Beginner looking for cheapest usable SR

**Spartigus** · 03-06-2010, 03:19 AM

Hey mate!
The thing with straight razors is that they are precision instruments, they need to be made and honed properly. The eBay ones you linked wouldnt be a good idea. I know you can get knives off ebay brand new, and you buy ones from a good brand, and they are excellent quality, but unforntantly straights arent like that. If you want to buy straights from ebay, you buy vintage ones that need restoring or lots of expert honing, and then you end up with an excellent shaver and a very very nice razor.

What you could do, is get the sraights that have disposable blades, i think they are called Shavettes, and they are very good, and im pretty sure you dont need a strop with it. Also you dont need to hone the blades.

What i would recommend for you is buy a Shavette and some spare blades, to get started. Then if you like it, get a nice normal straight and a nice strop. Someone recomend the Dovo brand, my first straight was a Dovo with a Dovo strop, i love her, they are very good!!!!!!!! For a first razor, buy from SRD, or the classifieds here, that way it is genuinely shave ready. Then get ebay ones that need restoring, then you can work your magic with the hones and buffing.

Good luck!

**LarryAndro** · 03-06-2010, 05:26 AM

I've had two Gold Dollars, and shaved with them as well as spent quite a bit of time honing them. My opinion is that they are nominally shavable razors. They get to shave ready... barely, and don't maintain the edge as long as I would like.

**HNSB** · 03-06-2010, 06:01 AM

You should take Glen (gssixgun) up on his offer. That will get you a blade made of good steel to see if you can make it shavable.

Please realize that making a blade capable of shaving arm hair, and making one able to shave facial hair are two completely different things. It sounds like you are up to the challenge (that is the whole point of this, correct?).

You don't need fancy shave soaps, but the shave will be MUCH smoother with a good soap. Good soaps (and a brush to develop a good lather) can make the difference between an uncomfortable, barely passable shave and a wonderful smooth shave.

Also, I really like how you mounted your papers on glass with the rubber feet. I don't know if that's a common thing to do with lapping paper, but I've never seen it before and thought it's pretty cool. You should be able to bring your razor to shave ready with what you have, but I think it would be wise to strop the razor before using it. You'll definitely need a strop if you want to keep shaving with that razor.
The good news is that you can use a wide flat leather belt as a strop to start out with.

Good luck!

Be sure to post here if you have questions or need help with anything else as you learn.

**ursus** · 03-06-2010, 06:26 AM

Originally Posted by Alltracturbo

Yes, this is pretty much correct. I don't need the razor to be shave ready because I wan't to sharpen it myself. That is the main reason I wan't the razor. I'll definetly try to shave with it when I get a good edge on it to see how I did sharpening it, but that doesn't mean I will enjoy it and continue in the future.

When I said I am looking for a usable razor, I didn't mean that as being shave ready. I was talking mostly about the type of steel. I am looking for something that after I put an edge on it would stay sharp through the entire shave and not lose it's edge.

Ok. Maybe we were reading too much into your post. Thanks for Glen pointing that out and promising a blade for you. One advantage of pre-sharpened blade would be that you'd know just how sharp a shave-ready blade is.

Do read the wiki industriously and be advised that the quality of shaves relate heavily also to preparation and technique. And that here the shavetest is considered the final test of sharpness, not HHT.

Good luck on your project!

**Alltracturbo** · 03-06-2010, 07:15 AM

Originally Posted by HNSB

You should take Glen (gssixgun) up on his offer. That will get you a blade made of good steel to see if you can make it shavable.

I just read the 36 page thread and many others talking about the Gold Dollar razors and was almost set to buy one, but I think I might just take him up on this offer before I jump into anything more expensive. Just sent a PM.

Originally Posted by HNSB

Please realize that making a blade capable of shaving arm hair, and making one able to shave facial hair are two completely different things. It sounds like you are up to the challenge (that is the whole point of this, correct?).

That is the main reason I even thought of getting a straight razor and didn't mind the idea of having to sharpen the Gold Dollar razor.

Originally Posted by HNSB

You don't need fancy shave soaps, but the shave will be MUCH smoother with a good soap. Good soaps (and a brush to develop a good lather) can make the difference between an uncomfortable, barely passable shave and a wonderful smooth shave.

How uncomfortable could it be? I use to shave dry with a regular razor. Then I started using shaving cream. Then when I ran out once I used the bar soap from the shower and it was actually smoother than using shaving cream (Just dries out your face). Plus it doesn't help that I useually don't change the blade for 4 or 6 months. I think i'm use to an uncomfortable shave.

Originally Posted by HNSB

Also, I really like how you mounted your papers on glass with the rubber feet. I don't know if that's a common thing to do with lapping paper, but I've never seen it before and thought it's pretty cool.

Thanks. I just used some epoxy to glue the feet on and sanded the edges of the glass so they aren't sharp. I have not seen this specifically done before, but I have seen some people online take a large piece of glass and stick the entire 8.5" x 11" sheet of each grade on it next to eachother. They do it that way to sharpen chisels and plane blades, but I don't think it would work that good for knives. The size I have is just like having sharpening stones.

They are the PSA backed sheets from here: http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/M...egory_Code=THS

Originally Posted by HNSB

You should be able to bring your razor to shave ready with what you have, but I think it would be wise to strop the razor before using it. You'll definitely need a strop if you want to keep shaving with that razor.
The good news is that you can use a wide flat leather belt as a strop to start out with.

This is actually what I was planning on doing, but I thought some of the people here would complain if I said I was going to use a belt, so I just wanted to keep the thread about the razor untill I decided what I wanted.

Have you ever tried using cardboard? It probably wouldn't be a good idea to use it on a straight razor (or anything that already has a polished edge), but I have used it on other knives before I bought the 3M lapping film and it actually worked really good. I only had a double sided stone that I think is 300 and 600 grit. Going from the 600 grit to using cardboard made a huge improvement. I did notice there are different kinds of cardboard and some don't work as good as others.

This is way off topic, but I always liked these videos. This guy sharpens a knife on a concrete block and cardboard. He has some other good videos as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG2QqhCTqT8

**niftyshaving** · 03-06-2010, 06:14 PM

Originally Posted by Alltracturbo

Yes, this is pretty much correct. I don't need the razor to be shave ready because I wan't to sharpen it myself.
......
Really need a shave brush? I have access to one, but don't use it.

What about shave soap? Wouldn't regular shaving cream or even bar soap work? I use both now with a regular Mach 3 turbo razor. I'm 23 and have been using the mach 3 for about 5 years.
.......

Learning to sharpen a sound blade is worth doing.
I saw someone offer you one... Life is good on that point.

As for shave soap and a brush. If is not a requirement
but even a Mach-3 user can profit from a good shave
lather and good face preparation. For me face preparation
is 80% of what it takes to get a good comfortable shave.

Since faces and whiskers are so different it is possible that
your regular shave cream is optimum for you. There is a reason
there are so many products and so many are sold. Some
is marketing and some just work for a lot of folk.

Re. my 80% assertion. I suspect that number is wrong.
A better way to look at it might be the process for
digging a post hole. It is harder than heck to dig the
bottom half first and it is harder than heck to get a
good shave without good face prep.

**Alltracturbo** · 03-12-2010, 10:39 PM

For anyone that's still reading this, I took Glen (gssixgun) up on his offer and accepted the free Genco that he had. He even offered to bring it to shave ready for me which I couldn't turn down since this is my first straight razor and I think it would be best to have a refrence of how a shave ready razor should feel before I try to hone it myself. I just wanted to say that he has been really generous and helped me out a lot. This is definetly making my straight razor experiance much more enjoyable.

Also, when he said earlier that it wasn't pretty, I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that and thought that I may even have to some restoration. I recieved the razor today and I must say that it's much nicer than I expected.

I useually shave every other day or sometimes every third day if I get lazy and today was the third day. I was thinking it might come so I decided to not shave untill after the mail came. I checked the mail and was so excited when I found it was there. I brought it in and stared at it for probably 20 minutes. Then I did some last minute reading of the beginner wiki pages here, took a quick shower, and then started my first straight razor shave.

No special brush or soaps, I just used the bar of soap from the shower. I went real slow and just did what I was comfortable doing while always remembering to keep around a 30 degree angle. I ended up doing about 3/4 of both sides of my face. I didn't do any of my chin, neck, or below the jaw bone. The left side was a little harder. I tried to use my left hand, but it didn't feel right. It felt like I wasn't cordinated enough and didn't have enough control, so I used my right hand instead. I'll learn to use my left hand later on. It went well and was really comfortable. It felt better after the shave than the areas that I did with the mach 3. Actually it didn't feel like I shaved at all. I tried to tell which was closer, but it was hard to tell. I think the mach 3 may have been a little bit closer.

All in all it was a good experiance and I can't wait to try it again. Here's a couple pictures I just took. Should have took them before I used it. I re-oiled it after I was done, but some surface rust already started to show up.

Thanks again to Glen and everyone else for spending your time helping me. I might still pick up a Gold Dollar razor in the future when I have some spare cash. There cheap enough to experiment sharpening with and quite a few people say they give a decent shave (don't wan't to argue about that here). Restoring an older razor would be fun too.

**LarryAndro** · 03-12-2010, 10:48 PM

When I started shaving with straights, I used regular shaving cream for a few weeks. Then, I went to Walmart and spent $7.50 and bought some very cheap shave soap, brush and mug. Even though it was as cheap as it gets, I was very surprised at how much better the shave was.

So...

Buy some shave soap and a brush! $7.50. Can you swing it?

You can upgrade later.

**gssixgun** · 03-12-2010, 11:49 PM

Glad you liked it !!!
Now you have one that you can mess with all ya want and at least you got to try the shave

**niftyshaving** · 03-13-2010, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by Alltracturbo

For anyone that's still reading this, I took Glen (gssixgun) up on his offer and accepted the free Genco that he had. He even offered to bring it to shave ready for me which I couldn't turn down
....snip....

IMO, That is a superior example of a tumbler run razor.

You are a lucky man...

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