asharperrazor said:
shanky887614 said:
if you were aiming on owning 10-20+ straights then it would be worth buying one
I'm actually not even sure about that either. And this is why: With each straight razor you purchase, you reduce the amount of honings you need. So, if you own 10 razors, you only need to hone them 1/10 as often. Now, in the real world, this probably won't pan out to an exact 1/1 ratio as rust kicks in and screws up your plans, but for the most part the ratio will be 1/X where X = number of straight razors.
I hate to be a pedant, but there be a misrepresentation in them thar maths.
You would still need to hone just as often (if not more so, because of the rust effect you mentioned). To illustrate...
Let us suppose that the average straight requires a hone every 100 shaves (having never owned a straight, I have no idea how accurate this is, but this is purely for the purpose of explanation, so please bear with me), and let us assume that the user shaves every day.
A man who owns 1 straight:
After 100 days, the razor will have been used 100 times, and it will need a hone. After 1000 days, it will need to have been honed 10 times. Pretty
straight forward (hur hur).
A man who owns 10 straights:
After 100 days, unless he has used only one straight and the rest have been sitting pretty on the shelf, no razor is blunt enough to need a hone. This much is true.
However, after 1000 days, all ten straights will have been used as much as possible before needing a hone (i.e. 100 shaves each), at which point the user will have selected another straight which still had some life left in it, and then used that one up. At the end of the thousand days, therefore, all 10 razors will be blunt, and need a hone.
So whether he owned 1 straight or ten, the man will have needed to perform 10 hones after 1000 days.
Ergo, unless you're planning to sell the razors/stop using them/quit straight shaving before they need another hone, buy as many straights as you want - you will need to hone just as often.
Like I say, I hate to be a pedant, but as someone who studied maths at Oxford and subsequently taught the subject, I cannot resist the urge to clarify a mathematical misunderstanding.
They called me The Mathemagician.
Not really.
