Thread: My Razor is SHARP

My razor is getting dull....needs a touch up

NEWBIE - STILL LEARNING!

Out of 25 razors, I have 14 that were professionally sharpened, including 3 by Lynn. These 14 set the standard for what I consider "sharp."

During my first 50 shaves, I was convinced that all my razors were not sharp. I blamed my uncomfortable shaves on all those "dull" razors. As my technique developed during shaves 51-100, I had the shocking discovery that all of my razors were getting sharper. LOL.


With 150 shaves completed, all but two of my razors can give me an "A" shave, even those that I have honed. However, I have discovered that the 6/8 Thiers-Issard Le Grelot, sharpened by Lynn, sets a high standard and is a A+++ compared to all my other razors. It is the standard by which I measure all my razors.

In the past month, I have learned to feel the subtle difference in the lack of smoothness that occurs when the razor is losing its edge. While 23 of my razors are sharp enough to give a decent shave, I probably have 10 that are at their optimum sharpness. I am still learning how to restore the edge with a Swaty Stone and a SRD paddle strop. If a razor is not as smooth as my TI Le Grelot, I do not consider it at its optimum level of sharpness, but now I blame myself rather than the razor.

One of the interesting things I experienced this morning is how a diminutive NOS 4/8 Strega (Eskilstuna, Sweden) can be just as sharp as a 6/8 TI Le Grelot and give a very satisfying shave. Now, if I can get it to be as smooth as the TI, I will be ecstatic.

My long-range goal is to learn not only how to sharpen my razors but also how to create at least a semblance of the silky smooth edge that Lynn so ably achieves with his honing. I am afraid that another 10,000 honing experiences may not be the answer since I am becoming convinced that honing is as much an art as it is a science.

So, now that this has been open for a time lets discuss this issue further.

The question is how do you know if your razor is sharp? Sounds simple eh? Well, I shave and my face feels smooth so I guess my razor is sharp right? Well not so fast.

Let's say you do a 2 shave pass and your face feels pretty smooth maybe even BBS but when you apply that aftershave or that alum block, hey, I feel burn. So what does that mean? Does that mean you have the burn because your razor wasn't up to snuff or maybe your skills weren't. Afterall something caused that burn and burn and good shave and sharp razor don't go hand and hand.

So there are two aspects to this. The sharp razor is one and the skilled shaver is the other. Which is more important? How do you tell if your shave was the result of an issue in one of the two factors. If your face is BBS and a dose of everclear to your face feels like a fresh mountain breeze does that mean all is OK?

We can go in many directions here so I'm not going to digress into skill sets (you all can do that if you have a mind to) since I started this as a sharp razor thread. I'm going to assume we all are expert shavers and are capable of the perfect shave if the razor is willing and able.

So what qualities do you expect as you rate you shave quality as a function of shave ready condition of your razor?

Here's what I do. I classify my razors as either giving me an excellent shave, an outstanding shave or an exceptional shave (and the razor goes with the shave). So whats the difference? Well, first of all the three categories result in BBS and no hint of irritation of any kind. So what's the difference again?

Well I'm glad you asked.

Imagine your sitting in a chair and someone blindfolds you and says you will feel something on your face and you guess what that is. So an expert barber takes the first razor and for the life of you, you don't know. All you feel is metal going down your face with no hint of it being a razor. Just silky smooth. Maybe it's a squeegee. Thats the exceptional razor. Next razor also silky smooth but you can feel a bare hint of the razor doing it's work. You can tell it's a straight but barely. The last, the excellent one you know it's a straight cause you really feel it working. No discomfort of any kind but you know. Those are the qualities I use to judge how sharp a razor is when shave ready.

Now the only real difference between the excellent and outstanding is some work. It may be hard to do depending on the razor but any razor of quality can be made outstanding in my book if you have the proper equipment and skills. However the exceptional razor to me has a certain quality, a zen,I don't know but to me such razor is born and those qualities are intrinsic to the razor. You can hone till the cows come home and it will never be such a razor. Probably when that razor was made everything perfect happened. Perfect blank, perfect forging, perfect tempering, perfect grinding, perfect honing. It reminds me of watch mvmts where you get a certain mvmt and it's supposed to have a certain accuracy and the one you have runs better than it should and better than one of "higher quality".

Now you may say I'm a honemeister and I can hone to make an exceptional shaver but no matter how sharp it is the qualities transcend that quality of sharpness or at least to me it does. But then again I've never claimed to be a honemeister so maybe I'm all wet.

So what do you all think? How do you judge your razor?

I rate the sharpness by the quality of the shave as well. There are some razors that seem to be magic on my skin; some are just good. It's similar to what you describe.



The real mystery here though, is why you typed out a long post but cut it down by eight characters by twice abbreviating the word "movement"...

That I will lose sleep over.

I go by what others tell me, and compare that to my own thoughts on the razors. Maybe its just my science background, but I have a lot of faith on peer review, especially when I know and trust those peers.

Originally Posted by HNSB

I rate the sharpness by the quality of the shave as well. There are some razors that seem to be magic on my skin; some are just good. It's similar to what you describe.



The real mystery here though, is why you typed out a long post but cut it down by eight characters by twice abbreviating the word "movement"...

That I will lose sleep over.

In watch collecting circles "mvmt" is a common abbreviation for "the movement" as in Geology xtl is common for crystal.

Being new to all this I have to take other people's word for it. I really think this is the hardest thing for newbies to learn. When some of us have a bad shave we blame the razor but honestly we don't know if we've made a mistake in our technique or if we've made a mistake in thinking our razor was sharp. Or maybe both. I think this is where a lot of newcomers get impatient and give up. It's going to take a long time for me to get used to the sharpness issue. This is one area where my stubbornness is a good thing.

Lori

lol @ who voted with me

I'm going to be the outsider when I say I feel I've gotten the blade truly sharp when it effortlessly cuts me. I know, I know.. but let me explain. I have easily irritated follicles, dust/dirt or possibly my own dead skin cells irritate my follicles, it's called keratosis pilarus. I'm not "into" my face enough to wash it several times a day to see if that will help. If I haven't shaved in 2+ days I still have bumpy razor terrain, so it's not the quality of shaves. When I put a new blade into a DE safety razor (I have two good ones) and I shave with it, even if careful, I can get little blood spots. They close fast, might not even feel them, but they are there. If I hone a razor and shave my facial hairs close, that's good. But the most aggressive finger-tip brushing, however many hours later (after hairs shrink from drying) may reveal it wasn't as close as I'm used to. The razor might not have opened the little hilly tops of my bumpy skin. I'm just giving two ideas for gauging closeness, which relates to sharpness (in my book).

The little blood spots from a new DE razor blade tells me it is very sharp, and it generally only last the first or second shave in. After that, it's a smoother shave and far less, if any, spots of blood (and they are sometimes quite small). When I finish a razor on my finisher and strop it well enough so that the harshness of that untamed edge is reduced and I get those telltale little decapitated hill blood spots, then I know I have achieved a level of sharpness which is almost, if not quite as sharp, effectively a level of sharpness to experience the same phenomena as a fresh double edge razor blade will produce.

This may sound weird but from my experiences in this traditional wet shaving, a few effortless little blood spots is actually a good sign I have achieved a very sharp edge. It calms down after 2-3 3-pass shaves, just like a DE blade (might be my stropping as that was the last aspect of TWS that fell into place).

For the record I have a cheapy disposable straight-style half-DE-blade holding shaver so I can directly compare the shaving action of both DE blades and open razors so it's not in my head!

Going to get into one of my guitar analogies...

wait for it..

Hendrix could have played a plank with barbed wire nailed to it and sounded like hendrix, Dave gilmour for all his expensive custom made pedal boards could play mass production versions of the same and noone would know the difference, only him. so..

Whats one mans smooth shave is another mans cheese grater. It depends on the standard you set for yourself, I'm sure a very experienced shaver on here could have a shave that the newbs dream about, not sting on Alum application, and still say "mm, that needs some honing"

What I'm trying to say is probably, in many cases, would it have more to do with the quality of the technique than of the edge? not saying the edge doesn't matter, of course it does.