Felt Stropping with Diamond spray

Fairly new guy here (about 4 months of shaving with straight). I have a very heavy beard, and have to shave at least 5 days a week for work. I have been trying to use my barber's hone as I have been having sharpness issues for a few weeks. I just received my hard felt strop and .25 diamond spray. I put a couple of light coats on the felt, let it dry, and stropped my razor about 25 laps. This was a shave ready razor that I have been using for about the last 3 months. It has been loosing its edge and I have given it a couple of trips over the barber's hone. The hone worked ok, so, I decided to try the spray, and it dulled it even more than it was. Can anyone offer some advice or tell me what I did wrong? Carlo

25 stokes on diamond spray sound like a lot to me. But i have not personally used the diamond on felt, so I will defer to someone with more experience.

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Originally Posted by Carlo

Fairly new guy here (about 4 months of shaving with straight). I have a very heavy beard, and have to shave at least 5 days a week for work. I have been trying to use my barber's hone as I have been having sharpness issues for a few weeks. I just received my hard felt strop and .25 diamond spray. I put a couple of light coats on the felt, let it dry, and stropped my razor about 25 laps. This was a shave ready razor that I have been using for about the last 3 months. It has been loosing its edge and I have given it a couple of trips over the barber's hone. The hone worked ok, so, I decided to try the spray, and it dulled it even more than it was. Can anyone offer some advice or tell me what I did wrong? Carlo

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25 on .25 sounds like an awful lot. I was talking to Lynn about that the other day & he suggested 5 strokes, after 10 on the .5, then test & see where you are. Not positive, but pretty sure you need to go to the .5 first.

I have the .05 on SRD hanging felt. I use a very light touch and go maybe 10 round trips. I think the light touch is the key.

If this is a razor from SRD, i would cash in your free honing certificate.

Some info on the SRD felt strop and an experiment I did using it..


http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...xperiment.html

I'm with the others. I have the felt w/ .50 DS. I do only 10 light passes, very little pressure. Without seeing/testing your blade, it's hard to tell.
Is this your only razor? You use it everyday? Barbers hones are very fine, just for maintaining an edge, and not forever. .25 diamond is way up there on the grit scale.
You probably need some lower grit hones. Does it shave arm hair OK....?
Anyway, If your without the proper equipment, I'd send it in for a honing...Sounds like it needs it....

I have two razors that I basically rotate. I think both are in need of honing, and the one that I used on the felt strop I believe was the sharper of the two. It was not responding to the barber hone. I ordered a set of hones and will work on one (learning tool) and likely send the other out to get fixed up. Thank you guys for the great info. Carlo

I've never used diamond myself (I do use chrome ox) but as with any paste/compound it is wise (and recommended) to try a minimum number of passes, say in the 5-10 region. Test, and if it needs more you should be able to gauge roughly how hmany more laps are required.