Thread: Well, I'm alive...

You may have all the resources you want but herer is another: The Interactive Guide to Straight Razor Shaving - Badger & Blade

Congratulations on beginning the journey. Enjoy the ride!!!

If you're going to stay with the spike you might consider deliberately blunting the last millimeter or so just to tame it a little bit. You don't need to go wild - remember how difficult it is to get a razor properly sharp and consequently how little it requires to take that edge off. If you don't overdo it it shouldn't be too hard to sharpen up if you want a real spike again later on.

Originally Posted by Cyclophile

Well.. A teenager back in the day would have the benefit of hands on training from his father or grandfather. All we have now is eachother.

This is true, however if/when i have kids i plan on teaching them the "real" way to shave as well as the modern way. My family all start shaving around the age of 13 but i was never "taught" how to shave properly. So as i re-learn everything with my first straight i'm excited that one day i'll be teaching future generations of DMcLeans, and i already ahve a few friends interested !

Originally Posted by trewornan

If you're going to stay with the spike you might consider deliberately blunting the last millimeter or so just to tame it a little bit. You don't need to go wild - remember how difficult it is to get a razor properly sharp and consequently how little it requires to take that edge off. If you don't overdo it it shouldn't be too hard to sharpen up if you want a real spike again later on.

I wouldn't destroy that beautiful spike - true spikes are rather hard to find. I wish I had taken a picture in the microscope to show you, but it's actually not perfectly sharp. It's slanted at a bevel width, which means that right now you have to move the edge one bevel (perhaps 1/64" on this razor) width and you'll get a true spike. Blunting (rounding) it more than that to a level where you can tell a difference means that you'll need to remove a lot more metal to recover it back.
Of course it's your razor and you can do as you please, but I just wanted to say that it's not too easy to find spikes that good - I am a fan and I only have 2 razors with at least that level of pointiness (one is a wonderedge, the other shall remain nameless for now).

Originally Posted by DMcLean

This is true, however if/when i have kids i plan on teaching them the "real" way to shave as well as the modern way. My family all start shaving around the age of 13 but i was never "taught" how to shave properly. So as i re-learn everything with my first straight i'm excited that one day i'll be teaching future generations of DMcLeans, and i already ahve a few friends interested !

For the tree-hugger leaning folks, you can talk about it being "sustainable" and "eco friendly" since you are not tossing all of those spent cartridges into landfills.

I won't be touching the spike, just will have to learn that it's there and watch out for it, that's all. My wife's at her Mom's for a few days with the kid, so she hasn't witnessed the results of my experimenting yet. "Honey, I went to the bar one night while you were gone and got in a knife fight!"
Yeah, that's how I got little cuts all over my chin and neck.

Hey Gugi, can you post a picture of a "spike", and a "non-spike" for us nubies?

Thanks for the post flybyu44. Ill be posting the same, hopefully with out the blood , but not counting on it.

For some reason I have that feeling like I just scored a Elmo (you dads out there know what im talking about ) a few years back, and im waiting to get it and give it to my son. Im almost giddy waiting to try this for the first time.

Originally Posted by Basher052

Hey Gugi, can you post a picture of a "spike", and a "non-spike" for us nubies?

Thanks for the post flybyu44. Ill be posting the same, hopefully with out the blood , but not counting on it.

For some reason I have that feeling like I just scored a Elmo (you dads out there know what im talking about ) a few years back, and im waiting to get it and give it to my son. Im almost giddy waiting to try this for the first time.

Hi Basher,

I don't know if you have looked at any pics of many razors yet, but if you do you will notice that the end of the blade differs on some razors. A spike blade refers to the end of the blade, on a spike blade the end of the blade is 90 degrees to the edge of the blade, making a perfect corner that is sharpen right up to the end. Other blades have rounded tips, so there isn't a sharp corner or spike on these blades. Hope that explains it for you. I'm just learning all this too, Wikapedia has a good section on straight razors, that is where I learned about the different blade shapes.

Thanks. Heading to bed now, but I will be heading that way tomorrow to do more learnin

Originally Posted by FLYBYU44

Hi Basher,

I don't know if you have looked at any pics of many razors yet, but if you do you will notice that the end of the blade differs on some razors. A spike blade refers to the end of the blade, on a spike blade the end of the blade is 90 degrees to the edge of the blade, making a perfect corner that is sharpen right up to the end. Other blades have rounded tips, so there isn't a sharp corner or spike on these blades. Hope that explains it for you. I'm just learning all this too, Wikapedia has a good section on straight razors, that is where I learned about the different blade shapes.

Yep, here's the link again: http://straightrazorpalace.com/buy-s...ius-spike.html
I have the original images as well, but even on these you can see that the point has a very slight roundness (the one with the profile of the blade).
Actually I am not sure spike is the correct term - 'square point' is probably it and spike would be slightly protruding like the end of a spanish point (look at the show&tell for my custom razor to see what I mean).

Ah, well, I may just post a close up picture of it. The first one is the point of my wonderedge and the second is the krusius. I changed the contrast a bit so that you can see it more clearly. Unfortunately the white letter on the case in the background is almost obscuring the point and it seems that that's where the camera focus is. But if you look carefully you'll notice that the angle between the edge and the tip where they meet is not perfectly 90 degrees, but sort of rounded ever so slightly (again the out of focus blur makes it hard). On the wonderedge it is.