New to straight razor shaving

D

doriandk

Joined
Jul 18, 2011
Messages
23
I've decided to give straight razor shaving a go. The razor I purchased to start with is a Dovo Best. I joint the Straight Razor Place forum last night, but haven't received the confirmation email yet, and want to ask a couple questions before I begin. Hopefully someone here can get me going in the right direction. The Dovo best comes supposedly 'shave ready' but from the reviews I've seen they need honing.

My question is what is the best angle to set the bevel? How refined does the edge need to be? I am pretty good at putting an edge on knives and have a blade sharpening business on the side. But I've never dealt with a straight razor. I have an Edge Pro with Chosera stones to 10k and balsa strop with 1 micron diamond spray and a Hand American leather strop with .5 micron diamond spray.

Am I good to go with that? Do I need to get equipped to go down to a quarter micron? Then plain leather? Or is .5 micron enough? And again, what is the best bevel angle? Any help in getting me going is appreciated.
 
The angle is set by the thickness of the spine. You hone the razor with the spine on the stone. Some prefer to apply a piece of electrical tape along the spine to avoid spine-wear, but it is not necessary. You should be fine with the grits you have. I've had great shaves off an 8K stone, but usually finish on chromium oxide paste. Once you get the basics down, try different options and see what works best for you. There are some decent vids on youtube for honing. Lynn Abrams, and I'm sure others are worth watching. Enjoy

Jordan
 
Absolutely DO NOT hone your straight razor freehand. The way to hone a straight razor is to lay it flat against the hone so that the razor's bevel and spine are contacting the hone. Then you pass the razor along the stone and also perpendicular to the length of the hone in order to ensure that the entire length of the bevel is making contact with the stone. The objective, and the hardest part, is to keep the blade FLAT on the stone. Don't accidentally lift up in any direction.

Also, you want to finish on a stone that's 8k grit or finer in general. As for the electrical tape thing, I find that honing without it until I'm done, and then afterward finishing with a few passes on my finest stone WITH tape gives me best results.

It's difficult to describe all of this on a forum. The best thing you can do is watch a few videos online, and then you'll have to refine your method from there.

Since your razor is brand new, you might be able to get away with stropping with green compound or finer. You want to strop on bare leather before each use.

Just put the edge pro away! Knife sharpening and razor sharpening are pretty different. I actually find sharpening knives much easier.
 
[video=youtube;snHgx37bANY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=snHgx37bANY[/video]
 
Yes, I agree with THG. Knives are a chip shot to sharpen compared to a razor. With a knife your getting it just sharp maybe nice and sharp whereas with a razor your getting it as sharp as one possibly can. Not necessarily polished. I use 2 or 3 layers of tape on my straight all the time. This gives me no spine wear and the angle I like. Plus, mine has only an 1/8" spine. For the final: I come off a x-fine Spyderco ceramic stone, on to a loaded strop w/ green slurry .5u (not always), on to a plain leather strop then to newspaper (w/photos) folded around the last stone. I may strop 50, 80 or 100 strokes on each of these. This gives a Really good shave. DM
 
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