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differant razors

garyhaywood

Well-Known Member
I've honed on my coti nu 3 at least 60 times on differant or the same razor using dliucot method . I have honed up my kropp which i will use in carousel and my racoon german razor i have honed these two with the same methhod in the past thew weeks as they are my experimental razors along with a couple more. I have found that they all shave no problem pass hht realy well this is with out paste btw.The shave of the kropp is very smooth just like my john clarks and son which bart has shaved with. My racoon has a differant feel as in not quite as smooth feeling. i have rehoned so many times even on differant coti and the shave was exactly the same great shave just not as buttery as my kropp. So i wonder why this is ? is because the steal just varys from razor to razor? or is it my honing? I have repeated so many tomes on racoon but the razor never seems quite as smooth as my kropp its got to be the steel? Its not rough its just not on parr with some of my other razors. My mate tim i'm sure he said he has a kropp and it was one of the best shavers he has i'm sure he will coment.Has any one else experianced this and is it due to differant grains of steal?
 
This one razor I have just doesn't come out the same as the others. I have to use paste on this one to even get it popping hairs before going to the strop. It shaves nicely, but it just doesn't turn out the same. I think it's stainless steel, not sure if that matters though.

I think I'll try honing it again soon; my honing skills have increase since the last time I honed it.

Justin
 
I have found that some razors hone easy and others are hard work, I only have 1 new one out of the 8 I use in my rotation, the others go back up to 200yrs, and I believe that the newest is the easiest to Hone, its a Dovo Best 6/8 full hollow, and a joy to use and maintain, as far as shave performance goes I have found that obviously the better honed a razor is the nicer the shave, I think what Gary is getting at here is the VERY subtle differences between different blades, with experience and skill levels as high as His you can rule Honing differences out, yet still I think you will find no 2 razors shave quite the same, same make and model, made by the same dude on the same day, and you will I think, if you really split hairs..lol! find a very subtle difference when it comes to the shave, I think that apart from different blade set ups, sizes etc, this is 1 reason we all end up with a favourite Razor.
 
i think your right ralfy I must have had 30 plus razors at one point i mainly brought them to compare. I now have just 10 plus 4 older ones for playing around with. I have had many brand new dovos i'm sure the meterial makes a differance. Plus i'm a little picky i realy aim for super smooth now where as at one point i was just happy if my razors did'nt pull. I have duble duck cost me a bomb but they are smooth. As for stainless steel and all the hipe that they are harder to hone and not as smooth i find them realy smooth i have a dovo micarta and that thing glides throught stubble so does my 6/8 puma inox. In fact one of the cheapest razors i brought was a wapi and boy do they shave well. I find shefield steel to be very comfortable/I found TI paste is the only thing that works for real smoothness on my TI's .
 
There is so much variations with straight razors that I can safely say “that’s why they are so interesting”. And this is especially true for vintage razors.
In those old days, most of the manufacturing was labor intensive, from the making the steel, to forging, heat treating, grinding and handling there was bound to be some variation along the production line… in fact it was very common.

There are a few things to take in consideration
Check the blade size VS the spine width. 5/8th to 6/8th should be around 3/16 inch. 7/8th to 8/8th should be around ¼ inch….
For example, you may have a blade that is 6/8th with a spine a little less than 3/16th inch when ideally should be a little over 3/16 inch. This makes the bevel angle lower than normal resulting in an edge that is “sharp” but thin for the hardness of the steel. When the edge meets the whisker it may buckle just before cutting through the whisker. This is not true for all blades, but it’s something to take into consideration. If you think this may be the reason you may want to reduce the size of the blade by a 16th and then reset the bevel. Most folks don’t want to make a blade smaller, but if the thing doesn’t shave well and you are confident about your honing skills then what choice do you have?... but removing material is “one-way” so you could try a layer or two of tape, reset the bevel, polish and test shave to see if it gets any better.

Some blades may have very hard steel and the edge will tend to chip easily (seen under microscope) when honing or shaving. You could try a different hone or paste and see if this makes a difference.

OK, so you may not have 1000 different hones (like some folks that hang out on other forums… no Ralfy, I am not calling any names), there is no shame if you send it to one of your comrades… two heads/hands/hones are often better than one (gee, I wish I had someone to send my problem hones for evaluation).

Last but not least… the steel may be one of those rare ones that was not heat treated properly at the factory, OR during the restore, was polished on a buffer and the temper is lost in a few places on the edge (it’s happened to me)… how to tell? It feels different on the hone. When the edge is dull, hard steel almost “slides” on the hone, but the hone will “grab” steel that has lost its temper… the effect better felt when the edge is dull than sharp.
How do I know? Polishing a razor with the Dremel on high speed, and noticed the steel was blued at a spot on the edge, I ignored it at the time and convinced myself that it was the old polish that stained the blade in that area, I quickly ran the wheel again over the spot and cleaned it up.
When it came time to hone, I could tell something was wrong, whenever that spot came into contact with the hone, I could feel the momentary “drag”. And when the razor was “shave ready?”, that spot never passed the HHT no matter how hard I tried… and I won’t bother to mention the shave.

Hope this helps some.
 
I agree with everyone. I have a Kropp which is the easist razor to hone and is smooth as silk. It shaves straight off a norton 8000 and shaves very well indeed. I get the same result off the coti - it has become my "comfort blanket" razor.

Other razors I have vary in results, some are easy to work with and some hard.

I have only one Dovo (Renaissance) the rest of my rotation came from car boots,the most I paid for these is 50p. So it shows that there are razors out there that are very servicable


At the end of the day I guess this is down to several factors, hone wear, age, type of steel, how they have been kept etc.

That is what I really like about this hobby - there is always a challenge

However what I can say is that I am still amazed with the results I am getting with a single stone
 
Thats just how i'd describe it tim smooth as silk dead easy to hone the kropp that is. i just put adouble bevel on my racoon and it is marginaly smoother still shaves great but compared to kropp not as smooth. Just diferant razors i guess.
 
Smythe said:
There are a few things to take in consideration
Check the blade size VS the spine width. 5/8th to 6/8th should be around 3/16 inch. 7/8th to 8/8th should be around ¼ inch….
For example, you may have a blade that is 6/8th with a spine a little less than 3/16th inch when ideally should be a little over 3/16 inch. This makes the bevel angle lower than normal resulting in an edge that is “sharp” but thin for the hardness of the steel. When the edge meets the whisker it may buckle just before cutting through the whisker. This is not true for all blades, but it’s something to take into consideration. If you think this may be the reason you may want to reduce the size of the blade by a 16th and then reset the bevel. Most folks don’t want to make a blade smaller, but if the thing doesn’t shave well and you are confident about your honing skills then what choice do you have?... but removing material is “one-way” so you could try a layer or two of tape, reset the bevel, polish and test shave to see if it gets any better.

What I have started to do is use Sir Barts Spine Width and Tape Chart from the Honing a Wedge Section of The Sharpening Academy, It puts you right everytime, well it does me anyway :thumbup:
 
Update on my racoon i added paste and it did seem smoother. I rehoned and dulled again with dilucot method. Shaved and the shave was still good but i'm thinking could paste squeeze a little more . Instead of pasting i restroped on linen which i realy recomend as it realy does agreat job then litigo and horshide. hht test seemed even better. i just had second shave and the razor is perfect i reckon a couple of shaves makes all the differance it feels smoother now. against the grain no problems paste would not make any differance. extra stropping may of made adifferance i also using ruprazor paladium and the draw is great but also very smooth like velvet i 'm sure the strop is making a little differance.
 
I wasn't quite happy with this one razor, and decided to try stropping it a ton. I must have done nearly 2000 laps. Every time I walked by my strop I would give the razor 60-100. It took several days, but when I decided to shave with it, I found that it definitely made a difference. This was with a Filly strop.
 
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