Thread: Bad Technique or not really "Shave Ready"?

Originally Posted by Pete10uk

Hi there

I'm completely new to straight shaving and have recently purchased a Dovo Best Quality razor (pre Honed & Stropped) and Dovo Prima Rindleder strop, to see if it is for me.

I opted to go straight in to a full shave without stropping myself to get the feel of the razor in it's best condition. I'm quite pleased with the result for a first go, 2 minor cuts in areas that I regularly irritate with a mach 3, so no real surprise.
As I say I'm happy with the result, not what I would call a close shave but nevertheless I was happy enough to leave the house. I'm expecting with practice this will improve, as all advise seems to indicate this.

I saved my chin to last and while doing this area could tell that the blade had changed, it didn't seem to be cutting as well. I finished the first pass and the tried a strop but this didn't seem to change things, but the results were OK so I finished up and left for work.

Now on my return home I have tried stropping again but I can't seem to get the edge back, testing on the back of my arm and on a long hair, I'm trying different techniques of stropping and get varying results, from not bad to very dull. When I say not bad, when cutting a long hair (in a loop) the hair tensions up before breaking.

Would you put this down to strop technique, or could something be wrong with the hone? Could a poor strop ruin a blade so quickly?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Pete

Chin is a hard location to shave correctly, so it might be just lack of technique/prep.

Probing the edge with hairs outside shaving situation is a learned skill that depends. You can continue doing it (to gather data between your hair tests and shaves), but concentrate on shavetest for now, ie. does it shave passable?

Dovo rindleder is decent strop (though a bit short) IMO. Steve's honing is good too. Poor stropping/prep is more probable cause. Can you describe what did you try stropping?

Does it pull when you shave your sideburns and no angling seems to be correct? If so, try fix it with stropping, say 100 laps. If it still doesn't cut the mustard, try touching it up with crox, newspaper. If that doesn't work, send it off to honing.

When I was starting out, the edge did worsen until I learned to strop properly.