New Guys: An important piece of advice from a fellow newb

[FloorPizza]

If I were to start all over again...

1. Buy two cheap, but quality, vintage blades off of ebay.

2. Immediately send one of them off to a honemeister to be professionally sharpened. I just got mine back from GSSIXGUN, and I can't even begin to describe how freaking sharp this thing is. *Don't shave with a straight* until you get this one back. Trust me on this.

3. Get the appropriate honing supplies, including, of course, a good strop. I gotta toot Tony Miller's horn for the strop.

4. Start working on getting your second razor as sharp as the honemeister sharpened one.

5. Have fun!

[Joed]

Yep, that's the way to do it. You can enjoy good shaves and work on your shavinf techniques independent of learning how to hone and not show your lack of honing experiance on your face.

[gugi]

Ebay can be tricky. I guess the only real way to learn is to go through the usual mistakes.

I have purchased over 200 razors, which is a fairly small number compared to many on this forum, but
in my view the best way for vintage is to purchase a razor that is already cleaned up and honed. Unless you want to get into restoration, or don't mind gambling on ebay.

[Earthdawn]

2. Immediately send one of them off to a honemeister to be professionally sharpened. I just got mine back from GSSIXGUN, and I can't even begin to describe how freaking sharp this thing is. *Don't shave with a straight* until you get this one back. Trust me on this.

Great post and i singled out #2 cause you damn skippy he sends it back SHARP !!! lol

+1 for GSSIXGUN honing !

[StraightRazorDave]

If I were to start all over again...

1. Buy two cheap, but quality, vintage blades off of ebay.

2. Immediately send one of them off to a honemeister to be professionally sharpened. I just got mine back from GSSIXGUN, and I can't even begin to describe how freaking sharp this thing is. *Don't shave with a straight* until you get this one back. Trust me on this.

3. Get the appropriate honing supplies, including, of course, a good strop. I gotta toot Tony Miller's horn for the strop.

4. Start working on getting your second razor as sharp as the honemeister sharpened one.

5. Have fun!

GREAT advice for newbies. I'm still new at it, but I made the mistake of being a brand new $120 unhoned dovo. Not that it's not a good razor, but definitely not one to learn to hone on. Definitely send you first razor(s) to get honed properly when starting out. I recently received 3 of my razors from floppyshoes who honed them for me. Like you said, it gives you that benchmark of sharpness to work up to. All newbies should read this before they buy anything! Thanks for the post,

Dave

[mziter]

I only have about a dozen shaves under my belt, but I can say that not buying an expensive razor was the best thing that I could do.

I bought a new wapi and a used razor from the classifieds for $80 total. This was still $40 less than the new razor I wanted to get. Guess what happened to my classifieds razor already? I might have tapped the faucet a bit with it..... . Anyways, I put a couple good nicks and have sent it out to get put back in order.

The moral of this story is that when you first start shaving you tend to do things a bit wrong (stropping, shaving, cleaning, honing, etc...) even things that you would not even think of. Save yourself the heartache of ruining a nice razor and get two that will shave but are not expensive.