Thread: pasted strop and raising blade off

i have a board strop and use the handamerica paste (0.5 micron green chromium oxide). i have two razors i use, one the club razor and the other a 6/8th TI with bison handle. on the latter, the spine is a hefty and wider than usual spine. in order to make sure that i have the edge hitting the board, i have to lightly hold my off hand fingers on the bottom of the blade to ensure contact. in fact, i don't hear any cutting or scraping. i do when i use the lighter SRP razor. sunday night, i shaved with the bison handle razor and it was not spectacular.

tonight i went back to the pasted strop and then as i stropped, i slightly raised the spine off the strop. i then could hear some cutting sound, and only went like 8 to 10 round trips that way. i shaved and it was a better shave.

i know that usually you dont want to raise the spine off the strop (or a stone when honing) but given that the spine is a massive one, is this ok? i read where you can create a new bevel and what not, but this razor seems to be really thick in the top of the blade. i know lynn has one of these so his thoughts would be appreciated.

sam

The problem with freehand raising the blade off the hone/strop is that its next to impossible to duplicate the next time! Yes, you may have created another bevel or rounded the edge a bit. May I suggest having someone hone the razor for you so that you have a good starting point on that razor.
After that it will not be necessary to raise the spine anymore.

Hope this helps,

randy, lynn had honed it up for me and i never hit the stones with it. so it has or had the bevel that was on it when lynn honed it. to me, it is very wide at the top, very much more so than the club razor. almost twice as wide. it has never stropped with the flat board strop the same as any other razor. i can send it to someone and let them look, sure.

i dont have any stones, as the ones you told me were so so, i sent them on to some newer guy who wanted to try to shave (i sent him a razor that i had lynn hone up and i touched it up with the pasted strop and shaved once before i sent it) and gave him the two loose hones. i gave a guy the grey two-in-one stone as he was a collector and used straights for like 20 years and had a ton of stuff so i thought from a historical perspective he might like it.

sam

I just re-read your post. I guess i should have been more careful.
Since you only did that on the strop then you are probably ok.

Lynn honed it for you and its not quite up to snuff now? Thats unusual.
Get ahold of Lynn on this one and see what he suggests.

it was up to snuff and more when he honed it. i may have messed it up. oh, and it is not a bad shave, just not a great shave when he honed it.

btw, i did not give the stones away, i have the blue one and the grey little devil. i just gave the 2 in 1 away. should i hit the stones a bit?

sam

The blue stone was a very fine stone as I recall. Once again I suggest you get ahold of Lynn or Hal Wilson or someone who has more experience than I do with barber hones. It sounds like you may just need a touch up on the blue stone.