Best Shave So Far

I am only about five weeks into shaving with a straight. I have been noticing over the past couple weeks that my razor has not been performing as well as it should and I thought perhaps I was just dropping into a valley with my technique. Not at all frustrated as I am committed to only shaving with a straight.

I found that my razor was not tree topping any hairs on my arms. I then did the HHT and it failed.

Could not decide what to do and with some advice and moral support from FranfC (who has been so very helpful in my journey so far) I used my Naniwa 12000 and ran about 12 no pressure laps on my Ralf Aust. My thought process was, how much can I hurt it with a 12000 using no pressure on the laps and worse case scenario I could send it back to SRD with my honing coupon. I felt a little "snag" on one side by the heel and when I was done, I looked at it through my loupe (use it in 1911 Gunsmithing) and can see a small "point" where the heel begins to round that apparently had not been rounded properly during manufacturing of the blade. That will need to be addressed at a later date.

I have to think that my stropping technique has a lot to be desired for this razor to have dulled so quickly. I have been afraid to use almost any pressure when stropping as I am/was afraid to roll an edge.

As all the razors and equipment that I have has come from SRD I am currently defaulting to Lynn's videos as my first go to videos. I re-watched Lynn's stropping video and feel that I am using too little pressure based on watching the strop movement in his video.

Up until today I have not been able to get the flip correctly and have been changing my grip when I change direction. Today, I again tried the flip as he demonstrated and much to my surprise it worked great. So after 15 laps on the premium cloth and then about 50 on the leather, kind of got lost in the moment as the flip was working so well, without even thinking, so probably between 50 and 70 laps. I was done stropping in less than half the time it took me to strop with a grip change. I won't be going back.

The shave was fantastic. Whiskers were cut down so much more easily and evenly. Used SRD's cake soap today and the stars must have been aligned because my lather was great almost immediately without having to work at it.

Shave is not BBS but was definently a DFS.

I understand tomorrow may not be quite as good, but boy am I excited.

Thanks Frank.