Thread: Mantic Goes Straight?

Remember to stretch your skin as tight as possible and pull it in a direction so they whiskers stand up, not lay down flat.

I wouldn't strop on the first shave, you'll most likely strop wrong and dull the razor, everyone does this at first.

Make sure your shaving angle is steep enough to cut hairs, too low and it'll cut nothing.

Use as much pressure as a feather would landing on your face. A DE and a straight is a light and day technique difference.

Please let us know if you need help!

Originally Posted by Yorkie

Looking forwards to seeing the vid.. Will it be screened here first?

Y'know that's actually not a bad idea. I might do that to get input on how it should be shown/presented in a video.

Don't look for this tomorrow though; it will probably be months before I do anything video-wise. My learning curve will be delayed because I'll probably use weekends to practice.

Originally Posted by mantic

Y'know that's actually not a bad idea. I might do that to get input on how it should be shown/presented in a video.

Don't look for this tomorrow though; it will probably be months before I do anything video-wise. My learning curve will be delayed because I'll probably use weekends to practice.

..and heal up in between lol (only kidding)

Got my RupRazor set today. I'll be soaking up the info here and I might even try a single pass this weekend...

Good luck Mantic....and let us know how the first shave went. I remember when I first started that I looked at your videos a dozen times before I even shaved with a DE.

You have got it beat for the most part. You know all the trick like stretching and so on. Heck I learned the ole "hold the swallow" technique from you. Good luck and have fun with it.

Take Care,
Richard

Originally Posted by mantic

Got my RupRazor set today. I'll be soaking up the info here and I might even try a single pass this weekend...

YES!!

Soon, Mantic videos on straight razors.

Originally Posted by mantic

Got my RupRazor set today. I'll be soaking up the info here and I might even try a single pass this weekend...

You have your beard prep down, you know the gig about keeping an angle and stretching the skin. If I were you, I'd be doing my side burns on my next shave, I think you should pick up the easy bits very quickly. Use your DE to clean up and advance on the weekends. You'll be there before you know it.

Welcome to the dark side Mantic. I'm yet another who has loved your shaving video. I basicly learned how to lather from your videos.
Good luck with learning to use straights. You're going to love it.

OK, I had my first straight shave over the weekend. It went about as well as I could expect. On the positive side I actually did cut stubble . On the negative side I managed to give myself two nicks (one under the nose and one under the left side of the mouth) and one good slice (right cheek). I can see beard reduction is going to take more time than I thought. One pass straight down, another pass almost straight down (just a bit of an angle to get more reduction), one pass straight up on the neck only. I didn't expect BBS or DFS (though strangly my neck and lower chin are darn near DFS and almost as easy to do as with a DE). Trying to get a handle on blade angle and razor grips (tried both hands but I think I'll stick with my right).

In retrospect it was stupid of me to wait a couple days without shaving before trying the straight; next time will be after a normal day's growth. I'm still also trying to get a handle on stropping: I hung the strop from a hook on the wall so I could get a flat surface and I spent several minutes (after lathering up to get my face well prep'd) slowly going back and forth in an X pattern on each side, but I still don't "know" if it made any difference.

I wiped the razor on a towel during the shave, rinsing once in a while. After the shave I left it out to air dry.

So there you have it. Obviously, this is going to take a while.

--Mark