Thread: How many shaves on a straight razor before the edge needs a refresh?

Awesome.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

104 shaves and counting on this one, but it is getting pushed out of my rotation again.
Attachment 318938

What a unique, yet still classic looking, blade...

Shave 96 on the Sub Cero, still knocking out DFS,

Testament to great honing, stropping and shaving technique. Keep it up Steve.

Shave 100 with the Filly 14 Sub Cero this morning, the edge is still performing well. No pastes or abrasives, maintenance tools are a Tony Miller linen and a 3-piece Kanoyama. Here are some things that I’ve noted during this ‘experiment’.

- The edge hasn’t degraded much since shave 35-40.
- Soap makes a difference in shave quality with a high-mileage edge.
- The Sub Cero is holding up considerably better than the Cape 1000 and the Filly 14 Doble Temple, both normally tempered razors.
- Good stropping makes a difference. I feel like that I have improved mine even though I’ve been stropping for almost 10 years.

In early March, I visited Alex Gilmore and had the use of the excellent 325x microscope that he uses. When I looked at my stropped edges, it was clear that the heel was not stropped as well as the rest of the edge, maybe out at the toe too. The edge that I was looking at smiled a little and we all know most straight razors aren’t, but a strop is pretty flat side to side. After thinking about what I was seeing, I decided to slow down, watch the razor on the strop, and make sure that all the edge was being stropped equally well. That required a little change in technique, but again, mostly just paying attention rather than swiping away and assuming that all of a smiling edge was equally stropped.

Going forward, I am probably going to add 10 linen and canvas to the 35 suede and 65 leather. Adding the linen seems to help the edge stay stable. That’s about the only thing that I’ll do differently, and I was already adding 20 linen once a week.

Here’s a little background for those that are interested.

I honed the razor on May 24th, 2019 with 1 layer of 1 mil Kapton. The steel is very hard. It’s made ~250-300 passes across my face (2 pass shaves and a touchup), 10,000+ passes across suede and leather, and probably 200+ across canvas/linen.

The Sub Cero was a test that I never really intended to do. I wondered how long an edge would last with only stropping, and the Filly 14 DT and Cape 1000 both averaged 65 shaves, 63 for the Cape and 67 for the Filly, which I pushed a bit longer. I stopped the test for those when the razor began pulling/tugging and the shave was no longer fun, but you could certainly get a decent shave with either of them even with the tugging. When I bought the Sub Cero from Stefan, I started thinking about some forum comments that the Sub Cero and Novodur branding were just marketing gimmicks. I knew from honing the Sub Cero that the steel in this razor was very hard, so I decided to find out if the selling point of ice-hardened steel was just marketing. Apparently it isn’t.

Alfredo got ~130 shaves from a TI (also hard steel), and Iwasaki claimed that a barber got 1000 shaves from a razor using linen and leather, though the ‘linen’ was probably jute, cotton canvas, or hemp and not flax linen. Victor (Bluesman7) is over 100 on one of his. I began using Alfredo’s regimen of 35 suede and 65 leather, then added linen as I felt was beneficial. What I did/am doing is consistent with another maintenance thread here on SRP.

And I have no idea how many more shaves that edge has in it! Lol, it has surprised me.

I do 40 linen...100 leather...when I strop before each shave...but not keeping a record of shaves.

Shave #109 today with the Sub Cero, today marks a milestone though, the edge is one year old. I honed it on May 24th 2019 according to my honing log, on a favorite hard jnat that does really well with hard, fine grained steel. It’s still shaving smoothly, no tugging of any sort, though the shave is not quite as smooth and close as it was 100 shaves ago. The edge is still delivering a DFS though, and has been remarkably stable since shave 35-40 or so. No pastes or abrasives, all the maintenance is with a 3-piece Kanoyama and a Tony Miller flax linen.

Tip of the hat to Stefan!

Shave 115 today with the Sub Cero. It seemed to tug just a little but I had 30h growth and minimal prep and it’s done that before under similar conditions. Alfredo got 133-134 from a vintage TI so I’m closing in and hope that the edge keeps going for a little while longer. I gave it a careful stropping after today’s shave.

While I often exceed 100 shaves between hitting the stones, I do believe a bit of luck is involved. Something as simple as a stray piece of dirt on your strop can easily cause damage. I have had some edges need to go to the hones at around 50 shaves, same steel, same temper, same grind, same shaver.

Below, I have attached a review of the razor. I shaved with one blade for 8 months . Shave every other day. This is about 120 times. And I could shave for a long time. But since I have a lot of razors in my collection, I wanted to shave with others. So the experiment was suspended