Thread: Professionally honed? Then why the trouble?

Everything I've read so far suggests that I should have a razor, or two, professionally honed to be able to judge what a 'shave-ready' razor is like. Well, I just got two back and have shaved with both and am wondering where the miraculous shave is.

To be honest, I just started straight shaving in Sept., only to start a beard in November. I trimmed the neck w/ my straights the whole time, but now that I lopped it all off and tried out my new 'shave-ready' razors, I'm a little dissappointed. Am I that out of practice?

Prep? hot shower. Pre-shave oil. Nice hot lather. Short strokes down the sideburns (which had already been clipped short). The razor seemed to miss HALF the whiskers! Humility demands that I re-evaluate my technique, but honestly, I don't remember my shave being this challenging. Could the razors not have been honed enough? What SHOULD I expect?

Did you strop them?

Who can tell ? Is it the razor, your technique ..... or the lack ? Not trying to be a smart guy but ...... it is impossible to tell whether it is one, the other, or a combination of the two. I would suggest contacting the honer and asking for a redo. If you had another razor that was working for you to compare to it would be easier to figure out whether it was one thing or another.

Yes, it is possible that the razors were not, as they say, honed completely to perfection. But as Jimmy said, it's hard to say if it's the razor or you. I say strop the hell out of it and try shaving a couple more times. If the results are still less than stellar you may want to sent it to a honer for evaluation.

Send one of them out to someone else to hone; while you are chasing the perfect shave,, learn to hone yourself.
Its actually quite fun.

My point was,perhaps,if you stropped them,they were fine prior to,just sayin.

Maybe there is another member in your area willing to give one of your razors a try?

Generally your razor will get a shave test (not an entire shave, just a test) by the guy doing the honing before it gets shipped back to you. If they thought the edge was substandard it would have probably gotten re-done. So, while it's not impossible that you got less than great honing I would revisit your technique; particularly in the areas of prep and angle of the blade while shaving.

Having said that, we don't know who did the honing (please don't post any names), so hopefully you picked one of the better known guys with a proven track record. That should minimize the actual honing as a variable.

I'm not all all certain as to what might cause your less than stellar shaves.

As the previous posters have already stated, it could be because of a number of reasons really.
A less than superior edge being but one of them.

That said, I do know how I fared my first couple of months..
I got my very first straight honed by some dude named Lynn something or the other.
I found it less than optimal to say the least.
I put that thing away and kept practicing with my Feather disposable and a couple others I had acquired.

three months later I returned to my Dovo, and wow, that thing was indeed most ready to shave

I'm not trying to put you down or anything.
This story was told just to give an impression of what kind of a learned skill the sport of straight razor shaving is!

Get in contact with the honer, see if you can have him redo the honing on it, just to rule that out of the equation.
Then, try your darndest to focus on prep, angle, stropping, stretching and what have you, and I'm sure you'll see improvements as you go along.

Good luck mate and keep us posted on your progress.
This community, I'm sure, will help you out in any way they(we) can

Another thing is that if you evaluated the shave after only a WTG pass, you might have been deceived. I don't get much except beard reduction from the WTG pass. I don't worry about it because I know I can finish the whiskers off with a subsequent ATG pass. After my WTG pass there are plenty of shortened whiskers left, and I can feel them. I know my razor is sharp, and that is confirmed by the good results on my ATG pass. Some may get great results from the WTG pass. I certainly don't get much more than beard reduction. If I evaluated only the results of my WTG pass, I might then question the sharpness of my edge. But I know it is shave ready, so I just attribute the remaining whiskers to the limitations of a WTG pass. That's why we do more passes.