I got a Rolls the other day and it appears that all of the pieces come together perfectly. My issue is, I honed and stropped it and it isn't sharp enough to shave with. It does easily remove arm hair though. So is it my technique or what? Can some of you Rolls familiar folks please push me in the right direction? I tried using it like a micromatic, with the blade nearly parallel to the skin to no avail, I then increased the angle and that didn't work either. I tried to find the right angle and couldn't so I stopped because that's normally when I experience pain/irritation/bleeding. Am I missing some fundamental thing about Rolls Razors maybe? Any insight is appreciated!
With the Rolls, you need to be stretching the skin. A Rolls is basically a straight razor with a perpendicular handle. Try some skin stretching and see if that helps. Assuming you have a good edge on the blade, you should notice a difference.
Rolls performance. My guess is your "new" Rolls isn't ready to shave with yet. How much restoring have you done on your Rolls? I ask this because I have only found one out of the many I've acquired that was actually ready to go "out of the box". Remember, it's probably been sitting for 50 years before you got it. In general I have to: Tear down and completely degrease the Rolls (I mean DEGREASE, grease is bad for a Rolls) Clean and prep the honing stone (scrub and sand with 400 grit) Clean and prep the strop (scrub, sand, neetsfoot rub, strop paste) Clean, prep and tune the friction pad (degrease, degrease, degrease, tune) Hone 60 cycles on the blade Strop 60 cycles on the blade Before the Rolls is ready to shave. The hone, strop and friction pad are keys to a Rolls performance. If your Rolls doesnt require a firm grip on the frame while honing/stroping then your friction pad needs a lot of work. If your not gitting full contact with the hone and strop (you can see the track left by the blade) then you've still got work to do. Oh yea, I forgot to add, unless your Rolls is a Series 3, after you've cleaned it you must quickly and completely dry it (toilet paper wads and hair dryer). The Series 2's were made with fine Shefield steel which means it'll rust like crazy. So the gobs of grease some previous owner squarted in the works to make it easer(?) to use hampered it's performance but protected it from rusting. When you remove the grease to get the performance it should have, you now have to guard it from moisture. It's great, aint it?
Thanks guys. Greg, mine leaves tracks on both the hone and the strop and I have no greasy globs in the tracks. I will definitely "dress" the hone and strop though. I forgot too, that I packed it up yesterday for the upcoming move. Guess I should have waited to ask this in a month or so. :scared001
Greg has some valuable advice . Unfortunately my stone and strop are in terrible condition so I just went at it with my regular stones and strop. Treated it as if it were just another straight razor but with a handle. Worked well. Mark
Hi all! Sorry for big digging, but i've small problem with my RR Viscount. I've 2RRV and when i use first i need realy strong grip to hone and strop, it's ok, but second, slide like crazy . Afrter disassembly friction pad i saw oil, a loot of it on this small red "something" i try to clean, but still got nothing;( There is any way to replace this? Sorry for my english. Thanks for any help!
