I think I have got the hang of straight razor shaving

[jbcohen]

This morning was the first weekday that I have done a straight razor shave, previously I did straight razor shaves only on the weekends because I was still developing a prowess with the blade. This morning I did it under seven minutes with no cuts or nicks. I think that I have finally gotten the hang of this one. I have stropping down but will need to get honing down. My inox was professionally honed by Lynn Abrams not long ago and I have a very light beard so I will not need to hone for some time now and I plan to go ask my straight razor teacher at The Art of Shaving to show me how to do honing. Right at the moment I have a narrow paddle strop with no caps on the ends of it so I sort of role off the edges rather than doing a role on each edge. I hope that I can get this all down properly.

When I shaved with electric razors I used to get a 5:00 shadow by 11:00AM, cartridges pushed that back to 3:00PM, double edges pushed that back to 7:00PM. Then I threw in shave cream and pushed the 5:00 shadow back to 9:00PM, the straight razor with the shave cream has been able to eliminate the 5:00 shadow completely.