Thread: Maintaining a sharp blade

Despite using a linen/leather strop after each shave, I am finding it necessary to use a pasted strop after 5 shaves and sharpening stone after 10. This is true for each of my three razors.

Anyone else have a similar experience or am I simply doing something wrong?

Thanks

You are touching up and honing way more frequently than I do. The first thing I would look at is whether or not you are getting your razor adequately sharp when you are re-honing. Consider sending one of you razors out to a pro for honing in order to provide a baseline and to remove a variable from your process.

You should be getting many more shaves before needing to touch up or hone. You might want to revisit your stropping fundamentals.

Razor stropping - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Originally Posted by Lazarus

You should be getting many more shaves before needing to touch up or hone. You might want to revisit your stropping fundamentals.

Razor stropping - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Agreed..it could be the stropping or else you have one damn tough beard! You should definately get more than 5 or 6 shaves between touchups.

That's a bit much my friend. The norm is a month or two. I'm also thinking it's your stropping technique. 25 linen, 50 leather is the norm, a light touch, go slow until you get the hang of it, get a rhythm going.

How much shaves should you get before pastes or hones are necessary? I touch the pasted paddle after 10 shaves or so for a few laps, and I was wondering if m overdoing it or not. The shaves are good before the paste too, but I don't want to let the edge slip out of my hands.

Many factors could be the reason.
Already mentioned your stropping,
Your personality,
shaving technique.
Your tough Beard.
blade quality.


Stropping. if you strop correctly your edge will get dull a lot faster.
Some people loves to have sharpest edge out there.
Even they strop in the middle of shave.
if you are using your razor same way as DE AND GO straight down
your edge will not last longer. use scything motion.
Just some people really have tough Beard.
Blade quality. some will keep the edge long enough others wont.
hope this helps.

Sham,

Can you please explain "if you strop correctly your edge will get dull a lot faster"?

Thanks

Various techniques are factors in edge longevity for sure. But some guys have really sensitive skin, and can sense edge deterioration as soon as it happens. For them frequent touchups may be in order to make sure their blades are in tip-top shape. This is why I don't really like giving a figure for how long a blade should last. If a newb hears that a blade should last months before a simple touchup they may think they are doing something seriously wrong, which perhaps they are or they aren't, who knows? Therefore the correct answer is "whenever the razor needs a touchup, do it".