Thread: New razor's edge ruined on second shave.

I recently got a new DOVO blade sharpened by Lynn. My first shave with it as I commented in another post was overall positive, comfortable and fairly close. Last night, when I went to shave, I decided to do a few passes on the linen strop on my Illinois razor strop before I hit the leather. Bad idea. I used the same technique on the linen as on the leather (no pressure, blade flat on the strop, rolling it over along the back.) Boy was I suprised when the linen left the razor with a jagged edge. The razor was still sharpen enough to get a close shave, but the shave was painful and I couldn't even do against the grain for fear fo cutting myself. Has anyone else had this experience, or any experienced user with any advice on how to smooth out the edge and keep it sharp? I've got some pictures of the edge after the linen attached.

Thanks - Evan

Evan, Send it back and I'll re-hone it for you at no charge. I don't often use a linen side, but everyone does things different. It's not uncommon for new guys to mess up an edge even just stropping. Lynn

Evan,

Try stroping again 25 or 30 round trips
on the leather. This time, use some pressure.
Using a little pressure could in fact fix the
problem. I don't think you messed up the edge
though.

Terry

Thanks a lot Lynn, I'll try to stay from that linen side at least with my good razor.

-Evan

The pic is crappy, but it looks loke you've been stroping on sandpaper?! Unless you have something like dirt or tiny hard particles embeded in the linnen, it should not and must not look like this. Lynn, you better hurry with the instructional videos...

Nenad

Evan,

Take Lynn's advise. He's forgotten more than I'll ever
know about this game. He answered while I was formulating
an answer lol.


Good luck,

Terry

You can't really see it very well in the picture, but there are some cerations in the razor that the leather won't be able to fix. As for the sandpaper, I had a similiar thought after seeing it, the linen is very hard and quite coarse, I've got some old razors and I can try on it when I get home and try to see what's wrong with my technique on it.

-Evan

Wow, I used to sell Illinois strops but have never seen one do this to an edge.
It does look like it has been on sandpaper. Take Lynn up on the re-honing and I would wash off the linen under running water with a scrub brush. The Illinois linen is coated and water will not hurt it. Do remove it from the leather though.
I would worry that the nicks and burr will scratch up the leather if you try stropping on that now. One also needs to be careful to keep the razor from hitting the metal hardware on the strop's end. I did this myself way back when I was new to all this.

Tony

On the linen side of the Illinois strop, there's some gold writing printed on the canvas that starts about two thirds of the way up , would going over this affect the edge at all?

Also, I stropped on the leather some before I noticed the nicks, and it scratched the the leather a bit. Will the strop still give a smooth edge?

-Evan

I am not implying that this is what happened in this instance. Be careful when closing the razor. I have ruined an edge before by allowing the blade to hit the scales when closing. Some razors have warped scales, or poor scale alignment causing a clearance problem. I have never had a brand new razor, so I do not know if this a common problem on one...

Mark.