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McVeyMac's Straight Razor (and other traditional wet shaving) Adventures

dkeester said:
Nice shave. Good luck with the progression. I hope the results you get are better than you expect.
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Dagwoodz said:
Great recovery shave this morning, Walt. Looking forward to how the ark progression turns out when you decide to finally tackle it!
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clyde72 said:
Nice read and shave Walt!

Will be interested to hear how the progression works out.
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dangerousdon said:
Thanks for sharing Walt!
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Thanks for the Ark encouragement. Might take a while to get through everything I have planned, because life is pretty busy. But I am committed to really get these stones mastered and understood. I have some great shaving razors off of them, but I feel like it was more luck than a purposeful design. I want to be able to feel through the blade when it is ready to move on to the next stone, and so on. That requires a lot of time with steel to rock.
 
Today I went back to the same razor as yesterday, and the result was almost as good, but not quite. One problem spot on my neck just did not get as smooth. I think it was likely user error, so I think I have to repeat tomorrow.

On another matter, months ago when I was incorporating maintenance honing on my 2x8x1/2 Black Ark, I started doing it without stropping the razor after the shave. I have since changed up this practice to include 30 laps canvas/50 to 60 laps leather on my Tony Miller Heirloom prior to taking the blade to the rock. This makes sense to me because if the apex of the bevel is slightly deformed due to the shave, and I take the blade to the stone, part of the blade that is deformed will be over worked while the opposite bevel will be under worked. I'm not sure that this provides for a better result in practice, but in theory I feel better about doing it.
 
McVeyMac said:
Today I went back to the same razor as yesterday, and the result was almost as good, but not quite. One problem spot on my neck just did not get as smooth. I think it was likely user error, so I think I have to repeat tomorrow.

On another matter, months ago when I was incorporating maintenance honing on my 2x8x1/2 Black Ark, I started doing it without stropping the razor after the shave. I have since changed up this practice to include 30 laps canvas/50 to 60 laps leather on my Tony Miller Heirloom prior to taking the blade to the rock. This makes sense to me because if the apex of the bevel is slightly deformed due to the shave, and I take the blade to the stone, part of the blade that is deformed will be over worked while the opposite bevel will be under worked. I'm not sure that this provides for a better result in practice, but in theory I feel better about doing it.
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From what I have read here in the various journals, on other sites, and seen in videos it seems like honing is more art than science. Especially when it comes to natural stones.

That being said, stropping the razor before taking it to the stones just seems like a good idea. That way you can make sure the razor is in the best shape you can get it before putting it to the stone.
 
Great reads. I fully expect you will get the stones figured out before you know it.
 
I thinking stropping between progressions is a good thing. And stropping before the maintenance stone makes sense.
 
This morning I had time to chase a bit, so I decided on a complete three pass shave with a little water cleanup. The hardware was the 6/8" BRW Barber's Notch. I normally do not strop pre shave as I usually just shaved with the razor the day before, but today I elected to do so as it has been a number of shaves since using it.

The shave was smooth and spot on for all passes. I almost gave myself some weepage above the lip, but it turned out that I must have stopped in a nick of time with the aggression on the third pass. The result is a complete BBS with BBS+ in most areas. During the maintenance honing on the final 10 water only laps, I think I might have raised the spine just a micron as the bevel began to bite on the stone slightly. I was completely bummed as I felt it as I will likely have to start over with this razor. Arkansas stones are unforgiving of even a suggestion of raising the spine during a honing pass, and that was all this was, a suggestion.
 
Congrats on what sounds like a really great shave. Sorry about the honing process...it never feels good when you have to start over on something.
 
dangerousdon said:
Congrats on what sounds like a really great shave. Sorry about the honing process...it never feels good when you have to start over on something.
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Well Don, I will shave again with it tomorrow to make sure, but it did not feel good.
 
I'm wondering if I have been raising the spine (unknowingly) during my surgical black passes. I've heard the same thing about them being completely unforgiving in that regard.
 
cmh737 said:
I'm wondering if I have been raising the spine (unknowingly) during my surgical black passes. I've heard the same thing about them being completely unforgiving in that regard.
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I think you would know it if you did it Chris. It is a blood curdling vibration that comes through the blade that gives you that "oh crap" feeling. I am hoping that there was just a bit of a foil that folded under and broke off, but I sort of doubt it.
 
Good stuff Walt. I'm looking forward to reading more of your honing thoughts. Out of all the natural stones there seems to be more mystery surrounding the Arks than any other, and they seem to require an almost preternatural sense of touch in order to really feel the interaction between stone and steel.
 
dkeester said:
Nice shave. Bummer about the honing mishap.
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Thanks Doug.

Smattayu said:
Good stuff Walt. I'm looking forward to reading more of your honing thoughts. Out of all the natural stones there seems to be more mystery surrounding the Arks than any other, and they seem to require an almost preternatural sense of touch in order to really feel the interaction between stone and steel.
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It does take a lot of time to really get the feel. That is why Keith Johnson instructs us to hone every day until we are sick of honing, then hone some more.
 
Great couple of shaves Walt!

Hope the edge was damaged.

I'm enjoying your observations on the Arkansas stones.
 
Today I shaved with the same 6/8" BRW that I had the outlier honing stroke on yesterday. I will say that the razor did feel a little more tuggy at 1/3 of the heel side of the blade, but all in all, it was not terrible. The shave was actually a full BBS, so the result was the same. It is just that the same smoothness and comfort level was not up to par with the day prior. Crisis averted I guess.

I essentially doubled my maintenance honing on this blade today in order to see if things could be smoothed out a bit, so I did about 60 to 70 laps. I have incorporated what I am now calling the Dave finish method which is hone on straight Smith's for a bit, then dilute with water by about 50% or more, then hone on water only. During the water only strokes is where I see something strange with this stone. The water beads up on the stone, and during the water only honing, I am essentially pushing a bead of water across the stone. The stone will not wet, and I never get it to "stick" as Dave calls it. Today was a little different though. When I began the water only, I was as always pushing around a bead of water with no stone wetting. Over time though, the stone did appear to wet over the length of the stone, but only in the center 1/4 of it.. My larger bench stones do not behave this way and wet across the entire surface to a large degree. The reason for this difference is unknown to me. It might be because I did maintenance honing on this smaller stone in my den using lather for about 6 months. The lather I used for this time was from my homemade shaving soap. I do know that this soap was formulated at a 5% superfat, meaning that 5% of the fat in the mixture was not saponified. It could be that over the six month period, the excess fat in the soap soaked into the stone enough to create a hydrophobic surface to the stone. Whatever the cause, this is my observation.
 
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