Men with heavy beards: I have broken the code

Thanks to all the knowledgeable folks here, I've finally figured out why I was consistently destroying my edge after 3 shaves. I think this will be of interest to all the guys w/heavy beards who are having the same problem. I'll key in my shaving journal if anyone wants to see it, but for now I'll just talk about mistakes corrected & lessons learned. For the record, I used an old Allen & Sons razor, Tilly's 3 hone beginner set (cushioned strop, Gem, & Lithide hones) and a loom strop with chrome oxide on one side, plain on the other.

Lesson 1: you can't dispense with the coarse hone. When you have a blade with no bevel on it, you can't establish a bevel using either of the finer hones. They are fine for polishing an already good bevel, but establishing a bevel with either of them will take a million years.

Lesson 2: if you have to, you can dispense with the fine hones. Using them results in a more comfortable shave, certainly, but I can (and did) get a BBS result going straight from the cushioned strop hone to a plain strop to my face.

Lesson 3: stop being so heavy-handed. If you strop or shave using much more pressure than the weight of the razor itself, you are going to destroy the edge. You can even ruin the edge using your face, by pressing too hard. Be very light-handed. As my edge got duller & duller, I would unconsciously begin to bear down on it harder & harder. It's easy to do without even knowing you're doing it.

Lesson 4: don't do maintenance with a hone--use a pasted strop. Any hone, even one as fine as Lithide, will tend to raise a wire edge in ways that a strop will not. I never used a pasted strop before, I'd just give it a couple strokes on the Lithide every couple days instead. Bad idea. Don't do it.

Lesson 5: Be anal about prepping. Even one shave on a poorly prepped face will wreak havoc on your edge.

So far, it's been 12 shaves since my blade has seen a hone, & the edge shows no sign of needing honing. I'll post to this thread again once I know how many shaves I can get total.

Thanks for all your help,
-Johnny

Awesome! I'm glad you found some good solutions.

Great points!
I feel like, for myself, if I start with a REALLY keen edge (like one from a honemeister such as Traveller - I have only produced edges that good a handful of times) I can maintain it and get the best shaves ever using a really light hand. Thanks for sharing your findings.

That's always been my problem as well, using much too much pressure; it comes from my years of using disposables, cartridge razors and electrics where I always felt I really had to draw those shavers across my face with some pressure. I still find like you, if I'm not keeping mindful of it that I can use too much pressure with straights. I'm past the point of unintentionally bearing down and hacking up my face, but like you, I notice my edges deteriorate quickly if I use too much force.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

Chris L