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

Shave #120 and still rockin’

Linen is often overlooked for maintaining an edge and use by most to clean a bevel without much thought or effort to its polishing ability. But it is where the micro abrasives are on good flax linen.

For maintenance I use Kanoyama strops, I too like the suede, but lately have been doing more on linen. I clean the razor well after shaving with a damp microfiber and dry microfiber to keep the linen clean and dry.

I use firehose between stones during honing and before the final laps on a finish stone. The Firehose is impressive for aligning the edge, but may be too much for daily use, so I use Kanoyama linen, suede, and finish leather. Firehose is so aggressive it leaves its own fine stria, Kanoyama linen will polish just a 1/3 of the bevel from the edge.

Clean linen and leather make a huge difference, I wipe mine daily before use with a clean, damp microfiber.

Think about it, I get razors in, that have random scratches and chips across the length of the bevels. A razor touches your face and your strop. What do you think is scratching the bevels and blunting the edge?

It’s all about stropping… and quality steel.

Shave 125 this morning, and it still has a better edge than the Cape and Doble Temple did when I stopped with them. I also checked the edge with a loupe, and it looks surprisingly good; a couple of short linear shiny spots and that’s about it really. This razor impresses me.

I’ve been testing fabric components to see if I could see an improvement/difference, I figure that any effect will be easier to tell with an edge with this much wear and tear on it. I’ve been doubling up to 40 linen/fabric after every shave now. So far fire hose linen neither improved nor set the edge back, Tony Miller linen seems to have helped, so after today’s shave I again hit the TM linen for 40 before suede and cordovan.

Shave 130 today, the edge is if anything noticeably better over the last 2-3 shaves. The Latvian linen and roo seem to be helping. Both are very thin and flexible, so tip of the hat to Aaron (ScoutHikerDad) and Mike (outback) for the suggestion of thin, flexible strops. The only other change has been going back to Santa Maria Novella shaving cream, which I used a lot early on in this test, and is just one of the very best SR soaps that there is. IMO. Again, no tugging. Post shave strooping was again 40 Latvian linen and 80 roo.

Roo strop and Latvian linen showing thickness.

Shave #133 this morning and the edge is good, and equals the number Alfredo got from his TI, so his result is not a fluke. I had previously posted that the edge is actually improving a bit over #125-127. I did some things differently, mostly to test the efficacy of fabrics and strops on an edge that appeared to be declining. Most likely the increased smoothness/performance is due to simply doubling the fabric from 20 to 40 each shave. I did switch to Latvian linen and a roo strop to see if more flexible products made a difference, Aaron and Mike are advocates of thin strops I believe.. Maybe, but the conventional wisdom is that the type of fabric and leather don’t make that much difference. There’s something going on, again, likely just increased linen.

I thought about stopping around #128, the edge didn’t seem to have much left in it and just flogging a few more shaves from it to exceed Alfredo’s number seemed like a ‘little’ thing to do with little relevance to maintaining an edge for many shaves. But I got a PM from Alfredo that simply said ‘Keep it going’, so that’s what I’m going to do. Thank you Alfredo!

Post shave stropping, 40 Latvian linen and 80 roo. The razor is amazing.

Shave #135, what can you say except Fillys rule! I had a little extra growth this morning and could tell it WTG, but ATG was normal. The edge seems to be showing a bit more wear and tear under the loupe, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the shave, which is still DFS. It isn’t a fresh edge of course, but it’s still delivering a perfectly good shaving experience.

Post shave, back to 40 Kanoyama canvas followed by 35 Kanoyama suede and 75 Kanoyama cordovan. Let’s see if I can tell a difference next shave.

Shave #140 on this fine Sunday morning - it won’t stay fine though, heat index of 105F/40C or so is expected. There was a little resistance (but no tugging) on the first pass on 28 hours of beard, the second ATG pass felt normal and the shave was excellent. The Latvian linen and roo seem to be doing well. Post shave steopping was 40 Latvian linen and 100 roo.

Originally Posted by Steve56

Shave #140 on this fine Sunday morning - it won’t stay fine though, heat index of 105F/40C or so is expected. There was a little resistance (but no tugging) on the first pass on 28 hours of beard, the second ATG pass felt normal and the shave was excellent. The Latvian linen and roo seem to be doing well. Post shave steopping was 40 Latvian linen and 100 roo.

I believe you just might make 200.

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

I believe you just might make 200.

That would be something. I don’t think that it will make it, but the latest stropping materials seem to be getting a little more smooth back in the edge. Iwasaki said that a barber got 1000 shaves from an edge with only linen and leather, but maybe that’s one of his tamehagane razors, that steel is known to respond very well to stropping.