Thread: The leap of faith.

Bigspendur, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you here. Learning to shave with a DE requires you to learn about prep, making lather, the direction of your beard growth, skin stretching, using light pressure and doing mutiple passes.

I struggled with my straights when I started out, and the month it took me to learn to get a good DE shave was a huge help when I came back to the straights.

I think a DE gives a newbie a good head start, but you'll still have a lot to learn about shaving and maintaining your razor.

Just my two cents,
Josh

If you buy a str8 be absolutely sure that it has been both honed and shave tested.

Welcome to SRP!,

Shaving with a DE prepares you to learn proper pre-shave techniques. It does not totally prepare you to shave with a straight. But regardless of what you shave with...prep is important.

RT

Originally Posted by JoshEarl

Bigspendur, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you here. Learning to shave with a DE requires you to learn about prep, making lather, the direction of your beard growth, skin stretching, using light pressure and doing mutiple passes.

I struggled with my straights when I started out, and the month it took me to learn to get a good DE shave was a huge help when I came back to the straights.

I think a DE gives a newbie a good head start, but you'll still have a lot to learn about shaving and maintaining your razor.

Just my two cents,
Josh

Well yea I reckon technically your right but to me those things are things you should already have down if you've been wet shaving whether with a DE or even a mach whatever. Compared to using a straight and honing and stropping to me thems small potatoes quickly learned. For me I had used a DE for a while before using a straight and for me it in no way prepared me for the straight experience. Just my humble opinion.

My Mach 3 experience involved a quick splash of water, Edge gel and an against-the-grain shave with a weeks-old blade. :eek

Fresh blades made me bleed, so I used them longer than you're supposed to. I hated shaving.

Nailing down my prep was hard for me because I have a tough beard and wimpy skin. The DE let me focus on that for a while and see what a difference it made.

But you're right: Them's is small potatoes. I got all that stuff in a few weeks; I'm still working on honing and stropping and shaving, and I suspect I will be for years to come.

Josh