Trouble getting a decent shave with a Straight

I have been doing 2-passes on the cheeks for about a week. The end result, while some of the beard is going down the drain, the remaining stubble is still pretty thick. One pass WTG with my DE will leave less stubble. I have checked the blade angle and that looks good.

I have ordered a pasted strop from Tony, so I was thinking a few passes on the various pastes to touch up the edge. FWIW, the razor does not pass the HHT, in fact it takes a fair amount of effort to cut a hair held across the blade.

Given this background, what are some suggestions of other things to try?

bonusmarple said:

I have been doing 2-passes on the cheeks for about a week. The end result, while some of the beard is going down the drain, the remaining stubble is still pretty thick. One pass WTG with my DE will leave less stubble. I have checked the blade angle and that looks good.

I have ordered a pasted strop from Tony, so I was thinking a few passes on the various pastes to touch up the edge. FWIW, the razor does not pass the HHT, in fact it takes a fair amount of effort to cut a hair held across the blade.

Given this background, what are some suggestions of other things to try?

Click to expand...

Send it out to be professionally honed!

Ditto!

+1

That makes three.

Yep, unfortunately it was sent to be honed. The state I am describing is the state it came in after being honed.

So, the consensus here is that it is a sharpness/dullness issue?

bonusmarple said:

Yep, unfortunately it was sent to be honed. The state I am describing is the state it came in after being honed.

So, the consensus here is that it is a sharpness/dullness issue?

Click to expand...

Yikes.... I would contact whoever honed it up and bring it to their attention.

Hi,
Have you stroped the razor each time before shaving and with what kind of strop? Sometimes you can round the edge of your razor while stroping. Also, what kind of pastes and strop did you order? His paddle strops are really great when your first starting as it's easier to keep all of the edge on the strop. Finally, at this point it won't hurt to play around with a pasted strop before you send it off to be honed again.
Best,
Red

Redhead said:

Hi,
Have you stroped the razor each time before shaving and with what kind of strop? Sometimes you can round the edge of your razor while stroping. Also, what kind of pastes and strop did you order? His paddle strops are really great when your first starting as it's easier to keep all of the edge on the strop. Finally, at this point it won't hurt to play around with a pasted strop before you send it off to be honed again.
Best,
Red

Click to expand...

Yes, I strop each time before I shave. I am using an Illinois #127 from classic. I ordered the 4 side paddle from Tony with the 3.0, .5, and .25 micron diamond paste.

joel said:

Yikes.... I would contact whoever honed it up and bring it to their attention.

Click to expand...

Yep, I think this is ultimately the right way to go. Mistakes happen.

I bought the 1.0/.5/.25 pasted strop from Tony. It works good but after the .25, I needed to strop on newsprint to smooth it out as it was too rough. After that it seems better.

Brad

bonus,

This shave readiness is an interesting and variable thing. I bought an old razor form an online friend who honed it for me before shipping it. The razor arrived in perfect shape and I shaved with it the next morning. It tugged and pulled a bit, so I touched it up on one of my "go to" hones and got a better shave the next day. The razor as sent had a wonderfully shiny and slick edge, but what works best for me seems to be a somewhat coarser edge which my coticule stone provides. I chalked up this experience to interesting idiosyncrasies. Beards seem to be as different as the skins from which they grow, so what one razor may easily shave may not so easily be done with another razor honed on a different stone.

That being said, most well honed razors should be able to relatively easily shave most beards. So, prep your whiskers well - lots of warm to hot water to soften the bristles - lots of good lather to retain the moisture and lube the razors passage - and use a gently applied razor that has been gently worked on a taut strop. Pay attention to the angle of the razor against the plane of your face: it needs to be about 30 degrees up from flat against your skin.

All that and things should be good to go -- a little bit more and the whiskers are gone.

Yeah, it's possible you may be holding the blade at too great an angle to your face.

I hear the 30-degrees number a lot, but for me it works better to hold the blade closer to 20 degrees for flatter portions of my face like my cheeks.

For curving portions of my face, like my chin, I treat it more like a 3-dimensional partial differential problem, trying to keep the blade at the tangent to the curve of my face at that point in that direction.

Hooray for 3-D calculus first thing in the morning.

As a quick update, I did a few laps on a pasted strop (.5 and .25 micron) and this produced an improvement in my shaves with the razor. However, I think there is more room for improvement so I am sending it off to Joel. Lets see where we go from here.

When you get it back, go light young man, go light! I was wondering how come I could really lean into the blade before I sent it out. Now I know!

Richard

riooso said:

When you get it back, go light young man, go light! I was wondering how come I could really lean into the blade before I sent it out. Now I know!

Richard

Click to expand...

Thanks! I know when I am pressing too hard when I look down and see my chin on the floor