Thread: First of many posts but first of little questions

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

watch for water/lather inside the scales too....................

+1.... This really is a common problem for new guys. When shaving it is best only to rinse the blade and not the scales. A lot of folks actually run water over both. What then happens is that you wipe the blade and scales thinking you got all the water dry and there is water inside the scales, so when you close the razor, you end up with the stain spots and eventually, rust.

As indicated, when you catch it early, you can generally remove the spots with Maas or something like it using a dremel or a quick pass on the buffing wheels.

Welcome to SRP!

Lynn

Welcome to SRP mate.

Even if you'd left the blade damp, I'm surprised to see so much spotting after one day.

I've never heard of Artamis razors before, so I did a search and came up with this.

Buy Artamis Shaving Products from My Smoking Shop Tobacconist

I don't know where you got your razor from but to me £17.99 for a new straight razor seems too good to be true (and probably is), at that price point I'd expect this to have been made in Pakistan/India from questionable quality recycled steel.

My advice would be to buy another entry level blade, but one of good quality that's actually going to serve you well.

For example...

A shave ready 'Gold Dollar' from Ruprazor

Or a shave ready 'Wapienica' from Fendrihan

Either of these are superb shavers, and are about the cheapest new "quality" razors I'm aware of. Either of these would serve you really well.

I'm going to make an educated guess from bitter experience, that if you persevere with the Artamis you could well be in for a rather uphill struggle.

Maas is sold in the UK at Lakeland stores amongst others, but if you can't find it then Autosol from Halfords works too.

I think this is going to be one of those times where you buy cheap and buy twice as I'm fairly sure your razor will be poor quality and not worth trying to shave with. Read the wiki here, learn as much as you can by watching Youtube videos and browsing these forums, then buy a shave ready vintage razor from the classifieds here. You'll be thankful you did in the long run.