommended was beeswax, shea butter and coconut oil or some sort of oil which i already had in my homemade diy beard balm, so at least that worked out lol

I use very few DE blades as I shave with a straight razor most of the time. I do have a DE blade hone inherited from my father in law. It is a Lillicraps hone made of green glass and the glass contains uranium oxide of all things.

It has been suggested in several places that since most modern DE blades are coated honing/sharpening them may be detrimental to the edge. When a DE blade gets dull I just replace it with a new one as they are so inexpensive in the first place.

Bob

Yes. What Bob said.
They cost penneys a piece so why take a chance on getting a bad shave with a dull edge. If you buy your blades in the 100 box or 1000 box the cost isnt worth the time trying to squeeze an extra shave out of them.

Originally Posted by BobH

I use very few DE blades as I shave with a straight razor most of the time. I do have a DE blade hone inherited from my father in law. It is a Lillicraps hone made of green glass and the glass contains uranium oxide of all things.

It has been suggested in several places that since most modern DE blades are coated honing/sharpening them may be detrimental to the edge. When a DE blade gets dull I just replace it with a new one as they are so inexpensive in the first place.

Bob

yea totally hear you mate...

tbh i just thought it looks kewl and i thought i'd try it out...

im waiting delivery for a pocket microscope so ill try to take pics of a de blade which has been used before and after stropping, will be interesting to see

I’m old enough to remember when the Wilkinson stainless blades first came out and lots of folks reported sharpening them by running them around the inside of a glass tumbler - pretty much what the DE glass hones were designed to do. As Gasman said, the price of good DE blades is now pretty low, especially if you buy them in quantity. Even though I own one of those glass blade hones, I don’t bother to try to resharpen my blades any more.

Originally Posted by DZEC

I’m old enough to remember when the Wilkinson stainless blades first came out and lots of folks reported sharpening them by running them around the inside of a glass tumbler - pretty much what the DE glass hones were designed to do. As Gasman said, the price of good DE blades is now pretty low, especially if you buy them in quantity. Even though I own one of those glass blade hones, I don’t bother to try to resharpen my blades any more.

im sure youre young at heart

what do these glass blade hones look like? and where can you get them from? youve got me curious now lol

Originally Posted by DZEC

I’m old enough to remember when the Wilkinson stainless blades first came out and lots of folks reported sharpening them by running them around the inside of a glass tumbler - pretty much what the DE glass hones were designed to do. As Gasman said, the price of good DE blades is now pretty low, especially if you buy them in quantity. Even though I own one of those glass blade hones, I don’t bother to try to resharpen my blades any more.

Yea, my dad told me that they did that during the great depression/dirty 30s. Desperate times desperate people then but not now.

Bob

Found this photo on the internet. Search “glass double edge blade hone”.

In the old days DE blades were thicker than now and they were steel and could be sharpened over and over again. These contraptions were very popular. The Lillicraps were the best known. The original Wilkinson blades were first quality blades and they advertised a minimum of 10 shaves from every blade. Most got way more.

As has been said modern blades are really poor quality depending on the coatings to give a good shave and they are very thin. An outlier there are the Kai blades. They are uncoated stainless and a tad thicker.

Originally Posted by saj1985

yea totally hear you mate...

tbh i just thought it looks kewl and i thought i'd try it out...

im waiting delivery for a pocket microscope so ill try to take pics of a de blade which has been used before and after stropping, will be interesting to see

I can respect that. For the right price I would get one of those and spend a couple of hours trying sharpen a ten cent blade or two. Then it'd go in the closet and I would forget about it for years.