Pasted dulls, plain sharpens: why?

Hi:

First post and an absolute newbie at this. Also a frugal experimenter. Yeah, go ahead and call me a cheapskate. :)

Anyways, my first straight razor is an Ebay special and am unable to get it sharp. I have a new King 1k/6k and 0.5M Chromium oxide paste that I have been using to try to get my razor sharp. I use a 28mm camera lens in reverse as a loupe to check on the edge.

I used the 1k to redo the edge and get rid of pitting. When the pit on the edge was almost invisible under the loupe, I used the 6k to get rid of it altogether. Then I moved to a pasted strop. But try as I might, I cannot get it really sharp. It never passes the HHT and the shave test is seriously suboptimal. I can get hairs to pop from my arm without the razor touching the skin, but that is about it.

So I thought a really flat strop would make it better. I stuck a sheet of newsprint on a flat glass plate, applied paste on it and stropped on it. It ended up making the razor duller :o and could no longer pop arm hairs. When I stropped on plain unpasted leather, it became sharper and the arm hair popping returned. Why is this happening? I know this group swears by the Norton 4k/8k, but being a cheapskate, I can't bring myself to shell out the $ for it. I "should" be able to use my setup to make it sharp enough, but I at a loss to figure out where my newbie technique is leading me astray. Any ideas?

We don't all swear by the 4000/8000 Norton!

It sounds like you might be occasionally lifting the spine or slightly over honing!

When I first started with straights I ran into a similar problem and to this day I couldn't tell you for certain what the problem was, but I don't have this problem anymore!

Too much paste, probably. Use a very small amount, spread it around as thinly as possible, and let it dry completely.

The result should be a ghostly green, as opposed to something that looks like a pool table.

dylandog,

I think you are right. I wiped off the surface of the paper with a wet paper towel as much as I could and stropped again. I find that it no longer dulls it. In fact, it is sharper than before. Thank you for the pointer.

Another question: At what point can I say that the razor passes the HHT? It now actually cuts a single strand of hair if I try to cut it within about 2 inches of where I am holding. But farther away, and especially if it curves away from the razor, it slides off. If I try it the way randydance062449's pic in his sig shows, it almost always cuts, but doesn't cut a dangling hair held vertically. How close is it to being acceptably sharp?

The HHT seems to get different results depending on the individuals hair. What you describe sounds like you're in the right ball-park.

I no longer use the HHT, just a microscope and thumb pad test then shave. The HHT can be really confusing, all it shows is the blade is sharp enough to cut hair but how smooth it shaves is totally different.