Thread: Stropping Practice for a Complete Noob. Advice?

Originally Posted by Senomaros

Well then! I probably should have waited until today to try my new straight razor for the first time so I could read this advice and not proceed to do exactly that, haha. Oops...

Thanks for all your advice though. I really appreciate it.

Also, a follow-up question I should have asked in the original post: Does practicing on newspaper with my razor run the risk of dulling the edge, or is newspaper too delicate for that?

Hope your shave went well. It's not impossible just challenging.

Let's just say practicing on hanging newspaper will be the least damaging thing you 'll do.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Hope your shave went well. It's not impossible just challenging.

Let's just say practicing on hanging newspaper will be the least damaging thing you 'll do.

It went probably about as well as it could have I think, considering it was the first time. After I did all I felt confident doing with the straight, I went over everything again with my usual cartridge razor. Didn't end up with too many cuts, only a couple more than what I normally give myself with the cartridge razor anyway. It felt like the blade tugged at the hairs a bit more than what I think it should have, given my complete lack of any prior experience to base it on. Probably because the hair was too long, like you warned me about. Or that my lather wasn't thick enough. Probably both, actually. Ah well. It was an interesting experience, and I'm sure the next one will be better.

As a newb myself I found out that your prep before shaving is very important. How did you prep?

Originally Posted by RRae

As a newb myself I found out that your prep before shaving is very important. How did you prep?

With a towel soaked in warm watter wrapped around my face for a while. After that, i tried making a lather with some proraso soap following instructions from the library here. I think I added too much water though, because it took like 15 minutes and was still really thin. So that probably didn't help. I should probably practice that too...

The experts will be on shortly. But I personally just start over if my lather is poor. I did a lot of practicing building a lather. I read on here somewhere that you don't have to shave to practice lathering. There are enough other things that need to be fine tuned for a beginner. Welcome to the journey.

Originally Posted by RRae

The experts will be on shortly. But I personally just start over if my lather is poor. I did a lot of practicing building a lather. I read on here somewhere that you don't have to shave to practice lathering. There are enough other things that need to be fine tuned for a beginner. Welcome to the journey.

Right, I was thinking I could just practice making lather without needing to shave too. I'd never used anything other than canned shaving gel before and as sub-optimal as my lather probably was, the Proraso just felt so nice on my face, so much nicer than canned stuff so that alone is a tempting enough reason to try again. And I guess it is soap so I'd be cleaning my face too.

I'll reiterate the 'slow' and 'use the lightest touch possible' suggestions. One thing that helps me is to remind myself that I'm polishing the bevel, not sharpening the edge.

And don't focus on recreating a specific sound as that can vary widely from strop to strop and razor to razor.

the tugging could be from a lot of things ,, don't worry so much and just go slow and try not to do the whole face yet just a bit at a time to get the feel of the blade. technique is a lot of shaving smooth without the tugging along with prep . time will get you there, its a whole new learning curve than the cartridge. after a hundred or so shaves , you will figure it out good luck tc