Thread: First shave! More questions!

I'm pretty green to str8 shaving as well but I tend to just build the lather on my face instead of in the bowl. I load up the brush and then start small swirls on my face. You should be able to find quite a few threads that discus it here. The brush (at least mine) seems to get better as they break in. That being said I have an el cheapo boars hair.

Enjoy the new razor and have fun. Take it slow and enjoy.

Shave #2:

Stropped for 10 min or so (soaking the brush and all that), i did the stropping SLOWLY. HAd a great shave! I even did 2,5 pass, XTG in the neck i will have to check some vids. Far from BBS, but much better compared to yesteday. 3 nicks, but compared to the 10 nicks i have when shaving with a cartridge razor these were 10 times smaller. I really have to get a better feel for holding the blade during XTG and ATG passes. No razor burn. awesome day!

This is the most awesome and coolest way to shave! Completely hooked! And i still have a lot to learn, but i think that will all work out.

An alternative for you is to face lather your soap. Just load the brush like you normally would, wet your face, then take the brush to your face instead of building lather in a bowl. Keep the water in the bowl you soaked your brush in and dip the tips of the brush bristles in the water when you need to (just the tips so you don't get too much water) and take it back to your face. I find it much easier to build lather on my face instead of in a bowl, plus building lather on your face has the added benefit of forcing you to spend time working the lather in your beard. It might feel a little weird the first couple times you do it, but you will soon learn if your lather is right or not by feel.

+1 on soaking your brush while in the shower. If you take a cheese grater to you puck of soap and simply compress the shavings into your container your other problem should be solved. When you first put the shavings into the container it will likely look a little wierd but after several loadings of the brush the soap will smooth out and look like a factory installation.
MISC. Tips and Tricks:

• Keep the strop tight and use very little pressure on the razor. Turn the razor on the spine
• More stropping is better. You can over hone a razor but over stropping is quite impossible. The more you strop the keener the edge
• Alum blocks and witch hazel are very effective and very affordable after shave treatments.
• You're right, this is the coolest and funnest way to shave. If someone had told me ten years ago that my daily shaves would be an enjoyable diversion that I totally looked forward to, I would have called them crazy but indeed this is now the case with straight razors, brushes and soaps

I'm going to send the razor to Bart from coticule.be, if i like the edge i'll probably get a coticule stone myself in the future ( I mean i'm going to get a coticule stone in the future... )

He also shared some thoughts with me on the tiny wave in my blade. He has the impression that at Dovo they grind their razors hollow and afterwards check for imperfections. Razors with insignificant imperfections are made into the cheaper razors. They call those "Best Quality" lol