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Starting With A New Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
Today I received a couple more Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60 SRs direct from the manufacturer. The steel for these SRs was made in Japan, timber for the scales was grown in Africa and all manufacturing/assembly done in Taiwan. Each kit consists of a ⅞ (21mm) Dutch point carbon steel alloy SR, PU leather zippered case, 60mm wide denim strop with brass plated steel hardware and a 4g block of rare-earth cerium stropping paste. The kit on AliExpress costs about US$22 including free worldwide shipping.

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My intention with this kit is to use it following the instructions of the manufacturer, Titan. They state that the blade is sharp but may need some stropping on the supplied strop with the cerium paste to be suitable for shaving.

Having purchased 14 of these SRs over the past few years, including making a M7DS, I am familiar with them and they can be honed into very good shavers. I have never before followed Titan's instructions for preparing this model of SR. This thread will cover my progress with this SR kit using the Titan method.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I first wiped the factory oil from the blade and then thoroughly inspected the SR. The blade closed centrally.

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I found that with some pressure, the spacer could be rotated about the wedge pin. I fixed that with a couple of drops of epoxy glue. The pivot pin tension was just right.

Overall I was happy with the build quality of this SR.

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Then came the edge inspection. No light reflected off the edge so maybe the bevel is properly set.

Like I do with all SRs that I receive, I next performed a Sharpie test. Three light laps on 9μm lapping film showed all was looking good except that there was a very fine secondary bevel right on the edge on both sides. I have come to expect a compound bevel from most factory edges of mass-market manufacturers, be they European, Chinese or Taiwanese.

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The final thing to do before working on this blade was to see how the edge cut. The blade is sharp, it shaved arm hairs. When trying my chest-hair test, the edge would cut the hair but there was a very noticeable pulling in the hair before it cut. Definitely not even near ready for shaving.
 
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rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I decided that this SR was going to be a keeper so before starting to work on it, I applied three coats of beeswax to the insides of the scales. This was done to assist in "waterproofing" the timber. I also waxed and polished the outsides of the scales with beeswax six times. Again this is done to better "waterproof" the timber but it also gives the timber a lovely warm semi-gloss finish. Another advantage of applying beeswax to the outsides of the scales is that it enhances the grip of the SR.

Now to start with the stropping. The strop is 60mm wide and has a usable stropping length of about 300mm. It is made of a double thickness of light denim with a smooth seam down the middle on one side.

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As per Titan's instructions, I applied a very light amount of cerium paste to the non-seamed side of the strop. The instructions stated to apply it at mid-length of the strop, full with and about 50mm long. The amount I applied was enough so that it could just be seen under a good light. Here it is applied, the area above the red line.

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After application of the paste, I stropped the spine of the SR on the pasted strop about 30 times with plenty of pressure to spread the paste along the full length of the strop. This was done to were I could not see any paste on the strop, no matter how hard I looked.

As I had never stropped with paste before and knowing that this SR had a compound bevel, I used a Sharpie pen to paint the bevels both sides. I wanted to see the progress of my pasted stropping.

Now the heavy work begins. I normally strop using about double the weight of the blade as pressure, holding the strop taut enough so that there is almost no noticeable deflection. For this initial pasted balsa stropping of this SR, I decided to use about three time the pressure and still hold the strop taut enough so that I would see no noticeable deflection.

After 200 laps (not a typo) I noticed about one third of the bevel length was ink free on the bevel farthest from the edge. Another 400 laps had all of the ink off the bevels except for one spot on either side. A final 200 laps (800 in total) had all the ink removed from all the bevels for the full length.

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I finished my pasted balsa stropping with 200 of my normal light laps. The edge is now tree-topping my chest hair at over 10mm from the skin without any feeling of the hair pulling.

Tomorrow morning will be the big first-shave test.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
First shave this morning with this SR straight from the manufacturer and only "honed" on hanging denim pasted with cerium oxide - never touched a whetstone, lapping film or diamond pasted balsa. I did my normal preparation and three-pass shave; WTG, XTG+CdM and XTG in opposite direction.

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Bearing in mind that I have a well developed SR shaving technique, the resultant shave was a little surprising to me.

First pass (WTG) went well and the shave was similar to what I would get with a normally honed and balsa stropped edge. The exception was that I needed to increase the shave angle slightly to get that similar result.

Second pass (XTG+CdM) was again similar to a honed and balsa stropped edge except that the CdM required noticeably more pressure against the whiskers to cut. The closeness of the overall shave on this second pass was also not quite as close as I would normally get.

The third pass (XTG opposite direction) went well and tidied things up. The finished result was almost on par with what I would get with this blade normally honed on whetstones, films and balsa. Overall, I would class this blade's edge to be about as equivalent as one honed entirely on lapping films to 1μm.

I would recommend this Titan set to a beginner on a tight budget who does not have access to a good honemeister. They would of course need to put in the work on the cerium pasted denim strop to get the edge to a reasonable level of shave-ready.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
In this trial I will now do two things. With the second Titan set, Iwill hone it up as normal but stop at 1μm lapping film. Then I can compare the two edges, one off cerium oxide paste and the other off the 1μm film. I will also keep keep stropping the pasted edge SR on the cerium about 100 laps before each shave to see if there is any edge improvement.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
Your love of all things SR is inspiring. So too is the method that Titan came up with to maintain their razors. Perhaps stones are not needed after all.
Thank you.

The cerium oxide paste may be no better or worse than other stropping pasted. It is just that I wanted to see how Titan's method of getting one of their factory-edged SRs to shave ready worked. If it works, their UD$22 kit could be something for a beginner to consider, depending on their budget and circumstances.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
Yesterday evening I honed up the other factory new Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60. Like its twin, it had a compound bevel so I honed it to a single bevel each side on a 400 grit whetstone. I then proceeded as I normally do. Preliminary bevel set was on 1k and finished the setting on 3k. Then to 8k before the lapping films, finishing on 1μm film.

This morning I shaved with the 1μm film finished Titan using the same prep, soap, lather etc.. The result was that I found the 1μm film finish to be slightly better to shave with than the cerium oxide paste finish.

I will now put the 1μm SR away. For the next few days I will shave exclusively with the cerium(IV) oxide (CeO2) paste, refreshing the edge after each shave on the pasted denim strop, until I notice no further improvement for two shaves in a row. I will then again shave with the 1μm film finished Titan to compare again.
 
It sounds like the compound bevel grind was the culprit, I don't mind shaving off of a 1micron film at all. Have you checked the bevel angle on these, I seem to remember some of them are 18 degrees or more?
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
@APBinNCA, I just measured the 1μm Titan. It has a bevel angle of 17.4°. The bevel angle of the CeO2 Titan is a moot point with its original compound bevel that is now rather convex.

The older Titans with the stabilisers generally had a design bevel angle of 18° to 19° or even a bit more.

Personally I have found little to no difference in shave quality with various bevel angles from almost 20° to under 15°, all else being equal. It's all in the honing and finishing. More obtuse bevel angles tend to be more forgiving to operator error while the more acute bevel angles have a shorter edge life. That is why I generally recommend a bevel angle of about 17.5° to 18.5° for beginners.

If a beginner later wants to try a more acute bevel angled SR, he may do so once he has his basic SR shaving technique developed.
 
Thank you.

The cerium oxide paste may be no better or worse than other stropping pasted. It is just that I wanted to see how Titan's method of getting one of their factory-edged SRs to shave ready worked. If it works, their UD$22 kit could be something for a beginner to consider, depending on their budget and circumstances.

You've shaved enough to answer a judgement question after a shave using Titans method. The question is... is this a viable way to enter SR shaving? Can you have a moderately shave ready edge without a newbie going to an experienced honer? I'm not asking if it's on par with a method edge, or other quality edges from known SR finishing hones. Does this get you far enough toward that end that it's a viable method?
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
@5whiskey, with the limited information I currently have, my preliminary observations are that the Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60 SR for about US$22 (March 2023) including denim strop, cerium paste and free worldwide shipping, is suitable for a beginner in traditional SR shaving. He/she will need to properly paste the strop and strop the razor many hundreds of (or possibly more than 1,000) times to get a reasonably good, and acceptable shave-ready SR. This stropping actually took me about half the time (½ hour) I needed to hone the twin Titan SR (1 hour).

I would recommend this SR setup to a beginner who has one or more of these constraints:
  1. Budget.
  2. No ready access to an experienced SR honemeister.
  3. Unable or unwilling to initialy learn honing (also not recommended for a beginner).
The Titan T.H.60 is probably not an SR that an experienced SR shaver would want to shave with for the rest of his/her life but is one of the more economical ways to introduce yourself to the art.

For those who are interested, here is a link to the listing on AliExpress.

Please note that the SRs pictured in the listing show a stabiliser. These SRs now come without a stabiliser. Also the cleaning cloth is no longer included. The SR is offered in three models, all with the same blade; XMHW has mahogany timber scales, 251 has ABS plastic scales and HYM has blackwood timber scales.
 
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He/she will need to properly paste the strop and strop the razor many hundreds of (or possibly more than 1,000) times to get a reasonably good, and acceptable shave-ready SR. This stropping actually took me about half the time (½ hour) I needed to hone the twin Titan SR (1 hour).

Great info' -Is this amount of stropping on leather/denim or pasted balsa ?
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
Just out of curiosity I measured the design bevel angle of the cerium oxide stropped SR. It is also 17.4°, the same as the honed SR.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
@Mitzie, I am only testing the CeO2 stropped Titan SR with the gear that it came with, nothing else is used. The SR came with a 60mm wide denim (only) strop and 4g of cerium oxide(IV) stropping paste.

All stropping on the CeO2 stropped SR is done on the denim strop pasted with CeO2. I am not game to strop the SR in the "clean" side of the denim strop as it has a flat seam running down its full length.
 
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rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
With such an angle and the quality of the steel it might be best to hone without tape?
There is no "honing" being performed, only stropping on a CeO2 pasted denim strop. I never use tape unless there is a definite need for it, like;
  • have to remove a lot of metal before bevel set and wanting to protect the spine,
  • wanting to reduce a bevel angle if the steel quality cannot support the blade's design bevel angle (very rare), and
  • Honing a wedge or near-wedge but only if absolutely necessary.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I just noticed that I performed a very similar test to the above in August 2022 reported here:

I had forgotten all about it. This current test is producing better shaves. Must be the extra stropping laps being performed due to me inking the bevels before I started stropping. That helped show me what was happening near the edge.
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
Have now completed six daily shaves with the CeO2 stropped SR. Between each shave, the SR was given about 250 laps on the pasted denim strop using normal (about twice the blade mass) pressure on the strop and hold the strop taut enough so that there was almost no noticeable deflection. No other stropping was performed. No further paste was added to the denim strop during this progression.

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The first four shaves showed improvement with each while the last two showed no improvement. Tomorrow I will do a comparison shave with both the CeO2 blade and the 1μm blade.
 
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