Thread: First tentative try with a straight

I'm not surprised at all that you nicked your self with the murker. Straights are actually much more forgiving then a DE. I almost always nicked my self with my Mach 3 before I was enlightened, or went crazy. One of the two.

Anyway, I rarely nick my self with my straight now. I did the other day after a fresh honing, but it was minor and stopped bleeding the instant I broke the styptic out.

I'm glad your making progress and finding results. Sounds like you just need to work on your ATG technique a little on the neck. That is a very tricky area to get a hold of with the second pass. You are getting there though. Keep on truckin!

Matt

Congrat on the shave. It feels so good when you can shave yourself well with a str8. Enjoy.

One way I get around the size of the blade in tighter areas is to divide the area in half. This way I can shave one area from the middle of the blade to the heel (keeping the point off & out from my jawbone), then cut the other half from the point to the middle of the blade (this allows me to feel how the point is cutting for greater control).

Hmm. Good advice, but my main problem may be that I haven't mastered the art of changing hands yet. Hehe. I do most of the shaving with my right hand, stretching the skin with my left. Learning to use my left hand for shaving will be the next big step, I think.

I received my 6/8 "German Hoppe" razor from ShavingShop today. It came well packaged, and it was wrapped in paper bearing Giesen & Forsthoff logos and "Timor" all over it, and the plastic coffin box also had the word "Timor" on it. The razor itself looks great, apart from a few minor issues. There is minor pitting on the blade (pretty far from the edge), possibly from moisture getting to the blade in storage, and there is a bit of sharp burr on the plastic scales which needs to be trimmed off at some stage. Other than that, I think it's a very good looking razor and it feels pretty good in the hand too.

I tried the edge of the blade on a wet thumbnail when I got it out of the box and had unwrapped it, and it slid straight off, so it wasn't very sharp. I hadn't opted for the honing service, so I knew it would be "factory sharp", so no surprise there. I gave it a handful of strokes on the "pasted" paddle strop I made a while back, and then a couple of handfuls of strokes on the unpasted paddle strop. That was just enough to get the edge to "bite" the nail and not slide off. So I decided to try shaving with it.

I prepped the beard, worked up a nice lather from the C&E Sandalwood soap, and lathered my face, got the razor and opened it... I just managed two strokes with it before I decided it was a bad idea and went to fetch the Wester Bros. razor instead. The new razor was just pulling my beard like crazy. I need to work more on stropping it, I think, and hope that will be enough to get it shave ready.