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

I hone a new edge on all of my razors each week, on "bevel-to-finish Sundays". Doesn't matter whether I shaved with them that week or not - everybody starts the next week fresh. I touch them up in between if they start to pull, of course.


(j/k)

I purchased a 7/8 wedge just over three months ago. Honed it as soon as I got it and have used it three times per week since, must be around 40 shaves.
Stropped before each use on plain leather ( have never used a pasted strop ) and no honing since the first one.
Still effortlessly removes the hair and actually feels every bit as sharp as when I first honed it.
I LOVE this razor !

For those who love to hone, I do, too. I feel like I'm divided because I want to challenge the edge to be sharper, and because I have about 10 stones that are just razor finishers.

But I was also curious when a person I know said they use a black arkansas only, horse leather, and only "once in a great while" go back to the strop.

Each time I have felt like the leather was losing its ability to get the razor back, I'd use a little bit more pressure on the strop (not lots, just a little more) and it was like the razor is newly honed again, even after 20 shaves.

It's not even a difference where I'm compromising the edge quality or something, or stubbornly using a razor that's partly dull, it still makes an easy ATG second pass.

It's the leather, I think. I haven't used cow leather in a little while, but I'm wondering if it would do the same thing once it's broken in as much (and absolutely totally smooth). I prefer the horse leather on a hanging strop, though, because it is so much harder on the surface and makes it easier for me to keep from rounding the bevel with the abrasiveness of leather.

Originally Posted by DaveW

I never use a hanging strop with compound on it because I don't like what it does to edge geometry.

Originally Posted by DaveW

I prefer the horse leather on a hanging strop, though, because it is so much harder on the surface and makes it easier for me to keep from rounding the bevel with the abrasiveness of leather.

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

Well, I have the king of edge retention in razors and it's very atypical. My TI Damascus recently had to be touched up. It's the first time I had to do that since I originally got it and honed it about 5 years ago. How many shaves have I had from it? I don't remember I've lost count but around 100 is a safe number.

However on average with most of my razors I like to do a quick touch-up every 20 shaves or so. That's probably average.

With 2 pass shaves every day I get 2 months per honing.

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