Well, I'm alive...

Sorry for all the new posts, but since each happens to be on a somewhat different topic I thought that was the way to go. Anyway I finally gave the straight razor shave a try tonight, is there supposed to be this much bloodshed?:D Actually it wasn't all that bad, I got several good nicks and learned a ton. First off I watch a bunch of Youtube videos of people shaving with straights. This didn't really help a great deal, I kind of figured out how best to hold it as I went along. I read the Wikapedia article on straights and found that my particuler razor is a spike razor and not really recommended for a newbie, after shaving with it I now know why, I would say that 100% of my cuts where caused by that nasty little point. I actually shaved about 75% of my face until I let the blade down wrong to start a cut and left a nasty long cut on the side of my neck, then I decided to finish off with a electric razor. Something I learned was that my razor wasn't nearly sharp enough, and that likely caused me problems, I could feel it grabbing slightly sometimes. Also I think the cheap soap I bought isn't good (however the cheap brush I bought rocks). The soap seems to lather up really thinly, I think it needs to be alot thicker so that the blade has some lubrication, most of the time it felt like I was dry shaving. Also is it true that you shouldn't let your razor get wet with water? I just wiped the lather/blood/hair off on a clean cloth and when I was done I wiped the razor good and coated it in mineral oil. I got a lot of nicks around my chin and my ears, that was my two trouble spots. Interestly under my nose seemed really easy. So that is how it went, I must say that I will for sure keep trying this, it's p$ssed me off so much that I got all the nicks that I'm determined to master this now. Makes you appreciate how difficult it would have been for a teenager around 1900 just learning to shave. Also I was pretty nervous with this being my first try, so my hands weren't what I would call steady either. Any tips that you guys could give me would be awesome and hopefully help me out here. Thanks..

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.

You'll be amazed how much you will have learned from that first experience. I can pretty much guarantee that the next one will be a lot better.

Don't be disheartened, and keep it up. You will get there in th end! ;)

First try is always the worst. There will be blood, as you have learnt. You'll start to "learn" your face & beard & accuracy & time taken will improve. If you haven't already, get yourself a razor which has been honed by an expert. The difference is amazing & you'll not nick yourself as much.

Welcome to the coolest club Anywhere!!! :D :eek: :D

Well my razor was honed by Gugi, I bought it off him, but he said it needed stropping. I did strop it but maybe my technique is not so good. After sleeping the night I washed my face this morning and you can hardly notice all my nicks. You guys are sure right about a close shave though. Where I shaved with the straight is still smooth this morning, but where I shaved with the electric razor is getting rough already.

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Originally Posted by FLYBYU44

Also I think the cheap soap I bought isn't good (however the cheap brush I bought rocks). The soap seems to lather up really thinly, I think it needs to be alot thicker so that the blade has some lubrication, most of the time it felt like I was dry shaving.

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If you have a normal to tough beard you will find you haven't been doing enough prep-work before you shave.

Find ways to soften your beard, spend the extra time and you will find it much easier to shave nick/cut free.

Shower before shaving using either Noxzema or Proraso, Shave cream/soap soaking into your beard for at least 15 minutes. The hot towel treatment in place of or in addition to the shower is good too.

PREP!!!!!

Not a whole lot to add to previous posts, but you did mention a thin lather, could be a little of the brush and a little of the soap, more than likely too much water in the brush. Play with lathering, using a little less water and see what happens. Im not there with you and dont know for sure, but from your post it seemed like a possibility.Good luck, I think youve already made great strides with your first shave and the next will be far better!:tu

Ah, good to hear you tried it :)
I (partially) shaved with the razor just before it went out and I'm sure it was plenty sharp, but I will certainly be happy to take a look at it again. However do give it a few more shaves and see how it goes.
The spike on this one was indeed almost perfect and you need to be mindful of it. I've never had any problems with the spikes (including this one) and I started with a spike, but I suspect different people are different. I really like the precision of the pointy points - if I need to take off a single hair somewhere I can just go and do it.

Other than that I'm a bit worried about getting such a close shave on your first shave - I'm thinking you may have been putting too much pressure. Krusius bros though are great razors, so may be I'm wrong. I certainly got great shaves out of it, but I like to think that the experience counts for something :)

In any case, if you are not happy with the razor, I'll certainly take it back for a full refund and I'll cover your shipping costs too :)

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Originally Posted by gugi

Ah, good to hear you tried it :)
I (partially) shaved with the razor just before it went out and I'm sure it was plenty sharp, but I will certainly be happy to take a look at it again. However do give it a few more shaves and see how it goes.
The spike on this one was indeed almost perfect and you need to be mindful of it. I've never had any problems with the spikes (including this one) and I started with a spike, but I suspect different people are different. I really like the precision of the pointy points - if I need to take off a single hair somewhere I can just go and do it.

Other than that I'm a bit worried about getting such a close shave on your first shave - I'm thinking you may have been putting too much pressure. Krusius bros though are great razors, so may be I'm wrong. I certainly got great shaves out of it, but I like to think that the experience counts for something :)

In any case, if you are not happy with the razor, I'll certainly take it back for a full refund and I'll cover your shipping costs too :)

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Actually I'm delighted with the razor, it is in spectacular condition that must speak of the dedication and thoughtfullness of it's former owner. :) I will try to keep it in the condition I received it. I actually don't think the razor is dull now, I've been reading posts on here and I think my prep work was lacking a lot. That is something that I will work on. I did a test after stropping the razor with a hair off my wife's brush, I held it up and it sheared right throught it several times. As for the point, I think it is something I will grow to like, I did notice that it makes the area under the nose and side burns way easier to trim then they might be with another razor. I have a quick question for you though, I was curious as to how old that razor is. I tryed to Google it but didn't come up with anything, thought you might know. Anyway it is in beautiful shape, whatever the age. Oh, and don't think you can get it back with your full refund offers, you sold it so it's mine now. :D:D

Hmm, not sure how old it is - Krusius Brothers is a major cutler and I think they may even still be in business. I'd imagine that they must've stopped making razors around the same time as boker did and Dovo remained pretty much the only one.
And yes, the razor is in excellent condition and it's always a pleasure to find such razor - it's not hard to keep it that way, just dry it off after shaving.

Also 6/8 being my preferred size I do have the 6/8 version of it - I am experimenting with decreasing head count, but that doesn't mean all my great razors will go :)

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.

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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.

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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 :D!

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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.

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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).

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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 :D!

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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 :eek:, 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 :p) 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.

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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 :eek:, 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 :p) 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.

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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 :D

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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.

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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.

I just finished giving my second attempt at shaving with the Krusius, I'm happy to tell you all that there was nearly no blood shed and it went a lot better. This time I did 100% of my face with the straight razor. A few things I did differently were; I rubbed my face a lot with a hot, wet facecloth, then I used very little water with the soap and applied the lather rubbing it in a lot. I only did a portion of my face at a time to keep it warm and flexy. Also I think last time I had the razor at too steep of an angle, and that is why it waas catching and cutting me so much. This time I held it so the spine was only a little bit off my skin and it seemed better. Not the greatest feeling shave, but I started with some serious razor burn from my electric razor this morning and also my skin was sore already from being pretty sunburnt today. I have to shave every day for work, last night I didn't get home from work til 11:00pm, so that is why I shaved this morning with the electric razor, usually I like to shave up nice the night before, that way I have less razor burn during the day.