Thread: Oh God! What have I done?! Please Help!

I concur, cudarunner is very top notch and will give you an incredible edge that is for sure. He just did two of mine and I am sending him two more as soon as I can get them in the mail. BTW Roy I am sending you two more to get done.

I really can't answer your question, but i do have to ask whether you wiped your blade after the pasted strop? If not you may have also contaminated the others, we'll the other felt at least.

Maybe you need to look at your stropping technique. It may be slightly off and linen/felt, leather is more forgiving than Cr Ox,which would accentuate any problem and rapidly dull the blade.

Certainly sounds like a rolled egde
Also +1 don't cut anything but hair with your razor EVER

For an experiment you could touch up your razor, if it is not too bad, and go back to your old strop and note the difference if there is one. Then I would eliminate the Crox and go plain felt and leather. Down the line I would give the green stuff a ride.

50 strokes on cr ox is a little much isn't it?

Originally Posted by cubancigar2000

50 strokes on cr ox is a little much isn't it?

I do a solid 50 laps when my razor is fresh off the hone. After that I'll skip it all together unless the blade needs a touch up. At that point I'll use the CrOx until the edge is freshened up.

Originally Posted by Warchild281

Ok so I've been straight razor shaving for over a year now. I just recently got a new strop: a Straight Razor Designs Premium I Leather strop with Hard pressed wool felt on the second flap. It is an extremely beautiful strop! I also got some green chromium oxide spray.
So here's what happened. I followed the instructions and sprayed the chromium oxide on the inside of the felt flap and waited overnight for it to dry. The next day i did my first stropping with it. I did about 10-15 full passes on the chromium oxide felt, 25 passes on the regular felt, and about 50 on the leather side.
Now for some reason my razor cant even cut paper. That was the most miserable shaving experience I've ever had. It failed all the sharpness tests. What could i have done wrong to make this happen?
One thing i did notice was that the draw on the strop was very light; didn't even come close to my 30 degree Russian leather strop's heavy draw.
What do i do to fix this and/or make the strop work?

You say this strop doesn't grab like your Russian strop? Might need to be broken in. I found this information somewhere on the forum, but can't remember where exactly. I took some of my shave soap lather and coated the strop with it. Then I used 600 grit sand paper and roughed it up a bit. Not too much, just enough to lighten the color a bit. Then I rinsed it off, lathered it up again and took some 1000 grit wet or dry to it. The original recommendation was 800 grit, but I used what I had on hand. Once I was done with that, I rinsed it off and lathered it up, and used a glass bottle to work the lather into the strop. I repeated that a few times and rinsed the strop off.

That will dramatically change the way your strop grips the razor. As for your edge dulling, as others said it sounds a lot like bad form. Hold it tighter, use less pressure, make sure you don't roll the blade so the edge hits the fabric, and wipe your razor between each step.

Originally Posted by Warchild281

One thing i did notice was that the draw on the strop was very light; didn't even come close to my 30 degree Russian leather strop's heavy draw.
What do i do to fix this and/or make the strop work?

What is a 30 degree Russian leather strop ?

Originally Posted by Warchild281

Ok so I've been straight razor shaving for over a year now. I just recently got a new strop: a Straight Razor Designs Premium I Leather strop with Hard pressed wool felt on the second flap. It is an extremely beautiful strop! I also got some green chromium oxide spray.
So here's what happened. I followed the instructions and sprayed the chromium oxide on the inside of the felt flap and waited overnight for it to dry. The next day i did my first stropping with it. I did about 10-15 full passes on the chromium oxide felt, 25 passes on the regular felt, and about 50 on the leather side.
Now for some reason my razor cant even cut paper. That was the most miserable shaving experience I've ever had. It failed all the sharpness tests. What could i have done wrong to make this happen?
One thing i did notice was that the draw on the strop was very light; didn't even come close to my 30 degree Russian leather strop's heavy draw.
What do i do to fix this and/or make the strop work?

My honest answer to you is that this happens occasionally to me and I don't know why.

What I can tell you is that I've done this close to five years and I'm still learning and still improving.

That's probably why retro shaving still interests me and I never get tired of it.

Warchild281,

The width of the edge on a striaght razor makes a flea's foreskin seem large - it is really easy to round off the edge when using abrasives on a compressible medium like felt. (I totally removed the edge on my razor when I first used 0.5 micron diamond on felt ).

For me, I use abrasives on a hard leather paddle strop, and as other posters have mentioned, use no pressure.

Have fun

Best regards

Russ