honing question, please help

Hello,

I am new to straight razor shaving. I have a DOVO 5/8 silver steel which I got new a few weeks ago. I have been attempting to hone it myself using a Norton 4k/8k, and stropping using a dovo leather/linen strop. From the start I have been able to shave with the razor without cuts etc, but not really my entire face. In the beginning the razor would pull quite a bit and would just completely stick in my chin hair. Then I began a series of 4 honing attempts. The first attempt I just did five full passes on the 8k side and I got no result. The second I did two passes 4K, 5 passes 8K and also had no result. The third I did 7(I think) passes on the 4K, 5 more passes on the 8K and by the time I was done shaving I had the worst shave yet I think. Today I tried the pyramid and did passes 4k/8k in this order: 3/3, 1/3, 1/5. My shave today was better (and my technique is surely improving) but the razor still pulls, especially when I tried a second pass accross the grain and it doesn't cut that well even on the first pass. I shaved my entire face but it's not smooth or at all even. I do think the razor is sharper but I want to sharpen it more and I don't know what to do next. Could one of the experts here please help me out with some advice on how to continue on my own?

I am new at this and I have a million other questions but I figured I would just start with this post. I have been reading the forums here and they have been of great interest to me. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

-------Michael

A new razor is so tough to learn on especially with a Norton. The Norton is a great stone and I highly recommend it but it should be used to learn with an old ebay special, if you can find one cheap anymore. They are very fast cutters that produce rapid overhoning in the hands of the uninitiated. I always tell people who are learning to hone to practice on an old razor and send your new razor out to someone who already has it down pat. You'll know what keen is and what to shoot for when you practice honing on your old razor. If you would like someone to hone it for you I'd be happy to, just pay shipping both ways. Send me a PM if interested.

Chris

Thats a great deal, and great advice. EL knows a lot about honing. Seeing an edge honed by a master is great.

Chances are it might be overhoned. It develops a wire edge which breaks off or bends while you shave, leaving it duller than before honing. Usually several passes on a pasted strop will take care of it.

When I was in your position, years ago. I got so frustrated with my new expensive razor I thought I would teach it a lesson. What happened was that I hned it with more aggression. Not longer but with more pressure. Lo and behold after stropping what a shave.

The steel used in new razors can be much harder. Usually, the ebay oldies are softer steel.

I've always used japanese waterstones of 8k+ grit for honing - although I have tried much coarser stones for utterly blunt blades. I've always maintained a 40 stroke minimum for honing, using even pressure. I found the trick to be the maintaining of the angle, keeping the back and edge in touch with the stone without bending the blade - if you do the angle goes and the blade rounds. I never use paste on the strop - mind you, my strop is so well used it's like buffed shoes anyway! Might be worth giving this method a try.

Hello M.

I think that your honing problem might be due to several factors: first of all, is your razor All Stainless Steel? If it is, you might be in a bit of a bind there. Since I do honing as a bit of a side job (I have another post on this), I do not offer to hone All Stainless Steel blades due to the difficulty in honing this particularly hard type of material. I have had the same type of disappointing results as well when trying to shave, the pull was so painful that I had to give up using these types of razors, even because no matter how hard I tried to restore the edge, I just could not get a decent one.

When I restore the edge of a Carbon Steel razor I first of all determine the degree of coarseness to start from. I use a series of sharpening stones ranging from a 300 (or even lower grit sometimes) grit to an Arkansas/Belgium cuticle type. A Carbon Steel blade lets itself to be honed relatively easily and the edge will restore itself with minimal effort. So, try to detemine what blade you have, if Carbon, you have an excellent chance of restoring a decent edge, however, by your painful description I am afraid you have an all Stainless Steel blade in your hands, and you are going to need a professional grinder to get the edge back.

If you don't have a Carbon Steel blade, try to buy one; you can find old Carbon Steel razors on eBay or even at little antique shops. The other day I bought an old Wilkinson Seven Days set at an antique shop in London and after removing the rust on some part of the blades, I sharpened the edge and within 15 minutes I was already doing my first shave with it! The Carbon blased were a bit rusted but after removing it and getting the blades through the entire range of sharpening stones I use, it sailed over my face effortlessly with no pull at all.

Cordially

Plenty of people have excellent results sharpening stainless steel. yes it may be a little tricker but it can be learned and has been by many, many shavers.

If you feel it is beyond your skills at this point there are plenty of guys here who will have no problem with getting it shave ready for you.

Tony Miller

Stainless isn't that hard to hone once you know how, but you probably shouldn't learn to hone on stainless. There's a lot more collected experience honing carbon steel than there is honing stainless, and stainless razors tend to be very hard so it takes longer to hone them, and a lot more chances for a mistake to dull your blade.

It's carbon steel. Silver steel actually but definately not stainless. I got it new out of the box, and it's the Dovo genuine ebony Silver Steel. As for the sharpening I have been working at it. I don't get much time to spend on it because of work and spending time with my wife so it's a slow process. The last time I tried honing it I think I really smoothed out the edge, and got pretty close to where it needs to be. The blade had a rough edge in parts and I corrected that. Most importantly I'm slowly improving my technique trhough practice and learning how to judge the razor sharpness. Eventually when I get another razor, I will get that honed first and then I can compare the two. In the meantime I have a Merkur HD on it's way from classicshaving. Another toy to play with.

-------Michael

My decision not to hone all stainless steel razors stems from the fact that I also do not sell All Stainless Steel razors. I would like to think that any of my customers would stand a decent chance of being able to sharpen/maintain the razor themselves.

Carbon steel blades can certainly be honed and sharpened by just about anyone wishing to do dedicate to this task a reasonable amount of time, effort and expense.

If I cannot sharpen a Straight Razor using a "reasonable" array of tools (and by this I mean at most a complete set of sharpening stones), I won't sell it.
I consider this merely a business decision, whether right or wrong, and I decided to stick to it; I apply this principle also to the maintenance of the products I sell.

If a customer desires to purchase a razor whose blade I know to be made of a particularly hard type of steel (some carbon blades could be harder than average due to particular manufacturing process the steel has been subject to), I will advise him accordingly. Most of my customers' enquiries come from first time Straight Razors users and I rather sell them a product I know they can maintain easily and independently from third parties support - including mine.


Cordially

Vincent Schwager

Tony Miller said:

Plenty of people have excellent results sharpening stainless steel. yes it may be a little tricker but it can be learned and has been by many, many shavers.

If you feel it is beyond your skills at this point there are plenty of guys here who will have no problem with getting it shave ready for you.

Tony Miller

Click to expand...

Hello Michael

since it's a carbon blade I am sure you stand an excellent chance of honing it yourself. Your Merkur HD should provide you with a good benchmark for judging the performance of your razor. To me, a straight razor is shaveworthy only when it matches the performance of a DE blade regarding

• shave smoothness
• number of passess required to shave any given area
• irritation caused

One of the trickiest aspects of honing a razor yourself is, besides having a steady hand and knowing when to stop, determining the starting grit of the hone to be used. In some of the razor blades I worked on, or in newly forged blades, it is necessary to start from Corundum, which has an hardness of the Mohs Scale of 9! I think it's naive to think that all razors could be honed by using just one or two grits, some really dull blades necessarily need to be completely rebuilt from scratch or even to go back to the grinding wheel. Incidentally, Corundum on Stainless Steel has almost a negligible impact, whereas on Carbon Steel you can easily rebuild slightly nicked edges in a reasonable time. If you haven't done so, I might suggest you purchase Lynn Abrams video http://www.classicshaving.com/catalog/item/523001/3712238.htm, a true tutorial to this noble art.

Vincent

mjsorkin said:

It's carbon steel. Silver steel actually but definately not stainless. I got it new out of the box, and it's the Dovo genuine ebony Silver Steel. As for the sharpening I have been working at it. I don't get much time to spend on it because of work and spending time with my wife so it's a slow process. The last time I tried honing it I think I really smoothed out the edge, and got pretty close to where it needs to be. The blade had a rough edge in parts and I corrected that. Most importantly I'm slowly improving my technique trhough practice and learning how to judge the razor sharpness. Eventually when I get another razor, I will get that honed first and then I can compare the two. In the meantime I have a Merkur HD on it's way from classicshaving. Another toy to play with.

-------Michael

Click to expand...

vschwager said:

since it's a carbon blade I am sure you stand an excellent chance of honing it yourself.

Click to expand...

What the #$%* kind of comment is that???? Stainless blades take longer to hone than your average carbon blade because they're harder steel, but they're not *that* much more difficult to hone, they just need more patience and a bit firmer hand on the hone. This has nothing to do with the stainless itself, it's all about the hardness. I've got swedish carbon blades that hone up like my friodurs, and a couple of carbon blades that are even harder steel than my friodurs -- now those are *really* a pain to hone.

You've said earlier in this thread that you don't hone stainless because it's too tough, then you said you don't hone it because you don't sell it (and implied that it's inferior), and now you're getting back around to the stainless-is-too-difficult-to-hone argument again. That is just complete cr*p. Get yourself a decent hone and realize that stainless takes a slightly different technique than carbon blades - not because it's stainless, but because it's so hard. Vintage carbon steel blades just aren't that hard compared to the more modern carbon steel blades like Wacker and Thiers-Issard.

BTW, is www.shaveshop.co.uk in your .sig your store? It looks a lot like Lynn Abram's store, only rearranged. You do realize that those Livi's are all stainless steel, right? So who's honing them?

I think that it might be underhoned and have a wire edge. I would first see what stropping reveals. Try 40 licks on the linen then 60 licks on the leather. Then test the blade with a hanging hair test. While this test is not the perfect test (i.e. Feather AC's will fail it but they are sharper than most straights) it will let you know if your wire edge (if it was there) is gone. Then I would be a little more agressive on the Norton. After it is soaked I would do 10/10, 5/5, 3/3, 1/5 then strop 30 licks. Then the hanging hair test. If your honing technique is light and smooth and covers the whole edge in each stroke, your razor should then be shaving sharp. As you probably know, the ultimate test is shaving with it not thumbnail or hanging hair.

vschwager said:

My decision not to hone all stainless steel razors stems from the fact that I also do not sell All Stainless Steel razors.

Click to expand...

Please explain. If the Shaveshop store you link to is indeed yours, you sell Maesto Livi razors. Mostly in ATS34. You do know that ATS34 is a stainless steel, right? And not only that, it became very popular as a high end knife steel precisely because it is particularly hard. It does of course depend on how it it treated, but most ATS34 knives I've seen were 59-61 range of hardness, which is pretty darn hard. Sometimes more.

Besides, this may be my lack of razors in particular showing through, but I do not get the assumption that stainless is always harder. Some stainless, like 420, is not particularly hard at all. The metals that make a steel stainless do not necessarily make it hard, as far as I know.... But maybe the stainless steels used in razors are generally harder than the non-stainless ones used. I understand this is true of Dovo, at least. But, on the other hand, it seems I remember someone saying that some of the TI non-stainless razors are just as hard.

Anyway, I am extremely confused by saying that you do not sell stainless steel razors. At best, it is hard not to conclude that you do not know a lot about your products.

-Mo

Edit: I just read MParker's post. Sorry to be redundant. But it looks like from someone who knows, that the claim that stainless is always harder is false.

Hello

yes, it is my store, and yes I do sell, ligittimately, Mastro Livi's razors only in the UK, and yes I do and can hone Mastro Livi's razors. I am sure that there are excellent All Stainless Steel razors out there, however, my primary concern is selling razors which can be maintained with a "reasonable" degree of effort and expense by the "average" customer.

The type of steel that Mastro Livi utilizes for his razors (ATS 34) lends itself to be maintained by using a pretty much "normal" range of sharpening stones and a strop. If ease of maintenance means that I deem a particular razor, for this very reason, to be superior to others, I guess it can debateable, but it's my opinion.

If your opinion is that certain particularly hard blades can be maintained by your average customer, that's fine with me. I have seen many razors sold on the web as "great shavers" only to find out that not even Corundum can put a dent on them. I also assume that the average customer does not have a grinding wheel at home.

Again, I am sure that there are quite a few fine hard steel razors out there, but I think it would be nice to have an agreed standard of maintainaibility for any given blade, which I feel is totally lacking (Bill Ellis has provided quite an interesting, and intelligent, method for "rating" his blades, on his website).

That's why I decided to only sell razors which guarantee an acceptable degree of maintainability - and Mastro Livi's (as well as some of other manufacturers) razors certainly do. But let's be honest, there are quite a few straight razors out there which are beyond hopeless when it comes to maintain them without having to send them to a professional for what should be "normal" maintenance.

Vincent

vschwager said:

The type of steel that Mastro Livi utilizes for his razors (ATS 34) lends itself to be maintained by using a pretty much "normal" range of sharpening stones and a strop. If ease of maintenance means that I deem a particular razor, for this very reason, to be superior to others, I guess it can debateable, but it's my opinion.

Click to expand...

I own a bunch of stainless razors and they hone up just fine on nortons, or barber hones, or arkansas stones, or shaptons, or pasted paddles, and strop just fine on my old Illinois and Bismark strops. Somewhere in there is surely at least one combination of hone and strop that you would consider "normal"?

I'm curious why you claim you don't sell stainless razors (but do sell livi's, all of which are stainless), and that you don't hone stainless razors (but do hone the stainless livi's), and that stainless razors can't be honed by mere mortals (but the stainless livi's can be honed by anybody).

Just askin', that's all.

Hello Moses,

ATS 34 is classified as Stainless Steel, but has a pretty high carbon content for a "stainless" - if only it shows mastro Livi's competence in choosing his raw materials.

To me, what it comes down to really is that razor blades made with ATS34 steel can be honed and maintained fairly easily (I speak from experience) - and that's that. This is a feature which is typical of blades with high carbon content. Of course I am generalizing, but I think that we need to be clear and realistic on the feasibility of being capable of maintaining a razor blade by using "only" a Norton or a Belgian cuticle.

I also feel that some razors should not even be put on the market unless with a label stating: Requires Professional Honing before using - and not even professional honing before guarantees that you are going to shave with it.

Cordially

Vincent

moses said:

Please explain. If the Shaveshop store you link to is indeed yours, you sell Maesto Livi razors. Mostly in ATS34. You do know that ATS34 is a stainless steel, right? And not only that, it became very popular as a high end knife steel precisely because it is particularly hard. It does of course depend on how it it treated, but most ATS34 knives I've seen were 59-61 range of hardness, which is pretty darn hard. Sometimes more.

Besides, this may be my lack of razors in particular showing through, but I do not get the assumption that stainless is always harder. Some stainless, like 420, is not particularly hard at all. The metals that make a steel stainless do not necessarily make it hard, as far as I know.... But maybe the stainless steels used in razors are generally harder than the non-stainless ones used. I understand this is true of Dovo, at least. But, on the other hand, it seems I remember someone saying that some of the TI non-stainless razors are just as hard.

Anyway, I am extremely confused by saying that you do not sell stainless steel razors. At best, it is hard not to conclude that you do not know a lot about your products.

-Mo

Edit: I just read MParker's post. Sorry to be redundant. But it looks like from someone who knows, that the claim that stainless is always harder is false.

Click to expand...

vschwager said:

To me, what it comes down to really is that razor blades made with ATS34 steel can be honed and maintained fairly easily (I speak from experience) - and that's that. This is a feature which is typical of blades with high carbon content. Of course I am generalizing, but I think that we need to be clear and realistic on the feasibility of being capable of maintaining a razor blade by suing "only" by a Norton or a Belgian cuticle.

Click to expand...

Vincent,

Ah. Very well. I am certainly not prepared to argue the merits of which steels are and are not easy to hone, since I have no clue. I can and do get a nice edge on my ATS34 pocket knives.

I think it was just the general blanket statement about "stainless steel" that was confusing, since you did not clarify meaning "most stainless steel" or whatever.

I leave it to the more experienced folks to argue about whether or not stainless really is hard to hone.

-Mo

Hello to all straight razor shavers,

I am certainly not doing this for the money, indeed as it regards the razors I might sell in the UK, I might be lucky to get up to a dozen a year - but I will be damned if I sell a razor that does not shave! I rather take it back and refund the money.

Again, I sell mastro Livi's ATS 34 Stainless Steel razors because this type of material lends itself to be honed and maintained "easily" - thanks to several of its properties among which we can list an unusually high carbon content for a stainless. There are a few other manufacturers out there who make excellent razors, I just happen to sell Livi's - that's it and everybody knows that.

I said I won't hone/sell All Stainless Steel, maybe there is a better definition for razors that cannot be sharpened by the "average" customer - I am open to suggestions.

I think it's important that prospective first time straight razors purchasers KNOW that certain razors are MUCH harder to maintain than others (when not downright impossible), not to mention that they will not even get a decent shave with it - I don't think it's too much to ask.

Cordially

Vincent

mparker762 said:

I own a bunch of stainless razors and they hone up just fine on nortons, or barber hones, or arkansas stones, or shaptons, or pasted paddles, and strop just fine on my old Illinois and Bismark strops. Somewhere in there is surely at least one combination of hone and strop that you would consider "normal"?

I'm curious why you claim you don't sell stainless razors (but do sell livi's, all of which are stainless), and that you don't hone stainless razors (but do hone the stainless livi's), and that stainless razors can't be honed by mere mortals (but the stainless livi's can be honed by anybody).

Just askin', that's all.

Click to expand...