May 11th
Menthol Monday
Razor: Valet Autostrop
Blade: Feather FHS (10)
Brush: Simpson X3 Best Badger
PS: Stirling Mentholated Preshave (in the shower) & Proraso Green (at the sink)
SS & AS: Stirling Orange Chill
Started with 5 stropping stocks down and back. Notices the polished leading, but the first WTG strokes on my right check were a little rough. Stopped another 10 strokes and shined up the whole bevel. Following that the left check went much better. I'm somewhat confident I can stretch this blade out to 14 two-pass shaves with stropping, but I'm more than a little worried about shave quality after that. As I feel my face about 2 hours post-shave I can say my skin is loving the 2 pass shaves I am certainly DFS. Once this 1 month 1 blade experiment is over I'll be looking at my 3 pass shaves to see if I can find the middle ground. I like BBS, but I often go just a little too far.
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As I said, I doubt this blade will last to the end of the month with stropping alone. So, I am looking for ways to survive this experiment with my skin intact. Basically, I can see four options:
1) I committed to shaving with one blade until my DIY blade is done. I made no promise to shave every day. I don't want to rush the final grinding and shaping my blade and crash right before the finish line. Shaving every 2 our 3 days follows the letter of the law, but I know anyone really interested in this experiment would be disappointed if I resorted to only shaving every 3 days.
2) Use a diamond spray on my strop. Probably the easiest option, but this will put additional wear on my vintage razor and I only have the one strop for my VAS. I'm not excited about this option. It's not creative enough.
3) I could make a jig to allow stropping/honing outside of the razor so I can refresh the edge just like I would refresh a straight razor.
4) I also have a Kris Kross blade stopper with a bad strop. The strop is not serviceable, but I'm not shy and willing to open it up and making a new strop I can use for refreshing with a diamond spray.
Option 4 will likely win the day. Option 3 would require me to design and build a new part which means reconfiguring my CNC machine instead of setting it up to precision grind the hollow on my DIY blades. Besides, my CNC is out of commission right now. The first steel blank I used was annealed 1095 steel and machined very easily. I wanted to have 4 blanks ready for heat-treating so I would have more to experiment with but my second order of steel is hot rolled, even though it was sold as annealed. Hot rolled steel is much harder and difficult to machine. I really wish I would have known that before I started. It was impressive to watch. The end mill bound and the oversized motor torqued up and the entire machine groaned and flexed before I could stop it. I managed to salvage the piece, adjust the gibs, and reset the speeds and feeds for hot rolled steel and start again. It was actually going okay but vibrations were a little higher than I like. After a few minutes, the spindle bearing lock ring vibrated loose. That's 2 emergency stops in less than 45 minutes. Obviously it was time to hang it up for the day.
Having the locking ring vibrate loose really isn't a big deal, but it does expose the bearings to debris. So, I'm cleaning and repacking the spindle bearings. The lower spindle assembly is currently on my workbench with just the bearings exposed. It's in great shape but it's definitely time to repack the bearings. The lube is dry and starting to darken. It's 1 to 2 hours of work rebuilding that spindle. So, that's likely all I will get done today if I decide to do anything at all.
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