Thread: First Shave!

Well I went for it today and had my first straight razor shave, my wife used to be a barber so she has her old straight razor with all of her stuff. I dug it out and put in a new blade (obviously it takes a disposable blade). First thoughts are that this razor is waaayyyy too light to shave with on a regular basis, also I am not too sure how these blades stack up to a properly honed straight. But that shave was not too bad, I only wound up with 3 very small nicks that stopped bleeding very fast on their own. Quality wise it was comparable to a bad DE shave, I only did one pass and I a fairly close in most areas, I can do the same with my DE, but when I did my post shave alum WOW; this was an uncomfortable shave. I know this will get better in time with practice on my technique so I am not too worried about it. My last thought for now is that I never realized how hard it is to really see what you are doing when you are shaving with one of these, there is always something in the way of the view of the blade and the angle.

Chief

Congrats Chief! We'll move you up to the big stuff soon. A regular straight shaves very different. Its hard to describe all the differences accurately though.

I have one of the pre-honed wapis on the way along with a 4 sided pasted strop so this was just me being imaptient to try something new. Part of the ackwardness this morning may have been due to the lack of weight on the razor I had to pull it through each stroke instead of letting the weight of the razor help. The plastcc parbers razor is hard to describe in terms of weight as I don't have a scale I could weight it on but it is really light, the only metal on it is the spine the blade slides into and it is just stamped steel. I will see if I can find a picture of one to post to give everybody an idea.

Chief

This is the razor I am talking about, it uses disposable blades encased in plastic that slide into the metal spine.



Chief

That is very cool! Light weight blades are hard to shave with. I find, depending on how long I've been shaving with an edge that needing to pull it through the stroke is pretty common with a regular straight.

Usually those disposables are a little too sharp to be pulling into your skin. They nick a lot too.

You'll see the differences soon.

Hay Navy Chief, do you remember me from Badger and Blade? You asked some time ago about wet shaving and at the time I recommended a straight, I was just getting my feet wet in wet shaving myself. I was hooked on the whole wet shaving phenomena myself. You said that you were going to stick with the double edge. Did I not tell you that the straight is what you need?

I also just started shaving with a straight just last week bro, it tore me up with razor burn, but no nicks. I bought a norton 4k8k wet stone and honed and shaved for about 3 days. This mornings shave was the best and closest shave I have ever had. I hone little by little now to make the edge wicked sharp. I received the straight at work and started showing the guys in the mess, they were like "Man you gonna shave with that".

Will,
Navy CPO

Good to see that I am not the only 'mess member' out there crazy enough to try this, the guys here are work think I am nuts enough for using a DE they think I have gone off the deep end with the straight thing. I just can't convince them that we really did have shaving perfected about 80-100 years ago..

Chief

Yes it is good to know there are others, I use a 5/8 Vintage Solingen Revisor ($100), that after honing, shaves very smooth. Like I said I've only been shaving with a straight about a week now, and I'm not using a safety razor again. Also I learned very quickly that preparation is also important. Pre-shaves oil or water base, which are optional help, and proper lathering using a badger brush, which i'm getting better at each day. There are some good youtube info videos out there that cover everything. I don't know much about the razor incert type w/ the spine, looks very sharp.

Will,