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Quest for a competent straight shave.

A little experiment today to isolate the edge as a variable, from the rest of the equation.

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I tried this folding Feather Artist Club SR with the standard blade in it. I got a DFS fairly easily with the technique I have developed. I was worried it would dive into the skin and cut me, but I had no problems at all.

Obviously this blade is coated, and is going to glide better than any straight as a result, but it is also significantly sharper than any straight I have used, so the edges on my straights may be a place where I can find some improvement.
 
I stropped the Dovo 5/8 Prima 50 times on linen and 100 times on leather. It still feels pretty dull.

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In three passes, I got to about 6/10 SAS without much trouble to my skin, and then I finished up with a Star DE razor to get it to 7/10. Some irritation on the lip, but that was a combination of the Dovo and a mikd Vikings Sword DE blade.
 
First shave with this other 5/8 GSG Renewed Dovo, with the GSG shave ready edge.

It did reasonably well, but I would definitely be happier with a sharper edge. I am not sure what it takes to get that.

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While I don't like it in principle, the advice to start with the straight finish with something I am an expert using has served me well in practice. This is a great way to get experience with the straight, and a smooth irritation free shave in one go. Three passes with the straight was 6/10 great skin and SAS stubble. The Merkur and Wilkinson pushed it to a BBS 9/10.
 
I did my eighth straight razor shave today. I keep removing variables from the equation, but I just can't seem to get it right.

I have everything: a Feather AC Kamisori shavette, 2 Gold Dollars, 2 professionally honed Dovo 6/8th razors, a vintage Bohemian Boston, an Illinois strop, bench strops, all the diamond plates, synthetic and natural stones I could ever need, a strop made from a dress shirt sleeve, denim for more strops, Flitz, green chrome compound, bench strops.

A few shaves have torn up my skin, and the rest didn't remove a reasonable amount of my beard before throwing in the towell and finishing with a crappy shave or a DE razor.

I am taking my time, minding my angle and going to 30 degrees, stretching skin. Today, I couldn't actually get any part of my face smooth. I was using a sharp professionally honed razor. I used it yesterday, too. No stopping, then stopping. Yesterday was a disaster.

I have watched videos.

Someone said it takes 30 shaves to get competent. Is that a typical experience?

I am not looking for a miracle here, I just want to have a reasonably successful shave with a straight where the success isn't actually achieved when I pick up a Blackbird.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Sorry for the ramble. I am lost.
Geo says about 100 shaves I think. It takes time to build muscle memory.
 
So, if you have stones and a sharpness tester, you are a knife guy. Not a put down, many of us were/are knife guys, I am a knife guy who came to razors years ago chasing an edge.

If you can produce an edge with your stones but it will not shave, and you can shave with a shavette, the likely problem is stropping.

Not uncommon at all. Stropping is more difficult to master than honing. It can take a full year of daily stropping to “master”, (get to a point where you are improving the edge with each lap on the strop).

It is also not uncommon for a new honer/shavers to roll an edge on a perfectly honed razor in a single lap.

So, first remove as many variables as possible, buy a new quality strop, that you can replace the linen and leather. New stroppers frequently nick their strops.

Vintage strops are full of soap, blood, rust and years of airborne dust, well rubbed deep into the linen and leather with a dirty hand.

Learn to look at the edge with magnification, straight down on the edge, if you see any shinny reflections, those are micro-chips, were the bevels are not meeting or a rolled edge. For a new honer, usually all three.

Many a knife guy have had the exact same issues you are having, thinking, “how hard can it be, I can sharpen a knife?”

The goals are different and the edge is much finer that most knives. And it can all be literally, wiped out in a single lap with a strop.

You must first find a test for the Whole Edge to ensure that the bevels are meeting fully from heel to toe. Hair test and your sharpness tester, test only a tiny fraction of the edge. The visual edge examination tests the whole edge. Once you can see the problem, you can fix it.

Your learning curve is totally normal, you are not alone.

Sharp is easy, keen and comfortable, is the trick.
 
I tried to model my honing of this over honed junker frederick reynolds after the Science of Sharp simple straight razor honing. I started with Naniwa Chosera 800, then shapton glass 8k, then flitz on denim. I skipped the .25 micron diamond because it isn't here yet. It is pretty Sharp, looks good at 120x, but isn't ready to shave yet.

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Finished up with Feather AC.
 
That's a pretty huge jump.
Yeah. Naniwa is a funny scale and scratches were nearly gone, but I could put a 3k chosera between them. I was thinking to go to the Naniwas pro 12k or best surgical black after the shapton glass 8k and skip the flitz on denim. I just am not sure what us better, how many strokes stroke direction if I do. My freshly flattened Naniwa 12k seemed to make a rougher edge than the Shapton 8k before, too. I have since hit the 12k with a kitchen knife to burnish it a little.
 
My freshly flattened Naniwa 12k seemed to make a rougher edge than the Shapton 8k before, too. I have since hit the 12k with a kitchen knife to burnish it a little.
After your 8k, you should only need to use 5-10 strokes on your 12k. Pressure and a large lap count will likely just ruin the edge at this stage.

These soft Naniwa stones work best freshly lapped. Any embedded swarf from a knife will just reduce the performance of the stone.
If you have any visible swarf at this stage the problem is not the finisher.
95% of the edge is established as early as 5-6k.
A straight razor should be significantly sharper then a Feather blade if that is what you are shooting for. The Feather blades bevel angle is 19-20 deg. A straight razor at 16 deg will have a potential to cut with less effort then a manufactured blade.
 
First and foremost let's address the single most important factor in any shave...Prep. Are you shaving after a fairly long, hot shower? If not, try shaving immediately after a 10+ minute shower just to remove this variable. I like to directly place my beard into the water's path every 60 seconds or so.

Beyond that, 30 degrees is a rough suggestion for WTG passes that should be seen as just that...a circumstantial suggestion. With straights and shavettes I shave WTG around about 26-29 degrees and around 20-24 degrees for X/ATG. One of the advantages of a straight is blade angle variability and not being locked in.

Another thing... sometimes you'll hear "apply only the weight of the razor", which, frankly, I found to be bad advice...or, at least, a over generalization. I'm sometimes apprehensive to state this because I don't want people to go too far with it, as there IS certainly such a thing as too much pressure, but it's absolutely not anything more than "the weight of the razor".

Use short overlapping strokes and make sure your lather is very, very wet. If used lather isn't falling off your razor occasionally then your lather is too dry. If your lather can form and hold "peaks" it's way, way too dry.

Are you Is your edge decent? How many home meisters have you tried? Could be the edge is not as shave ready as you think.

Or....you might be like me in that only shavettes provide comfortable shaves due an absurdly coarse beard and traditional straights simply not being able to get and stay sharp enough regardless of how much they're stropped, but this is unlikely. I only know one other person this applies to. I'd wager you'll be able to get there if you keep practicing and experimenting.
 
Oh, I don't think I am overestimating my edges. I am very open to the idea that the Feather AC is the only shave ready edge I have actually tried.

I haven't tried a true straight edge that I can say was certainly good, so I am not really qualified to say where any of them are on any reasonable scale.

None of the GSG shave ready edges seemed very sharp to me. They were more like barely sharp enough to get the job done. Not in the same ballpark as a Feather. Were they done properly or poorly? I really don't have the relevant experience to say.

It is possible that everyone shaved with edges like that 125 years ago. They are functional. It is possible that enthusiasts are shaving with edges like that today. All of my own edges are worse. I haven't tried anything better. I just don't know.
 
None of the GSG shave ready edges seemed very sharp to me. They were more like barely sharp enough to get the job done. Not in the same ballpark as a Feather. Were they done properly or poorly? I really don't have the relevant experience to say.
Since all your reference edges were honed by the same person, it would be worth sending one to someone else to get a different perspective, in my opinion.
Yeah. Naniwa is a funny scale and scratches were nearly gone, but I could put a 3k chosera between them. I was thinking to go to the Naniwas pro 12k or best surgical black after the shapton glass 8k and skip the flitz on denim. I just am not sure what us better, how many strokes stroke direction if I do. My freshly flattened Naniwa 12k seemed to make a rougher edge than the Shapton 8k before, too. I have since hit the 12k with a kitchen knife to burnish it a little.
What stones do you have in the 1 to 5k range? Personally I would want one, probably two stones between the 800 and the 8k. The other thing, since you have an 8k and a 12k, I wouldn't bother with the SoS method at all, just do edge leading strokes through your progression. Not sure what's going on with the 12k, I lap mine every time I use it. 10-15 laps at the most is the ticket if the prior work was done well. What did you lap it with?
 
Oh, I don't think I am overestimating my edges. I am very open to the idea that the Feather AC is the only shave ready edge I have actually tried.

I haven't tried a true straight edge that I can say was certainly good, so I am not really qualified to say where any of them are on any reasonable scale.

None of the GSG shave ready edges seemed very sharp to me. They were more like barely sharp enough to get the job done. Not in the same ballpark as a Feather. Were they done properly or poorly? I really don't have the relevant experience to say.

It is possible that everyone shaved with edges like that 125 years ago. They are functional. It is possible that enthusiasts are shaving with edges like that today. All of my own edges are worse. I haven't tried anything better. I just don't know.
I shaved with shavettes for years (mostly feather SS) before trying traditional straights. I kept sending different razors to different people with different stones and pastes before I finally realized that traditional straights will just never be as sharp as the feather AC blades that I had grown accustomed to. I can shave my head with them just fine, but not my hard facial whiskers... especially the goatee area.nnThat said, they can still get sharp enough for most people, and it's much too early to assume it's not just your edge/technique/other... though I doubt it's entirely your technique if you can get good shaves with the much more demanding feather AC.

I would try another hone meister and ask them to strop the razor for you so there's no opportunity to hinder the edge between getting it back and the first shave and and see what results you get before troubleshooting further
 
I have accumulated a decent selection of razors, so I just reached out to @Steve56 about honing one of them.

Between the Naniwas Chosera 800 and the Shapton Glass 8k, I have only the Naniwa Chosera 3k.

I am not making a bunch of assumptions about how the edges should be. I know they aren't going to feel like a Feather, I know they should be able to produce a socially acceptable shave, and I know that my limited experience is not enough to say whether anything I have tried between the two is bad, good, great, or anything else.
 
One thing that seemed to help a lot today was three days growth.

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Careful stopping, 25/50 on both razors may have been a factor as well.

1 pass down using my over honed Sheffield, which I honed twice yesterday, since the first attempt could barely cut arm hair. On the longer stubble, it produced a socially acceptable shave above my jawline, but failed to remove stubble below the jawline.

I switched to the GSG Renewed Dovo 5/8, and got a DFS in three more passes with some touch-up.

Finally, I cleaned things up to a DFS+ using a new coated stainless Personna blade in my Gem Junior.

Drippy lather the whole time, but I was actually lathering like that before I started straight shaving. I have never gone for that Barbasol straight from the can lather. I do like Barbasol, but dripping wet like everything else.

Anyway, my honing and shaving are coming along, but honing is more difficult than I expected it to be.
 
You’re making good progress. It takes a while for everything to come together but you’re well on your way. Just stick with it and don’t forget to look back once in a while for some perspective on how much better your shaves and edges are than when you first started.
 
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