Intro costs

[superpacker]

So, I am not sure of this is in the right part of the forum, if not, hopefully the mods can adjust it, and I extend my apologies. I am the OP for the "is this sanitary" post. I was surprised at how much a response it got. It was so helpful, and sold me on a vintage straight. It was sad and funny at the same time when telling my wife about my vintage razor concern she said, "you let dentists stick the same tools as everyone else in your mouth don't you?" The point came across.

So my next question is about set up. I have not idea if I will be bit by the bug and start collecting and restoring. But right now, my plan is to fight hard. I really am a one kinda guy. I have one brush I love, one razor I love etc. So I would really like to by one simple and quality straight and baby it forever. So in addition to a razor, if only one is purchased what else do I need? I know I will need a strop. But, what about stones/hones? If it is shave ready, do I need one, or is better to just send it to a honemeister once and a while? Do I need the big North 4000/8000 or just a barber hone. It seems like straights can add up the money quickly. what is the simplest way to set it up for the maintenance of one razor

 

[Fnord5]

The Norton 4/8k is OK, but getting a higher grit(Chinese 12k/lapping film/thuringan) will give you a much better edge.
Member Kees has thuringans for sale, not sure of prices, but I can recommend the actual stone. They work great.

So, bare minimum is:
Straight.
Strop.
Touch up stone(thuringan/Chinese 12k)
Possibly a pasted strop instead of a stone, which will stretch actual time between honing.

But in this world of straight shaving, cost is irrelevant.
You will buy more.
Then you will buy hones.
And rusty ebay blades that you will want to try and restore.
And other strops.

And then, you will notice the customs.
Bill Ellis.
Maestro Livi
Robert Williams
Just to name a few, and you will lust after them, and think of things around the house you can sell to acquire one.

Your best bet, is to buy the best right away, because if you like Straight shaving, you will be getting the best anyway, and if it isn't for you, you can make all your money back on the BST.

 

[Leche]

Unless you are doing restoring you can have one high grit (over 10K) to do touch ups. A barbers hone would also work here. You can also make a paddle strop out of balsa wood and abrasive paste like Chromium Oxide, diamond paste, or pastes from Dovo or TI. Buy a strop from Tony Miller. It will be beautiful, highest of quality, and last forever. Buy a practice strop with it and learn on that.

 

[leighton]

Usually I don't disagree with Fnord, but this time I disagree a little.

Bare minimum is:
Razor
Old leather belt and/or newspaper.

Optional things that make life a **** of a lot easier:
Leather strop (pretty cheap, you can get one for $20 or so)
Paste (either cromium oxide or cerium oxide) & balsa wood for touching up the razor when its dull. - $10 at most.

 

[Doc4]

Ultimately the decision is to hone or not to hone. How much will honing cost you? Yeah you probably want a Norton 4k/8k, and something finer to finish. You also want a plate to lap the stones from time to time. The finishing stone is where you run into money problems or not, depending on your choice. The Chinese 12k is pretty inexpensive.

Not to hone ... you mail out to honemeisters from time to time. Even with pasted strops, eventually you have to. Assuming $30 per honing (including your shipping costs) or about $150 for the various hones to do it at home ... if you send it out twice a year* you are at the break even point in three years. After that, honing it yourself is "free".

Of course, there is the question of whether or not you feel "up" to honing.

* numbers are rough estimates and not precise. How often the razor needs honing depends on many factors of steel and face and stropping technique.

 

[Fnord5]

Usually I don't disagree with Fnord, but this time I disagree a little.

Bare minimum is:
Razor
Old leather belt and/or newspaper.

Optional things that make life a **** of a lot easier:
Leather strop (pretty cheap, you can get one for $20 or so)
Paste (either cromium oxide or cerium oxide) & balsa wood for touching up the razor when its dull. - $10 at most.

Well, yeah, I guess that is the minimum minimum.

 

[superpacker]

I just remembered that my grandfather had lots of differing grits of knife sharpening stones. i don't know if they are the same, but would it be worth taking a look through these?

 

[Fnord5]

Likely he did not have anything of a high enough grit for a straight razor.
However, you might get lucky, so go check them out.
Some things to look for:
Barber hones usually have a, "embossed" maker name

And the Thuringans usually look like this:

 

[gugi]

Get your razor honed first. Then learn how to keep it sharp, which is much easier than honing it in the first place. Norton 4k/8k would work (Lynn's recipe is 2-3 strokes on the 4k side and 5-6 on the 8k side). 3-20 strokes on a finishing hone should work just as well. Or on a pasted strop.
As long as you use very light touch and don't wait until your razor is too dull this is easy. And there's always the option to send it out until you learn to do it yourself.

The better your shaving and stropping the less often you'll need a hone. Canvas is essential for this.

Not to hone ... you mail out to honemeisters from time to time. Even with pasted strops, eventually you have to.

I'm not quite sure this is true. There are people who have not honed their razors for years.

 

[leighton]

While it is theoretically true that eventually the paste will create an appleseed edge, the amount of time it would take is unknown. I estimate many many years. Its .5 micron paste after all, how fast can it cut?

 

[Leche]

While it is theoretically true that eventually the paste will create an appleseed edge, the amount of time it would take is unknown. I estimate many many years. Its .5 micron paste after all, how fast can it cut?

Would this ever happen with a paddle strop?

 

[superpacker]

So if I'm understanding properly, If the razor is properly honed, I can just strop it every time I use it, and the once and a while touch the edge up with a high grit stone? Will a barber hone work just fine for this? Will I still need to send it out ever? What about a double sided barber hone? Does that give more options?

 

[leighton]

Would this ever happen with a paddle strop?

Yes, the substrate that the paste is applied to is flexible, even though the underlying wood is hard. Would not be as pronounced as a hanging strop though. Does an appleseed edge make a razor unshaveable? I don't know, like I said it would take a damn long time to appleseed an edge and I have no personal experience. Can't tell you how appleseeded the edge would have to be to make it uncomfortable either. Its all theory. But at some point the edge would get too obtuse for comfort.

 

[leighton]

So if I'm understanding properly, If the razor is properly honed, I can just strop it every time I use it, and the once and a while touch the edge up with a high grit stone?

Exactly.

Will a barber hone work just fine for this?

Yes.

Will I still need to send it out ever?

Not unless you roll the edge or otherwise cause damage to it.

What about a double sided barber hone? Does that give more options?

It has two grits. Not sure what you mean by more options. A double grit stone just has a coarser grit and a finer grit. The finer grit is what you finish on and the lower grit helps shave the edge if the finer grit is too fine to reshape the edge in an economical number of strokes.

 

[superpacker]

Not sure what you mean by more options. [/QUOTE]

I guess by more options I meant I could come closer to doing "full" honing work with out investing in the more "complex" stones and sharpening work.

 

[leighton]

I guess by more options I meant I could come closer to doing "full" honing work with out investing in the more "complex" stones and sharpening work.

no.

 

[The Knize]

Yes, the substrate that the paste is applied to is flexible, even though the underlying wood is hard. Would not be as pronounced as a hanging strop though. Does an appleseed edge make a razor unshaveable? I don't know, like I said it would take a damn long time to appleseed an edge and I have no personal experience. Can't tell you how appleseeded the edge would have to be to make it uncomfortable either. Its all theory. But at some point the edge would get too obtuse for comfort.

I thought I knew this stuff better than I apparently do. I can certainly guess, but what would you say an "appleseed edge" is exactly? Wonder where that particular terminology came from. How many of us these days have a good sense of the properties of an appleseed other that sort of small and roundish!

Re honing: Having had some experience with honing but not a huge amount, my sense is that the experience and frequent use of the skills of the honer means a lot, and that there is more to it that simply putting blade to pasted strop or to stone, so that lack of experience and or frequent doing it makes it harder to do properly. My experience is probably pretty lame and non-typical, but as an utter newbie to straights in every respect, I seem to have, with a lot of fooling around, and over time a good deal of time, brought a DA up to shave ready, used basically balsa paddle strops pasted with chrome oxide and a .25 diamond spray, respectively. Probably a miracle, I know, but I read a lot and was real careful. I have other straights now that were "professionally" honed. But I find that even in "touching up" any of my razors now on the same balsa paddles (which actually seem pretty good to me), with the long time between doing that, that I am not as adept at it as I was previously. I just do not do it often enough to gain and retain much skill or knowledge at it.

It seems to me, that even putting the fact that if I honed razors all the time, I could justify truly excellent stones or whatever, and I am sure that they by themselves would make a difference, I cannot imagine that honing thousands of razors on the course of the years and say dozens or so a week (how many does a typical honemeister do in a week anyway) would not enable me to do something very special to the edge of a razor compared to what the average consumer can do, at least without a huge amount of time, intensity, and effort. I mean we are talking about thinks like setting bevels, and making blades that have some curves in them be not only as sharp as possible, but also as smooth and even as possible.

Folks new to straight razor shaving talk on these fora all the time about how much trouble they have getting any sort of reasonable technique down in the beginning. I do not even know that my shaving technique is all that great. But I imagine that if I had only used a straight to shave say once every six weeks, that my technique would be horrifying. Is not the same going to be true for honing?

I am not saying that touching up a razor is the same as a full bevel re-set, or that the rank amateur cannot do an okay job of touching up at least for quite awhile before taking the razor to a pro. Or that care, time, and attention cannot overcome of the negative of lack of experience--but who among us is likely to take that time and care every time over the long haul?

Am I far off here? A perfectly honed razor is a wonderful and very special thing, and I am in awe and have nothing but the deepest respect for the person that has developed handiwork-type skills, because in my experience "it is only what one does not know how to do that looks easy" re these kinds of things.

I suppose there is always a continuum re these things and part of it is how good a job one wants done, how much it costs, and I guess how much fun doing it oneself is. I do shave my own face. Should I have that professionally done? Probably not. But should I cut my own hair? Don't really know. Probably a question not asked frequently enough for fear of what would be said if the answer turns out to be "no," after the activity is DYI. However, I am pretty sure I should not be filling my own teeth or doing my own natural gas piping installations! Heck, it was not always true, but at this point I probably should not be swinging a hammer with respect to anything that should end up either pretty or strong, or both!

 

[ambrose]

I would say pick up a TI le grelot , TM strop, and lapping film.

Although this set up is not the most cost effective at first. You will see that this is a great set up to really last you a long time with out making you want to spend any additional money. Ultimately an investment like this will save you from future spending.

 

[leighton]

I thought I knew this stuff better than I apparently do. I can certainly guess, but what would you say an "appleseed edge" is exactly? Wonder where that particular terminology came from. How many of us these days have a good sense of the properties of an appleseed other that sort of small and roundish!

Think of how an appleseed looks and that is the cross section of the edge. Its rounded at the sides with a tip on the edge. It came from either swords or knives. Gives the edge the benefits of a more obtuse angle, while keeping it thinner right at the edge. Benefits don't exactly translate into razor use.

 

[superpacker]

If Tony Miller strops are everything everyone says they are and will last a lifetime if I don't junk it up, maybe I should buy one and a leather belt from the thrift store and work on that till I get good so I don't mess up the TM?