Thread: Ok now Im just confused

Let me start by saying I just completed one of the better shaves I've ever done.

I pulled my bowden's wedge out last night and decided to run it on a balsa strop .3 and .1 to see if I could make it shave ready. surprisingly enough it came off the balsa and then leather feeling exactly like my boker with the thumb test. Which while not as sharp as my lion auctioneer is definitely shave ready. so I figured I'd shave with it tonight to see what happened. It went fantastic besides a couple weepers until halfway through the last pass and then started becoming like it was before I put it on the balsa. It's like the edge won't hold up for a full three passes.

my strop progression was 15 passes on each side of the balsa (I tried seven on the .3 and didn't get much so I doubled it) I then wiped it and proceeded to linen and then 50 on leather.

so after the blade seemed to be failing I gave it the thumb test and it seemed to not be grabbing at all. I threw it on the leather strop for 20 passes and now it's back to feeling shave ready. which seems weird to me because a strop doesn't sharpen it aligns the fin.

Possibly your pastes are creating or sustaining a slight wire or burr which quickly fails, unless the steel itself is not capable of holding the edge for some reason.

Excluding the factors that onimaru55 listed, which are valid points, ineffective stropping is likely the cause. What you are experiencing isn't uncommon for new folks, most will restrop mid-shave to fix this issue. As you practice and gain experience you'll find the need to restrop will become less until you'll eventually be able to finish a shave without the added stropping.

There shall remain mysteries. I would avoid the .1 and focus on lots of linen and leather. You might be producing too fragile an edge. The edge requires a rounding created by stropping. If the edge is too fragile it breaks instead of being strong enough to round.

You might also search for the "match" trick to remove high grit burrs.

well it's never happened to me with another razor so I suppose I could have just had a bad time stropping. Ill try it again next time it comes up in the rotation and focus a little harder on stropping.

Although it seems that my razors need to hit the balsa about every seven to eight shaves. which I think is probably a bit on the low end of good shaves to get out of a razor. I've lightened up on stropping pressure recently to try to combat that I wasn't using a lot but after looking at stoptober it was more than I should have been. Thoughts?