Cartridge to R41 to Cut-Throat

[Jakebullet]

Shave 87 and 1 on the Gold Dollar after a final (I hope) 20 laps on the CrOx.
Used the very reliable Proraso Green today. Now the thing at last feels smooth everywhere, but while nearly perfect atg on my top lip it could just be a tad sharper.
The razor is now very sharp, shave ready and extremely usable but I just want that extra tiny bit of extra sharpness to tackle the thick hair for bbs on the top lip then it’ll be perfect.
The edge is now a mirror.
Back to the CrOx for 25 laps and see what tomorrow brings.

 

[Jakebullet]

Shave 88 and number 1 on the Gold Dollar since I gave it another 25 on the CrOx.
Lathered with TOBS Sandalwood Soap. I’ve spent the last week wrestling with the edge of this razor. I have 3 others shave ready and on stand by in my box but I’ve been working on this one as a sort of project so I can learn how to bring back a lost edge on my own.
Yesterday’s shave was so close to being right that I thought that just another 25 strops on the CrOx should seal the deal.
How annoying then when this morning’s shave, while sharp, close and smooth enough was stingy and not as sharp and close as yesterday’s! Have I overshot the mark a little? Have I rolled the edge a bit? Have I over honed it and made it crumbly? Or was I just off form? I’m ruling out the form option as I think my technique is reasonably reliable now. I’ve got no way of knowing which of the other options (if any) may apply.
In future when I’m close like that I’ll just increase the CrOx or film in 5 lap intervals so I have a better idea of what results I’m getting. I ordered a progression of lapping films the other day so if all else fails I’m going to try resetting the bevel on this thing and building it up from scratch.
My concern for now is that tomorrow I intend to use my Hanckels Friodur 7/8ths. 8 shaves ago I gave it 10 laps on 1 micron lapping film, no CrOx. It was sharp anyway but this made it sharper but still not Uber sharp. So when I was having success dialling my Gold Dollar In I decided to give the Henckels 25 laps on the film and 25 on the CrOx. I used a pretty new piece of film and there was quite a lot of grey material left on the film which is rare for me. I wasn’t too concerned, but after finding out that I’ve overcooked the Gold Dollar today im concerned I may have done the same to the Friodur although it got nowhere near the amount of hone time that the dollar got.
I’ve come away for the weekend for a break with my girl and our 3 year old and I’ve brought the Friodur with me so I’ll find out how I did in the morning. I’ve also brought my Thomas Turner & Co. Annoyingly, in the rush to get away today I’ve forgotten to pack a strop. Looks like I’m going to have to try using newspaper and see how I go with that. I’m only away for 3 nights so if I switch razors I’ll only have to strop one of them once.

 

[Jakebullet]

Shave 89
1st on the Friodur since I have it 25 laps on 1 micron film and 25 on CrOx on the rough side of my strop.
Well my fears seem confirmed as this just didn’t feel great today. It didn’t feel all that smooth and it didn’t cut all that close. My own personal test for smoothness and sharpness is atg on my top lip. Only a sharp blade will cut that wire and I can tell how sharp or blunt something is by how much it does or doesn’t struggle there.
Well this was sharper than yesterday’s Gold Dollar but not as sharp as it was before I messed with it. I’m going to give it another try before I mess with it any further. If I don’t feel an improvement then I’m a bit lost as to what to do next.
Should I leave it and hope it somehow settles with use? Or should I take it back to the 1 micron film? The last time I honed it in film it was smooth but this time I used CrOx. Maybe my face doesn’t like the CrOx edge?. Or maybe it needs more polishing on the CrOx?
It’s still shave ready so I’m not panicking yet but it’s certainly challenging to get things right and find a refresh method which I’m confident in.

 

[Jakebullet]

Shave 90
I used my Thomas Turner & Co 5/8ths today. I think this is about the 5th use of it since I gave it a refresh on about 7 laps on CrOx over a month ago.
This was my first razor, the one my girl bought me for Christmas . It’s always given me smooth shaves, it just seems to like my face. Plus I haven’t messed with it recently as I have my Gold Dollar and Friodur. For the last two weeks I’ve been experimenting with honing with mixed success and I’ve hardly had a great shave in all that time. But I have been learning. But today I wanted to be reminded what a great edge and a fine feels like.
Lathered with TOBS Eton College and got going. This razor is really smooth and really enjoyable to use. Wtg was lovely, xtg I could definitely feel less tugging than I’d been used to and atg it was lovely and sharp and smooth. No touching up today, just a cold rinse and splash of Proraso Green which barely stung at all today. I last refreshed this on a small piece of CrOx which came with a strop I bought. I’ve done all my recent honing and refreshing on a different CrOx, a big bar which I bought ages ago.
I rubbed it all over the rough side of my 3 inch strop. Is it possible that the big bar isn’t as good quality stuff as the little one? Is there a way of getting the CrOx off the strop or should I just buy another?
Or is it that when refreshing this razor I only used 7 or 8 laps on the CrOx as opposed to the 25 laps I’ve been hitting the razors with recently? Tough to know.

 

[Jakebullet]

Shave 91
I stropped the Friodur 100 times on some folded newspaper and gave it another go.
Again TOBS Eton College as it’s all I brought with me. I think this cream is a little thick for me it leaves a fair bit of slickness but I find say, the thinner Proraso allows better blade contact.
The shave was maybe a touch smoother that the last use and I was a little more precise and careful too. My mind has lately been more on honing and less on refining and polishing my actual shaving technique. Today I was more deliberate and attempted to get close and smooth, to use smaller strokes and to stretch more. I thought it went quite well and it dragged less and felt smoother but when I splashed on the Proraso green my cheeks caught fire and I left the bathroom with bright red cheeks looking like I’d been hammering the whisky since birth. A few hours have now passed and most of the redness has gone and my face feels very smooth. I’m going to keep using this, my thinking is that I did too many laps on the film and the CrOx and that it needs a few shaves to smooth the edge and bring it back into the ‘Goldilocks Zone’.

 

[Namkcakram]

Shave 90
I used my Thomas Turner & Co 5/8ths today. I think this is about the 5th use of it since I gave it a refresh on about 7 laps on CrOx over a month ago.
This was my first razor, the one my girl bought me for Christmas . It’s always given me smooth shaves, it just seems to like my face. Plus I haven’t messed with it recently as I have my Gold Dollar and Friodur. For the last two weeks I’ve been experimenting with honing with mixed success and I’ve hardly had a great shave in all that time. But I have been learning. But today I wanted to be reminded what a great edge and a fine feels like.
Lathered with TOBS Eton College and got going. This razor is really smooth and really enjoyable to use. Wtg was lovely, xtg I could definitely feel less tugging than I’d been used to and atg it was lovely and sharp and smooth. No touching up today, just a cold rinse and splash of Proraso Green which barely stung at all today. I last refreshed this on a small piece of CrOx which came with a strop I bought. I’ve done all my recent honing and refreshing on a different CrOx, a big bar which I bought ages ago.
I rubbed it all over the rough side of my 3 inch strop. Is it possible that the big bar isn’t as good quality stuff as the little one? Is there a way of getting the CrOx off the strop or should I just buy another?
Or is it that when refreshing this razor I only used 7 or 8 laps on the CrOx as opposed to the 25 laps I’ve been hitting the razors with recently? Tough to know.

It’s not just possible, but very likely that you have two different qualities of CrOx there.

With synthetics there is particle size and also particle size distribution/deviation. The particle size on a generic green CrOx crayon may be centered on .5 mu, but if the PSD is wide and sloppy you can still end up with and edge thats harsh.

Unfortunately nobody really openly advertises PSD, unless it is tight and a bragging point and in that case you may be looking at some highly specialized abrasive($$$) not really ideally suited for this application.

Why not just step your lapping film game up to .5 mu or .3 mu and compare results? I’ve seen lapping film down to .05 mu and I’d bet the PSD is much tighter and abrasive cutting action much more predictable on some fine lapping film than a generic chunk of green.

You may find you end up with what a lot of natural stone snobs say is a harsh/synthetic edge, but a lot of times that calms down and smooths with some time on the linen strop.

I try not to be a stone snob, but I think take your experiments away from the loaded strop and push further with edge leading honing and you might like what you find.

 

[Namkcakram]

Also forgot to say you can usually clean a strop off with something gentle like dawn or simple green and let it dry if we’re talking normal linen.

Also also my first was a Thomas Turner that needed restored and I sent to Bob Kees. It needed significant rust removed from the cutting edge so I sent a 6/8+ full hollow and ended up a ~5/8 not quite full hollow with a wider than normal bevel angle, but Bob did a killer job and when I nail an edge it shaves as smooth as the high dollar blades you see people rave about. It has become my honing tester now because of the bevel geometry mixed with good steel.

Normally I’m a stickler for a bevel angle around 16*, and my understanding is most gold dollars are around or even over 20*. That’s not ideal, but it makes a gold dollar a great honing pig because what yields a great shave at 20* in trash steel should yield a slightly better shave at 16* in nicer steel.

 

[Jakebullet]

It’s not just possible, but very likely that you have two different qualities of CrOx there.

With synthetics there is particle size and also particle size distribution/deviation. The particle size on a generic green CrOx crayon may be centered on .5 mu, but if the PSD is wide and sloppy you can still end up with and edge thats harsh.

Unfortunately nobody really openly advertises PSD, unless it is tight and a bragging point and in that case you may be looking at some highly specialized abrasive($$$) not really ideally suited for this application.

Why not just step your lapping film game up to .5 mu or .3 mu and compare results? I’ve seen lapping film down to .05 mu and I’d bet the PSD is much tighter and abrasive cutting action much more predictable on some fine lapping film than a generic chunk of green.

You may find you end up with what a lot of natural stone snobs say is a harsh/synthetic edge, but a lot of times that calms down and smooths with some time on the linen strop.

I try not to be a stone snob, but I think take your experiments away from the loaded strop and push further with edge leading honing and you might like what you find.

Thanks for the help and suggestions I had a strong feeling that the 2 CrOx’s I was using were very different, one was much harder and took a lot of time on the blade whereas the other was softer and did a great job in 7-8 laps. I think you’re right in what you advise in that faced with such inconsistencies in the product it’s probably best to sidestep it all together and stick to the films. At the minute I only have 1micron film for my touch ups but I’ve just ordered a range of them the smoothest being 0.5 micron so it’ll be interesting to give it a go. Would you recommend taking it straight to the .5 or taking it back to the 1 micron first?

 

[Namkcakram]

Thanks for the help and suggestions I had a strong feeling that the 2 CrOx’s I was using were very different, one was much harder and took a lot of time on the blade whereas the other was softer and did a great job in 7-8 laps. I think you’re right in what you advise in that faced with such inconsistencies in the product it’s probably best to sidestep it all together and stick to the films. At the minute I only have 1micron film for my touch ups but I’ve just ordered a range of them the smoothest being 0.5 micron so it’ll be interesting to give it a go. Would you recommend taking it straight to the .5 or taking it back to the 1 micron first?

Well I’m pitching in what I know of abrasives from education and experience, but I’ve never honed a razor on films so I’m hesitant to make a recommendation. I’d say a few laps on a broken in piece of 1mu can’t hurt. It’s also hard to say without knowing how you strop on your abrasives, some people leave a strop slack so the bevel may be convexed a little more than it would be with a taught strop/less pressure/no abrasive.

Do you use any kind of fluid when you’re honing or just hone dry on the films? If you have a fluid there you can make slow passes and judge the “undercut” to try and make sure you’re honing to the true edge and not just nearly to the edge. If you’re not sure what undercut is, just watch how the fluid acts at the edge of the blade during a slow lap and you’ll be able to tell if the cutting edge is fully on the stone or if it’s just microscopically close.

If you’re honing dry just do a normal number of laps to reset the edge if you have a feel for that. I don’t buy into “over-honing”, it gets tossed around as a catch all to blame your abrasive or stone IMO. Reality is people probably over-honed their attention span and got sloppy, and plenty of abrasives are very unforgiving of a slight spine lift or accidental roll. If you got your edge polished down to a few hundred angstroms wide it only takes a tenth of a degree for a few MMs of movement to undo a lot of work.

Btw I’ve used lapping film to flatten Japanese chisel and plane backs, and to lap the surface of Arkansas stones to Guarantee the surface quality... so I’m not a noob, just never used this application. The PSD issue applies to normal sandpaper vs coarse lapping film. Sometimes it’s worth the outrageous cost for coarse lapping film just to know you won’t have a rogue big abrasive scratch in a surface. I buy mine from Woodcraft if there’s a store near you. My store carries down to .1 mu I believe but I’ve only bought down to .3mu.

 

[Namkcakram]

I’m gonna actually go slap some fresh .3mu on granite and test a razor on it for science sometime soon now because this thread has me curious.

 

[Jakebullet]

Thanks so much for all this tons of food for thought. When I was honing I noticed that the water which I spray on the film tended to gather towards the toe end of the blade and I wondered why. I hone on an acrylic block on top of my kitchen counter and wondered if the counter wasn’t flat. Im assuming the acrylic block is flat but I don’t know for definite. Anyway the idea that it could be symptomatic of my rubbish technique and areas of the blade lifting had only dimly occurred to me. I’ll slow down I think and pay more attention.
I too, wondered how it would be possible to over hone (although I had read of such a thing) so I’m glad to see it is likely a myth and another symptom of poor contact with the hone.

Shave 92 today and number 3 with the Friodur.
Last night I stropped it 30 times on linen and I gave it 100 on the leather. I slowed things right down and for first time in ages really focussed on doing it well. I kept the pressure really light and kept the strokes long and even and the edge in slow contact with the strop the whole way. Anyway this morning’s shave was a lot smoother and sharper feeling. Each day the razor gets a little better, I’m not sure what’s happening unless the CrOx I used left a badly aligned edge and the stropping and daily use is bringing things back together. Either way I’m thankful as today was a nice smooth shave with minimal redness and I’m hoping for better again tomorrow. A nice splash of Speick and not too much stinging.

 

[steveclarkus]

Not sure why water gathered at the toe but you will likely find it easier to hold the hone in the palm of your hand and the blade and hone will more easily find each other evenly. Also, when honing in your hand, it is a good idea to put a drop of oil in the pivot because water tends to run into it.

 

[Jakebullet]

Not sure why water gathered at the toe but you will likely find it easier to hold the hone in the palm of your hand and the blade and hone will more easily find each other evenly. Also, when honing in your hand, it is a good idea to put a drop of oil in the pivot because water tends to run into it.

Thanks a lot for the advice I’ll give it a go
Shave 93 today and 5 on the Friodur.
I lathered with Palmolive shave stick today, it’s great stuff I don’t know why I don’t use it more often. A great, instant, slick lather with a nice fresh scent and a brilliant soft post shave feel. All for £0.50p per stick! The blade continues to feel a little smoother each day. The further I get from the hone the better it feels. My face is still a little red but that may be glowing remnants of the assault of the last few days.
I’ve got exactly one week until I reach 100 shaves, I want to treat myself to a little shave related gift, maybe a nice soap or aftershave or something. Any suggestions?

 

[Clay S]

Thanks a lot for the advice I’ll give it a go
Shave 93 today and 5 on the Friodur.
I lathered with Palmolive shave stick today, it’s great stuff I don’t know why I don’t use it more often. A great, instant, slick lather with a nice fresh scent and a brilliant soft post shave feel. All for £0.50p per stick! The blade continues to feel a little smoother each day. The further I get from the hone the better it feels. My face is still a little red but that may be glowing remnants of the assault of the last few days.
I’ve got exactly one week until I reach 100 shaves, I want to treat myself to a little shave related gift, maybe a nice soap or aftershave or something. Any suggestions?

Matching soap/Aftershave.

 

[Namkcakram]

...
I’ve got exactly one week until I reach 100 shaves, I want to treat myself to a little shave related gift, maybe a nice soap or aftershave or something. Any suggestions?

I vote screw the frilly stuff, get yourself some hardware!

Never tried a gold dollar personally but IMO easiest razor to hone yourself is a Genco/case or one from Little Valley, NY. You can find shoulderless designs with decent blade life on eBay for literally $10.

Steel is soft yet takes a KILLER edge, and they come out of the box with a nice 15-16.5 bevel angle.

You can pay a lot more money but you can’t buy a better shave, and I think you’ll find you can really nail an edge on one of those before you manage to re create it on something tempered harder like a Friodur or something with a wider bevel angle like a gold dollar.

Or buy a nice vintage fire hose strop, get the smoothing effect of clean linen with more aggression and speed.

That’s just me though, I’m not into pre treat and stuff I’m in and out in 15mins at 530am and any aftershave will be sweated right off by 7am.

 

[steveclarkus]

There is a nice GENCO which I used to own with a Method edge for sale on
Razor*aficionado*brothers on eBay

 

[Jakebullet]

Great suggestions thanks a lot I think I’ll give one of those Genko’s a try. I looked on eBay, there are a lot of them on there, I don’t suppose you could send me the link to the one you mean with the method edge?

 

[Namkcakram]

There is a nice GENCO which I used to own with a Method edge for sale on
Razor*aficionado*brothers on eBay

What on earth is a method edge? One of those one size fits all honing recipes people push?

I’m sure it works great on a Genco, cause almost anything works great wether there’s a method to it or just fumbling around with a random finishing stone. They’re somehow not tempered very hard, but hold an edge well. It’s some kind of hillbilly magic.

 

[steveclarkus]

What on earth is a method edge? One of those one size fits all honing recipes people push?

I’m sure it works great on a Genco, cause almost anything works great wether there’s a method to it or just fumbling around with a random finishing stone. They’re somehow not tempered very hard, but hold an edge well. It’s some kind of hillbilly magic.

Newbie Honing Compendium

 

[Jakebullet]

I vote screw the frilly stuff, get yourself some hardware!

Never tried a gold dollar personally but IMO easiest razor to hone yourself is a Genco/case or one from Little Valley, NY. You can find shoulderless designs with decent blade life on eBay for literally $10.

Steel is soft yet takes a KILLER edge, and they come out of the box with a nice 15-16.5 bevel angle.

You can pay a lot more money but you can’t buy a better shave, and I think you’ll find you can really nail an edge on one of those before you manage to re create it on something tempered harder like a Friodur or something with a wider bevel angle like a gold dollar.

Or buy a nice vintage fire hose strop, get the smoothing effect of clean linen with more aggression and speed.

That’s just me though, I’m not into pre treat and stuff I’m in and out in 15mins at 530am and any aftershave will be sweated right off by 7am.

What do you use yourself to hone on?