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

I still haven't had to re-hone the razors gssixgun and outback honed for me. i'm not sure how many shaves, it's been a year-ish but I don't shave often so MAYBE 50-100? Interestingly: that greaves I had (one of my first straights), had to re-hone 2 times inside of 4 months when I first got it. Looks like I've clearly gotten better/more careful with my stropping. (there's also the chance that early Sheffield blades are magic and/or the two gentlemen who honed these razors are magic. I vote for both). Now, it obviously isn't as smooth as that first shave I did after honing, but I still get single pass BBS, so I'm gonna say i'm good?

I do strop (quite a bit) on linen after, and on leather after and before (maybe 50 on linen, and 100+ on leather in total).

I was starting to get worried, but good to know that 100+ shaves with good stropping isn't too out of the ordinary!

Is stropping on linen good for the blade then?

I use it mostly to clean the blade after my red mistakes

Steve

I always use linen before the leather.
This is a common practice for most of us.

Most of my edges are from my coticule. After around 25-30 shaves the edge starts to leave the area that I like it in, although it usually only takes few strokes on the coticule to bring it back

I thought that I’d replied to this thread but apparently I have not.

I’ve done two tests maintaining edges with just a strop and am in the process of a third test. The first two were with a Cape 1000 Swedish Steel and a Filarmonica 14 Doble Temple. Both got to around 65 shaves before I threw in the towel on them, and they still shaved well enough, they’d just lost enough smoothness and gotten ‘pully’ to the point that I re-honed them.

The current test is with a Filarmonica 14 Sub Cero, and I’m wanting to know if the harder steel makes a longer lasting edge. I’m at shave 43 and it’s still shaving well, but I’ll know before too much longer.

I’m using a 3-piece Kanoyama strop, plus a piece of Tony Miller flax linen. My maintenance stropping routine is 35 suede/t5 leather. About once a week I add 20 canvas before the suede and leather, and once the edge starts losing some ‘freshness’ around 35 shaves or so, I use 30 linen about once a week before the suede and leather.

Hope this helps shed some insight on edge longevity. I do a 2-pass shave with a dry ATG cleanup pass on the neck, sp 65 shaves amounts to about 150 passes.

I’ll post when the Sub Cero gives it up.

Shave #50 - half a ‘century’ on the Filly 14 Sub Cero edge longevity test. It seems to be holding it’s in-shave comfort/smoothness better than the Filly 14 DT and the Cape 1000 that I previously tested and got around 65 shaves each. Both of those previous razors I would have touched up at 50 based on in-shave smoothness if they were a daily driver, but not so much this one. It’s still shaving well enough to satisfy my edge snobbiness.

I’m maintaining it only with a 3-piece Kanoyama strop, normal post-shave stropping is 35 suede and 65 cordovan. About once every 7-10 days I’ve been adding +20 Tony Miller linen to that stropping routine, starting at about shave #35.

Shave 55 on the Filly Sub Cero, movin’ right along, performing well.