Thread: Largest number of shaves before rehoning or using a loaded strop?

Tough to say for me since I don't shave everyday and I rotate razors every shave. There was a time when I kept track of shaves between honings but I've been at this long enough that I got bored and don't bother anymore - I just touch up when needed. Probably about 20-25 shaves I'm guessing before hitting a pasted strop or hone. I know some guys can go 100-200 shaves leather-only, but my sensitive skin can detect even slight degradation in an edge so comfort comes first for me.

Fifty laps on leather after each shave. I went 3 months (75 two pass shaves) after I first got the razor before it started tugging. Twenty-five laps on CrOx and 25 on FeOx got it back in shape -- for two shaves only. Another 25/25 and it shaved well again. Since then I do 30/30 on the first day (of the odd months) and it is good.

I bought two of Larry's raxors when I started down the straight path with the idea that I could go to the second if I needed to get the first on honed. On the anniverasry my first straight shave I switched over to the second razor which had never been shaved with or stropped. I couldn't tell the difference between it and the one that I had been using for the previous year. Gonna keep up with this program as long as it works.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

If you are rounding a bevel that easy, there is something amiss with your stropping... I read the first post and said "huh" but after the second one mentioning the abrasiveness of leather that was the giveaway..

You shouldn't get rounding even with Diamond paste and a hanging strop, it is possible, but not easy, but with plain leather it should never happen... If that is what you are seeing you are either lifting the spine, using to much pressure, or too slack a strop...

What really doesn't make sense is that you have to know how to strop if yer edge is lasting that long

Couple of things - the rounding of the edge occurs to some extent with all leather, as a woodworker, the level of rounding that I'm talking about is anything away from geometric perfection, so it's more a problem in my head than anything else. I'm aware that some folks like to maintain a razor for a very long period of time with intermittent trips to a hanging strop, but in my case, I have gobs of hones, and prefer to end then with chromium oxide on balsa because it's a bit harder than leather.

My problem with my cowhide strops, if I carried out finding out what it is, is more than likely that they're just not broken in to the level of horsehide. So when I talk about pressure, it's only a little bit of extra pressure to make sure the bevel of the razor on a tightly pulled horsehide strop is actually getting contact with the strop from end to end on the razor (obviously, if that doesn't occur, the strop will not clean up the whole edge on both sides, and someone will go back to the hones thinking it's the strop, when it's likely at first to be lack of contact with the strop).

And you're assuming correctly with the last part - I don't break any stropping rules. I *never* lift the spine of a razor off of anything i'm using for any reason, neither the strop nor any of the hones.

The abrasiveness comment of the leather comes from a bunch of us on woodcentral examining edges on microscopes. If you look at your edge right after you strop, no matter how little pressure you use, you'll notice that there are abrasions here or there on the bevel (not deep ones, just marks from the silica in the leather), and that the very edge of the razor has been worked just a little bit differently than the rest of the bevel. Like springback from the leather - the same thing occurs with wood after a cut even though people think of it as hard.

Trying to understand all of this is what's gotten my stropping technique to where it is - and today on shave 25, I still have an edge that will bring weepers easily and it is still in the ballpark of HHT4/5 on both sides of the bevel (if I bother to HHT something once a week or two, I always make sure that the results are the same on both sides of the bevel, to make sure there are no anomalies - I don't do HHT often, though).

Going back to my original comment, though, I think the horsehide has settled into a point where the silica particles on the surface have worn and the whole matrix of the surface has been compacted into a shiny layer of smooth worn particles - but they still have enough spank in them to keep the edge clean and very very very mildly abrade it. I'm wondering at what point the strop will allow the edge to fall off sharpness, but I haven't gotten there yet. I'll push it as far as it will go and come back to this from time to time. When this particular piece of leather was new, it was stiff and very abrasive - it could cloud a bevel that came off of the chromium oxide balsa or one that came off of an old barber hone that I got from Alex gilmore.

But, anyway, I am not doing anything to break any rules, for sure. Just as in woodworking, you can experiment, but you can't break known rules and expect success (that's part of the issue that the whole world has of seeing someone else make a mistake, seeing the results, and then expecting that your results will be different).

(we get nutty about this stuff over on the woodworking boards, too, chasing minutiae to try to find out if we're doing something that's necessary when we maintain our woodworking edges - in this case, I was honing just to hone every couple of weeks, because I figured that I should).

What drove me to not habitually refreshing the edge of the razor on something else was a co-woodworker's comment that he very rarely goes to his stone, and he never uses anything else but bare horse butt leather.

DaveW,
could you clarify for me when you refer to "horse butt" strops are you referring to horse leather strops from the butt area or the shell cordovan strops that come from a "membrane" that resides subcutaneously ie under the outer skin or leather of the horse?
Thanks

No affiliation to this seller, and I'm not sure this is even where I got it, but this is exactly what I got, and then I cut a strop from, from the smoothest part of the piece I got:
(ebay item #)

370623377484

I'm cheap (though i do have 3 commercially made hanging cowhide strops). I didn't want to buy a commercial horse strop unless I knew that's the kind of leather I wanted, and getting a big piece of veg tanned leather was a good way to get it (one of our supportive sellers in the WW community sells horse butt in precut sizes, but I am too cheap to buy it because they want about this much for one piece).

So what is it? I'm not sure. I'm darned sure it's not shell cordovan. I recall tony miller mentioning that leather that's sold as "horse butt" is often a very hard cheap leather that is abrasive, and that's exactly what this was.

I originally purchased it for woodworking, because I wanted the hardness and abrasiveness (it's fantastic as a chisel strop - best I've ever seen, because it doesn't dub the edge of a chisel noticeably if it's backed by a hard board).

Gentlemen (and Ladies) Good afternoon,

I have been drawn to this thread as I have been thinking about whether to send my razor off for honing as it has just started pulling a little when I shave with the growth, I shave every day usually a one pass except at weekends when time allows for a three pass shave. I usually strop (never use paste) twice a week with sixty strokes.

The last time I had the razor honed was September 2010 - so I work that out to be somewhere in the region of 600 shaves!!

Admittedly I do not have barbed wire like stubble, the blade is stainless steel, and I am comparing the shave quality to the quality of shave I got before I realised I needed to get the blade honed not just use 'straight out of the box', however my daily shaves now leave me with no discomfort and the three pass shave I had this morning has left my face BBS!

BTW As this is my first post I would just like to say how much I enjoy visiting this forum, great information, great contributors, and has really increased my shaving pleasure over the last few years.

Originally Posted by Nic

...I shave every day usually a one pass except at weekends when time allows for a three pass shave.

...(never use paste)...

The last time I had the razor honed was September 2010 - so I work that out to be somewhere in the region of 600 shaves!!

Man, any way you cut it, that's a heck of a run on nothing but leather. Bravo!

Bought a dovo bq in december, have shaved with it tons, just refreshed with balsa strop and she feels good as new.

Conservatively estimating an average of about four shaves per week for two years on a new razer that has NEVER been honed - only stropped on canvas and leather - makes it about 416 shaves so far.

Going by DaveW's rules, however, I believe my results don't count because the canvas undoubtedly acts as an abrasive.

Well, the leather is an abrasive, too. I'd say as long as you're using no pastes or powders, that counts well. My motivation for this (at least what I remember of it now) is that I have a Friedr. Dennert razor, which is uncommon, that i LOVE to shave with. Every day. But I want it to outlast me if I'm still using it to shave decades from now. I figure my life expectancy is about 50 years, maybe a little less. I don't want to put it to abrasive every week or two.

I'm at, i guess, 45 shaves or so, maybe just less than 50, and the razor is still fine. It's not like fresh off the honed sharp, but it is an easy two pass shave with good results. I do love freshly sharpened so much that I'm at odds a little about whether or not I might want to sharpen just to get back to that. It could be 100 shaves or more before i *can't* shave comfortably with this razor, it seems to have settled into a spot at around 20 shaves where it's been similar sharpness since. I have GOBS of nice hones, because I figured I'd always do a touch up hone every week or two, but now it seems like that might become a rare activity. I sold my PHIG on here yesterday with another stone, and I'm contemplating what I should do with 4 much more expensive hones. I really should only have one of them, as I have GOBS of prefinisher and finisher level stones that I also use for woodworking.

I should be ashamed, but instead I just ordered a blue/black translucent arkansas that I figure will go both ways fairly well. Feed the monster, right?