Thread: First straight razor shave

I bought a kit from SRD with a Dovo 6/8 Bismarck and am very happy with it. Got it today at noon and did my first shave by 4:00 pm. The shave did not turn out too bad. I am having problems making decent lather. I have been searching threads for information and I will try to do better tomorrow. Any tips on making decent lather would be helpful. I did not bleed to death and only had a couple of very minor nicks. I am older and my facial hair is tough. I wish I would have started with the SR twenty years ago. I know I still have a long hill to climb but at least I am on the right trail and in time I will get there. Thanks for such a great forum.
Jerry1

There are some good videos about lather making in the General Razor/ Shaving Related Discussion section under the sub forum Videos.
Welcome to SRP, Jerry.

Good to heat first shave was a success. Lynn has as lather vid on YouTube. Usually it is about loading the brush properly and water ratio.

As someone above said, getting the moisture right is key. And don't stop working the lather too soon. I've been having good luck with face lathering. If I need more water I just give the tips of the brush a quick dip.

Welcome, jerry1!

That was a real issue for me as well. Let me stipulate that I have pretty hard water. I had way too much water and didn' load up the brush on the puck nearly enough left me with disappearing soap suds every time. Not that lovely creamy lather that I was seeing in the video. Oh, and I had Musego which seems nearly impossible for the to lather, even now. I bought the VHD deluxe shave soap from Walmart and voila! Lather everywhere. Go figure. Since then I've got another soap as well that requires more diligence than the VHD.

Also, not that you can add a few glycerin to the soap to build uberlather. That's generally what I do.

I soak the brush and soap in soap dish in hot water while I shower. Pour out the water, squeeze the knot dry and start loading the brush up. After loading up the first time, I add water by the drops(2 or 3) and get back to loading and adding drops where necessary.

Keep us posted with what you try and how successfull it is going. I am overwhelmed with how helpful everybody here is to eachother. It's truly a blessing to have a resource and community that we have here.

Welcome. I went the easy route and use creme vs soap for lather. Just super simple. Figured there would be enough challenges and this was one less hurdle. As said already it's a combo of soap and water. Sometimes hard water makes it more difficult from what I've researched.

Hi to all the kind responses
I will let everyone know how I make out on the lather. It is so helpful to have so many knowledgeable people to help when one gets stuck. This is a great forum.
Jerry1