Thread: How often to hone - advice needed

This might sound like a smart alec answer but a straight needs to be honed when it needs to be honed. Frequency or the number of shaves shouldn't come into it. If you start with a freshly honed razor, you will find that stropping it keeps it very sharp. Over time, you will notice the it is losing a little of it's sharpness so more stropping (both canvas and leather) is required to enable it to shave you comfortably. When it gets to the stage where stropping does not produce and edge that is comfortable to shave with then a touch up of some type is required.

Every shave causes some wear of the cutting edge. Plain leather and linen have no real abrasive properties so that's why you have to hone every so often. With the exception of a few razors I don't get more than about 10 shaves out of a razor before it needs honing again. Shaving daily for months with the same razor without honing is exceptional.

Originally Posted by honedright

The linen on my strop is a vintage waxed one. Unfortunately no one makes these any longer. I think it is one reason for my success. If you can find one of these in good shape I suggest you try one.

Scott

Scott, reading you only hone very occasionally, I would not be surprised if an abrasive was added to the waxy substance you describe. If not, an untreated strop would be just as good for keeping your edges going forever.

I got this quote from this thread: http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...ping-king.html

Originally Posted by Kees

Scott, reading you only hone very occasionally, I would not be surprised if an abrasive was added to the waxy substance you describe. If not, an untreated strop would be just as good for keeping your edges going forever.

I suppose it's possible that some type of abrasive was added when the strop was produced many years ago. I currently, and for the past year or so, use a different linen (still a vintage linen) from the one I used when "Stropping is King" came about. The one I use now doesn't have a "waxy" coating although it does have the remnants (very little now) of some type of tacky material. Very similar to a NOS "Beau Bruml" linen strop that I have (and haven't used) distributed by the Dubl Duck company. As for the current use linen strop, I have cleaned it and have dressed it by rubbing it vigorously with a flat pumice stone until the surface of the linen is very smooth, removing any raised fibers that were sticking up from the surface. I would suppose that this treatment would remove any abrasives that might have been added to the surface? I don't know about that. I'm guessing that the linen itself is abrasive enough, and at least partly responsible for keeping my razor serviceable for such a long time.

I'm guessing that the linen strops I've used are at least 40-50 years old. Isn't it necessary to periodically re-paste a strop in order for it to have sufficient abrasive to work? I've never added anything to mine, so assuming an abrasive agent might have been added 50 years ago, after all the cleaning, dressing, and stropping over a year or more, how much abrasive could be remaining?