Thread: First Shave with Straight!!!!!

Shave ready straight came in the mail today!!!! A shave ready 6/8 Cleff Co. Looked beautiful, except for one scale that was slightly warped, nearly causing the blade to foul on the scales. No big deal really, just gotta pay attention when closing. After a hot shower, stropped 15 strokes on my Illinois, and lathered up with some Proraso. The with the grain pass was like butter, but the against the grain passes were a bit more cumbersome. Seemed to be a good deal of pulling on the ATG pass. Is this pretty normal?? I tried making my angle more steep and this seemed to help a great deal, but the pull was still there.

All in all the shave was way better than I'd expected for my first. Got everything except the cowlicks on my neck Baby Butt Smooth!!! I am definitely hooked now, and will be sending my 5/8 Joseph Rodgers and a Berliner I recently acquired (anybody know anything about Berliner's?) off to Lynn for a hone job!!

The only thing I'm still pondering is the drag on the ATG pass. Seems like this should be pretty normal, but was wondering if it may still need some tuning. I don't think my stropping technique dulled the blade, as it still passed the HHT afterwards, and I spent a great deal of time making sure the strop was nice and tignt, and the spine didn't lift.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. Just a little exstatic is all!!! Any feedback will be graciously devoured in its entirety!

This was your first shave, and it sounds like you did extremely well. Heck, just surviving without major blood loss counts for a great first shave in my book. This isn't like shaving with a Mach 3, there's a lot to master and a lot of little techniques to learn. Improvements in prep and other assorted techniques will help a *lot*, in comfort, closeness, speed, and the pulling issue.

I usually find that I have to lower the angle for the against-the-grain passes.

sounds like you had a great first shave!! congrats. That is better than most of us can say.

Congratulations . . . it's fun isn't it!

Congrats. My first left a "chevron" or two on my cheek where I cut myself. No major blood loss, but definitely not as good as your first. But it is getting better, though!

I use to strop about 15 passes and got the same results you did then i tried 30 passes and it made a big differance, so try that