Thread: Today's shave

I used my INVICTA straight today for the first time in a month. I'd stopped when I developed a chest cold with cough and spent the month playing with my DE collection instead. This week I dug up the straight, noticed a couple of tiny nicks in the blade and headed to the workshop. 10 laps on the 4K took the nicks out, then 60 laps of the razor hone (unknown, but likely 10K) and 60 laps on the horsehide stop put a shaving edge back on.
This morning it shaved me for the first time in a while, a pass-and-a-half shave to DFS standard. I used Williams with a dab of Keroderma chamomile cream to lather a dry face, hot towel, re-lather and shave WTG then half pass of ATG. A lovely job. This razor is very light, and it stutters across the stubble, but no nicks resulted.
My question is: can I cure the jerky progress of the blade? So I hone up my monster wedge instead? Use shave oil? Anoint my face with 5W30? Get someone else to hone it sharper?
What suggest you, gentlemen?

I would guess it could be a sharpness issue but that is only a guess. IME a truly sharp razor shaves smoothly with no 'stutter'.

Originally Posted by bigstick

I used my INVICTA straight today for the first time in a month. I'd stopped when I developed a chest cold with cough and spent the month playing with my DE collection instead. This week I dug up the straight, noticed a couple of tiny nicks in the blade and headed to the workshop. 10 laps on the 4K took the nicks out, then 60 laps of the razor hone (unknown, but likely 10K) and 60 laps on the horsehide stop put a shaving edge back on.
This morning it shaved me for the first time in a while, a pass-and-a-half shave to DFS standard. I used Williams with a dab of Keroderma chamomile cream to lather a dry face, hot towel, re-lather and shave WTG then half pass of ATG. A lovely job. This razor is very light, and it stutters across the stubble, but no nicks resulted.
My question is: can I cure the jerky progress of the blade? So I hone up my monster wedge instead? Use shave oil? Anoint my face with 5W30? Get someone else to hone it sharper?
What suggest you, gentlemen?

I can only suggest that you use 0w20 Synthetic oil from Mobil One. seems to me the light oily film that you would get would stop the stuttering.

ahhh.. and so begins the quest for the perfect edge/shave/technique!

I would suspect it may be a sharpness issue, although it could be technique and or a combination of both. What I would suggest is to try 5 or 6 very slow, very light passes on your razor hone using lather as the wetting medium. Then try shaving. Another thing you can try is to run over to Lee Valley Tools and pick up a bar of honing compound and a strop paddle and try 5 to 10 light passes on that followed by a couple of dozen on newspaper before the horsehide.

I agree that it is a sharpness issue. 1K, 5K, 8K, 12K are good honing progressions to get that sharp edge we all enjoy. But there are several other smaller issues that could be causing skipping.

It sounds like you are having some fun and moving up the learning curve.

Pabster

today I tried Pacific shave oil, and that made a significant improvement. No catching. Still a little more drag than I would like, so that's the sharpness issue still with me. Best guess anyway. Revisit the hone as suggested this week.

Do you use magnification when you hone? This adds so much insight to how well your edge is coming a long, nothing comes close in helping you tune in an edge. Also a 4-10k jump seems like a big gap to me, I would put an 8k in there.