Thread: Beginners Tips: April 2011

So this month I decided on these tips, I was dealing with one of these personally so I figured I would share...

Let's Talk about pressure this month

Shaving pressure:

Seems I have been honing a few more Kamisori recently, and one thing these razors teach you, is that without that super light gliding stroke, with pressure as light as an angel's kiss they will bite you...
Now practicing that lately, it has transfered back to my western razors also..
It is very easy to say this "Use very little to no pressure" but much harder to achieve in practice, as it feels counter intuitive...
We have some inherent thing going on in our brain I think that tells us, that to get a closer shave one must press harder...Nothing could be farther from the truth, if you really want to get the BBS feeling, and no irritation then "Back off Bub" and get that stroke as light as you can...
It takes a bit of practice to get that really smooth glide and it is best to practice it on your last shaving pass.

Now on to the next pressure

Stropping Pressure:

This has been coming up this past month on the forum, and the standard answer is "NONE"
well for a beginner that is near impossible to understand. The real answer is as much pressure as it takes to keep the spine (and therefore the edge) moving evenly across the strop...
There should be a bit of deflection in the hanging strop as you move the razor, when you start you want to reduce variables so keep the strop tight...
If all else fails place your hanging strop along the edge of a table or counter until you get the hang of the motion and the flip...
As you get better and better at stropping, you will find that by using different pressures at different times while stropping, combined with adjusting the tension of the strop, is what will bring the edge to it's absolute finest ... But that takes practice, for now concentrate on keeping the spine on the strop. don't lift it because that will leave the edge hanging there and that my friends is when bad stuff happens

As always I ask for the senior members to add their thoughts here also as many times we see things from a slightly different perspective, and the more views that beginners get, the better off they are....