Advice for a newbie

[RT83298]

I’m the proud owner of this very nice blue diamond straight. However I have a few newbie questions.

How do I find the right blade angle? I seem to be struggling with that.

And how achievable is learning to hone it myself? How often should this be done?

Thanks guys


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[Luecke2326]

First, Was this freshly honed before you received it?

 

[RT83298]

It was indeed. Just bought a strop


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[Luecke2326]

You can keep up an already established edge shaving very well with a pasted(CrOx or other paste) strop and regular stropping on linen and leather. Alternately, you could purchase a finishing stone like a Naniwa 12K which would work well every couple of weeks to touch up the edge, but really you only want to touch up your edge if you feel it is failing. I learned to hone very quickly and so can you, it just takes a little reading and watching of videos.
When you are new though, its best to start with a quality edge provided by a hone meister. YMMV

 

[Luecke2326]

Which strop did you buy? Photos???? I'm envious of that razor, my example has no gold wash.... Very pretty!

 

[RT83298]

It’s just an executive shaving 3 inch wide leather strop. Nothing fancy!


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[jmturley]

Blade angel will come with practice. Just remember the spine should be closer to your face (about one spine width away).

Learning to hone can be done, it’s not as difficult as people like to pretend it is. Yes there are a lot of options, but find what you like/can afford and go with that. But, if you already have a nice shave ready razor you won’t need to hone for a while, unless you really want to. However, you should learn on something else and not your main razor that is already shave ready.

 

[Bbb34]

As a "general" rule, with the blade against your skin, your spine should be 1-2 width of the razor away from your face. So, anywhere from 10-30 degrees is what you're looking for. Depending on your razor and your comfort level this number is not exact, and of course will vary, but you'll quickly find what works.

It's a lot easier to feel you've gone too far away (scraping instead of cutting hair) than it is to find absolute perfect angle.

As for honing, I can't give you advice on that, but if your razor is indeed shave ready, assuming you know what you're doing when stropping (I didn't when I started, and that's normal I guess) you should be OK for at least 10 shaves. A lot longer if you were more experienced, but I found that I was wrecking edges a lot more when I was just learning, through combination of wrong angles and bad stropping.

Take your time and enjoy, just read a lot and watch couple of videos online, you can learn a lot from those.

 

[Twelvefret]

I have been using a SR for three months. In that time I have learned to hone and strop. Follow these steps.
Newbie Honing Compendium