Thread: Why the hone is better?

Originally Posted by scottad1

As for stropping, my strop is an Illinois 127 and my main complaint is that it has shoulders along the edges that do not let the razor rest flat along the leather almost the whole length of the strop. It worked fairly well at first and would not let the razor touch my face without 4 or 5 passes on the strop but now I do not like to even look at the dagon thing.

Another thing that might help, is once you know you have your stropping technique down you should do more laps. Generally most people are doing 40-60 laps on the strop before each shave.

I am a 35 to 40 lap guy, that's for sure. I think i have to fix my gear then complain about it but keep in mind I have been doing things the same way for 6 months with the same gear and the change in performance is only 2 months old at the most. It got so uncomfortable to shave that I switched back to the Mach 3 for a month until I went back to the way I was shaving before I had enough money to buy my strop.

I agree, big. I am not ruling myself out as the source of the issue but I am not doing anything fancy or different than just to keep the strop taught and making a nice easy X pattern and leaving the weight of the razor the only thing holding the blade to the leather and using the K.I.S.S method.

Another possibility. If you've been happy with your shaves a number of months have you been touching up your razor on your finisher ?
If not maybe it simply needs a touchup. If it needs more your minimalist setup becomes a problem as you only have a bevel setter & final stone ie if the razor needs some work on a 4k you can only go to an aggressive 1k or spend more time on your finisher which is an unknown grit.

I think you are on the right track Onimaru, I have touched the edge up several times and I even spent a bit of time trying to set the bevel with the 1k but I found no better results going from the 1k to my finisher and going back and forth two more times. I think I may need an expert to give it a look over and see where the razor is at and hopefully hone it back into the correct bevel.

If you've already gone back to the 1k you'll probably need to send it out for honing. The finishing stone is likely much too fine to remove the scratches left by the 1k stone.

Just to clarify tlittle, I strop 4 or 5 laps just before a shave and 35 to 40 after. Unless I miss the mark and need to strop 35 to 40 on both the pre and post shave, that could be a problem.

I usually do 40 laps on leather before shaving, but I do forget sometimes. I'd definitely hit the strop more before shaving if I were you and see if things improve. I'd also put the strop on something like a table or counter top and use it like a paddle strop. That way you definitely take the whole tension issue out of the equation.