I can shave with a DE and SE blade for a week or more. Should I not be able to shave with a straight without stropping for the same amount of time?
No way I'm going to try this, Kani needs love.We might need to start up a forum challenge!
You could, sure. However a modern DE/SE blade is coated, which gives it the longevity you mention, while the straight is not. Depending on the quality of steel, keenness of initial honing and skill of user who knows how many shaves it could go without stropping.
We might need to start up a forum challenge!
Not strop because mis-stropping might ruin the edge? So, I would get a week of good shaves before ruining the edge by mis-stropping it? Just arguing for the sake of arguing here. Or is it mostly impossible to mis-strop?
When I started looking at the Feather brand DE blades at 200x, I noticed three distinct bevels. I built a laser angle measuring gizmo to check what the actual angles were. To my surprise the final angle was between 20 and 21 degrees. The Feather Professional straight blades were 25 degrees.
Most traditionally sharpened straight razors are honed to 15 to 17 degrees. That got me thinking that a little more obtuse angle, as a final step, might help give me the smoothness I was looking for. My razors are ground to have a 16 degree bevel with one piece of tape on the back.
Out of curiosity, has anybody here ever ruined a blade by stropping incorrectly? How much trouble was it to fix? I haven't seen much of that on the forums, but maybe it's because we're too embarrassed to mention it publicly.
I would recommend stropping at first with the strop on a counter, then stropping slowly. Concentrate on keeping the spine in contact with the strop and you will be fine.Thank-you, gentlemen. Very helpful! I WILL strop, for better or worse!
That is perfect, just go slow.I actually have a paddle strop.