Thread: A plea to any experienced shavers in the lower mainland for help

So I kinda decided to make this a huge post about a bunch of different things instead of polluting the forum by starting a bunch of new threads. So first I'm going to start out with a picture of my set up, I have a 5/8 Dovo best quality, Edwin Jagger best badger brush, Merkur 33c safety razor, and finally Crabtree and Evelyn sienna shave soap. So here's what's going on I'm about 30-40 shaves in with the straight, and things are going fairly well. Up untill I've been going with 2-3 WTG passes and leaving it at that, a couple of days I tried my first XTG pass with my straight, something I guess I wasn't ready for cause I got razor burn like a hadn't experienced since my first shave with a safety razor almost 5 months ago. I'm thinking it was an issue of having too steep and angle, just need to flatten out the blade a little more maybe do a second WTG pass first to take the hair down a little more. My second issue is the blade I'm hopping this picture will show what I'm talking about the grind is not even on both side just wondering if that will effect further honing. Finally I know my stropping sucks there is a concave to leather of my strop, maybe 1.5-2mm which seems to create a problem keeping the strop taught pronounces the concave shape and prevents me from keeping even pressure across the blade and releasing the strop tension is inevitably going reduce the time between honing. So here's my request, if there is any experienced shavers in the lower mainland of B.C. who would be willing to test shave my razor, tell me if I'm doing more damage that good with my flawed stropping technique, possibly give me a little stropping lesson and if you are feeling really generous with their time help me paste one side of my webbing strop so I can do a little upkeep on my razor in between honing



cheers
-Omid

After 30-40 shaves and nothing but stropping, I'd say your egde is ready for a touch-up for sure!
Hey I noticed my razor getting duller after 6 shaves, and got more burn because of it..

Like Blix said, a touchup is probably not a bad idea, especially if your stropping is not up to par. The grind should not interfere with good honing, it is not an uncommon thing for razors to show some difference from side to side like that. The bump in the strop, you could take some sand paper to the spot and smooth it out. I'd recommend using as fine a sand paper as possible, perhaps start at 600 or something to remove it, and then going over it with finer grits to smoothen it thoroughly.
While waiting for someone in your area to pop in, take a look at this great stropping video by AFDavis11, it taught me a lot.
Also, there is a great tutorial for pasting a strop right here.
I wish you best of luck and hope this helped some, while waiting for some hands-on tips from one of your locals.

Send your blade to be re-honed by a pro and you will be in business. While you are waiting on it to return, you may find a stone to touch up your edge. A good barber hone or Naniwa 12K would do the trick. If you aren't ready to try touching up a blade you should have two blades so that you will always have one on standby.

Secondly, you should watch the pressure you are applying to the blade. If a blade is dull, it gives us a tendency to apply more pressure to make it shave closer...all we are doing is damaging our face...thus the razor burn.

Keep at it and you will get it...
Scott

There are a few Canadian guys that can Hone for you... Maxi comes to mind
I am just south of Creston in Idaho not sure how close you are...
Also in Sept we have an area meet in Spokane Washington, that if you can make, I promise you will learn more there, than in a year of Reading about it
The link to the meet up info is in my Sig Line also there is a link there for the Alberta meet which you might look at to see who is near you...

I'm in the Lower Mainland, but I'm not an "experienced shaver" -- only about 1 year of experience, and about 20 razors. I've sent you a personal message.

Charles