6 months in, still having trouble

Hey guys,
I have been shaving with straights for about 6 months now, and am still having trouble achieving a close, comfortable shave. The smoothest, most pain free shave that I have had is with the first shave from a Feather Super blade. Even with a brand new Feather blade, I can't achieve a bbs in some areas. I will give a summary of different things that I have tried, and hopefully someone can spot where I am going wrong.

My face: I have sensitive skin, coarse facial hair, with the most concentrated growth around upper lip and goatee area. Normal growth direction of facial hair.

Various products tried: Col. Conklin soap, Taylor of Old Bond Street sensitive skin soap, Al's cream, Truefitt & Hill cream, Castle Forbes sensitive skin cream, pre shave oil, & baby moisturizing body wash for pre shave softening. I have also made uber lather with various combos of listed soaps/creams + a few drops of glycerine.

Razors used: Feather, brand new Dovo, mint W&B, Puma.

Techniques: Hot shower for prep or hot towel over lather. I've tried different combos of lather consistency from runny to cool whip thick. I work the lather in for a minute or so with a silvertip badger hair brush. I've tried many different combos of varying pressure/angle, wtg/xtg/atg, skin stretching, scything, etc. I can shave wtg and get a presentable, somewhat comfortable shave over my entire face, but there is still substantial amounts of hair left everywhere except my cheeks. Xtg doesn't pull anywhere except above lip and chin area. Atg stops the blade in it's tracks everywhere except cheeks, and outer neck. Even the brand new Feather blade and first shave on my new Dovo couldn't shave Atg with any angle/pressure combo that I tried. I know that everyone says to stop immediately if you feel tugging, but I have toughed my way through shaves to try and find out what works, and what doesn't. I'm comfortable with the blade, can use both hands to shave, can scythe, coup de maitre, and shave with high angles without cutting myself. I can't however, achieve a smooth shave over my entire face without going through alot of blade tugging, several passes, and an all around uncomfortable shave. I have watched hundreds of YouTube videos, some of guys that get close shaves in one pass, sometimes going atg in areas on the first pass. I have stropped my razors on a pasted strop lightly, up to 75 laps on pressed wool, and up to 150 laps on leather. I have tried blade weight up to light pressure while stropping, and the edges on my shave ready razors look perfect under a 40x loupe, will HHT coarse hair (chest hair) but won't cut hair off of my head (which is pretty fine). I haven't tried to hone any of my razors. Do I need to take them to my 4/8K Norton, or is it something in my procedure that I am doing wrong? I feel that I am pretty good at evaluating cause/effect for things, as I must do it on a daily basis for my job, but this has me stumped. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

The ONLY things that pop out to my rank novice eyes are

- you're stropping on a pasted strop.. exclusively? And how's your stropping technique?

- your blades look / are shave ready.. by your standards or by a honemeisters?


Personally, I botched up the edge of a Dovo BQ honed by Lynn (sorry, mate!) just by stropping with novice level technique. You may want to consider sending one of the blades out for a professional hone, and having it serve as a guage to judge the performance of your other ones. (And you're stuggling to get a close shave... do you really want to add to your frustration by adding novice honing skills to the mix?) Also, either get together with someone local or post a vid of your stropping technique just to cover that base. My understanding is that pasted strops aren't an everyday-use item...maybe once a week with daily blade use. Maybe.

All I got.


Cheers.
Scott

After six months, your technique should be fine. My guess is that your blade is not quite sharp enough. When you mention the Feather blades, what are you using them in? When I use my Feather DX SS with a new Feather blade, the sharpness and results border on magical. Even ten shaves in with a Feather, it gives me all the sharpness I need to get a good shave. I'd say you are doing too many laps on paste and rounding the bevel. I never use paste and just rely on stones and leather.

There has been much said about BBS in the past. Sometimes BBS all over is not attainable or comes at a cost just to high. I have 2 areas that are very hard for me to get BBS and I had to accept for these patches DFS is good enough. I can get BBS but the number of laps, risk of nicks all leading to irritation to attain BBS in these areas is just not worth it to me. This goes for whatever razor I try, DE,Straight or Mach 3. Which tells me that it is just not meant to be in this area.

IMHO the soaps and prep are perfect. Not your issue at all. I suspect the sharpness of your razor, and, if you are like me, the culprit would be assuming that your stropping technique is acceptable when your face is telling you that it is not. Get yourself a butter knife and slowly practice on a hanging leather strop. Count as you move back and forth, try to maintain a rhythm. It may appear silly for me to say this, but it took me longer than 6 months to learn how to properly use a strop. Be patient with your learning process, this is a journey - enjoy the trip, you'll get to the destination. Good luck!

Just a small thing that may help, as we're all just kind of guessing based on what you've told us. But there's a video on youtube of Liam the barber's shop at the Waldorf. In the video there are a few clips of him or his daughter giving shaves. Watching that video really gave me an appreciation for how lightly the razor touching the skin should be. Before that I was almost literally carving the whiskers off my face. 15+ years of disposables and cartridge razors had very much desensitized my skin, and I could tolerate using too much pressure. So I'd say check out the video, and just see if that's how lightly you're doing it in the actual shave. If so, then at least that's one variable you can cross off the list. Then go and watch afdavis's stropping video on the homepage here. If you're doing that part right too, you'll know this is a razor sharpness issue, for which you might have to drop a twenty and get it honed by a paid honer. But with a little searching, you may not have to spend any money to get it honed. In fact, I'll be surprised if someone doesn't swoop in and offer to help you out. The guys on here are pretty damn helpful when it comes to the struggling masses. I'd offer myself, but my edges aren't proven, and the last thing you need is an unproven edge to shave with. haha. Maybe next year. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 94Terp

The ONLY things that pop out to my rank novice eyes are

- you're stropping on a pasted strop.. exclusively? And how's your stropping technique?

- your blades look / are shave ready.. by your standards or by a honemeisters?


Personally, I botched up the edge of a Dovo BQ honed by Lynn (sorry, mate!) just by stropping with novice level technique. You may want to consider sending one of the blades out for a professional hone, and having it serve as a guage to judge the performance of your other ones. (And you're stuggling to get a close shave... do you really want to add to your frustration by adding novice honing skills to the mix?) Also, either get together with someone local or post a vid of your stropping technique just to cover that base. My understanding is that pasted strops aren't an everyday-use item...maybe once a week with daily blade use. Maybe.

All I got.


Cheers.
Scott

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I have only taken my shave ready razors to the pasted pressed wool for 10 laps or so, then continue to unpasted wool and unpasted leather. My first few attempts at stropping started with absolutely no pressure on the blade. I was actually skipping the blade across the leather, and not keeping contact because of how light the pressure was. I have tried blade weight and light pressure, making sure to keep the strop extremely tight, and can now keep the entire blade against the leather throughout the strop at a relatively quick pace. I will post a video when I get home for evaluation.

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Originally Posted by ace

After six months, your technique should be fine. My guess is that your blade is not quite sharp enough. When you mention the Feather blades, what are you using them in? When I use my Feather DX SS with a new Feather blade, the sharpness and results border on magical. Even ten shaves in with a Feather, it gives me all the sharpness I need to get a good shave. I'd say you are doing too many laps on paste and rounding the bevel. I never use paste and just rely on stones and leather.

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I am using the Feather blades in a cheap "Mr. C. Razor". My dad bought it several years ago from a local barber, it has a heavy head, and will accept Feather blades. This was the first straight that I used, as I wanted to see if straight razor shaving was something that I wanted to do on a regular basis. I have a 40x loupe, and I compare a brand new Feather edge to those of my straights to see how fine the edge is. My straights look similar to the Feather edge besides the double bevel of the Feather. I have a few old straights that are not shave ready, and I can definitely tell a difference between those and my shave ready straights' edges. From the looks of it, it doesn't look like I have rolled the edge of any of my razors.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BanjoTom

IMHO the soaps and prep are perfect. Not your issue at all. I suspect the sharpness of your razor, and, if you are like me, the culprit would be assuming that your stropping technique is acceptable when your face is telling you that it is not. Get yourself a butter knife and slowly practice on a hanging leather strop. Count as you move back and forth, try to maintain a rhythm. It may appear silly for me to say this, but it took me longer than 6 months to learn how to properly use a strop. Be patient with your learning process, this is a journey - enjoy the trip, you'll get to the destination. Good luck!

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I'll post a video later for strop technique evaluation. I definitely enjoy the process, but my goal is to achieve a shave that is equal to or smoother than a cartridge razor shave, with less discomfort. I shaved with cartridge razors for years, and dreaded every shave. I used Mach3, Fusion, etc, and every razor felt like it was ripping hair out, especially on upper lip, and neck. ATG passes with cartridge razors give a BBS shave, but I end up with wicked razor burn. It got to the point that I quit shaving all together and only used neck trimming electric shears to bring my facial hair to a 5'o clock shadow. This went on for probably 5 years, and I started dabbling in straight razor shaving to see if it could be a solution.

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Originally Posted by regularjoe

Just a small thing that may help, as we're all just kind of guessing based on what you've told us. But there's a video on youtube of Liam the barber's shop at the Waldorf. In the video there are a few clips of him or his daughter giving shaves. Watching that video really gave me an appreciation for how lightly the razor touching the skin should be. Before that I was almost literally carving the whiskers off my face. 15+ years of disposables and cartridge razors had very much desensitized my skin, and I could tolerate using too much pressure. So I'd say check out the video, and just see if that's how lightly you're doing it in the actual shave. If so, then at least that's one variable you can cross off the list. Then go and watch afdavis's stropping video on the homepage here. If you're doing that part right too, you'll know this is a razor sharpness issue, for which you might have to drop a twenty and get it honed by a paid honer. But with a little searching, you may not have to spend any money to get it honed. In fact, I'll be surprised if someone doesn't swoop in and offer to help you out. The guys on here are pretty damn helpful when it comes to the struggling masses. I'd offer myself, but my edges aren't proven, and the last thing you need is an unproven edge to shave with. haha. Maybe next year. :)

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Yes, his and other's videos make me jealous. The razor removes hair effortlessly. When I try to use blade weight only, the razor usually "skips" across my face, not removing any hair. I can use light pressure over most areas of my face, but to remove the hair completely, I feel like I must bare down and push through a painful ATG pass. A WTG pass sounds like scraping a butter knife across toast, cuts hair, but I can feel significant stubble when I run my hand ATG. Around my lip and chin area, after the first pass leaves it feeling like 5o'clock shadow. There are 2 barbers in town that offer straight razor shaving, one that uses disposable blades, and one that uses traditional straights. I think that my next step would be to have one or both of them shave my face to see how it feels. That way, I can see if it is technique, razor sharpness, or both that are causing my troubles. I will probably send one of my straights to Lynn to hone, and will try to match the sharpness on another razor with my hones. Again, I thank everyone for their input, and will post a video or two later.

My next step would be to send your razor to be honed. Ask who ever hones it for you to strop it after his test shave. When you get the razor back, don't do anything to it but shave. You'll know quickly if it is your shaving or stropping. Also, make sure you stretch your skin well. I have sensitive skin and a very tough, coarse beard. When I don't pull the skin, I don't get a good shave.

+1 to what others have said re: getting your razors honed, stropping technique, and skin stretching.

Have you checked to see whether there are any SRP members near where you live? If you enter your location in your profile, then there's a map page that will show the other members who live in your area. If you could get up with one of our more experienced members that way, that might help.

Also, just wondering whether you've ever tried shaving with cold water, rather than prepping with hot towels and using hot water. I don't have your skin sensitivity issues, but I wasn't getting BBS consistently or easily until I switched to cold water for making my lather and wetting my face. And the blade feels more comfortable on my face.

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The razor removes hair effortlessly. When I try to use blade weight only, the razor usually "skips" across my face, not removing any hair. I can use light pressure over most areas of my face, but to remove the hair completely, I feel like I must bare down and push through a painful ATG pass. A WTG pass sounds like scraping a butter knife across toast, cuts hair, but I can feel significant stubble when I run my hand ATG.

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Ah see? That was easy. Your razor isn't sharp, and you may not be using the correct angle. But firstly, your razor isn't sharp. Secondly, don't be surprised if you can't match what an expert can do when it comes to honing. I've been at this a bit longer, and can't do it either. Take into account many of us might not be getting quite the edges we think we are also. Proven to me recently, when I had to eat my own humble pie. So get the razor honed by a professional, try to find a mentor to troubleshoot your technique(think Skype), and stay the course. It'll come around. Now that I think of it, you ought to get two razors honed by pros. Then you got one to shave with, and one to stare at and study while learning your own honing.

Here is a video of me stropping my Dovo. I normally have the strop much lower, but I didn't have a camera angle from that view. Let me know if everything looks good or if I should make any adjustments.
Stropping - YouTube

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Originally Posted by regularjoe

Your razor isn't sharp, and you may not be using the correct angle. But firstly, your razor isn't sharp.

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But what to think of the fact that he has the very same problem with them new feather?

I wonder if a visit to a barber for a shave will prove beneficial?

Yeah, I agree about the honing. I think you're saying you haven't honed your razors, and I don't think you say you've HAD them honed. So does that mean you haven't sharpened your razors for six months AND you've got course hair? Have you EVER had a close, comfortable shave (i.e. when the razors were new/fresh?). Were they actually shave ready when you started? I don't have a heavy beard growth, so I feel for those that may, and also have course hair. Then again, the AMOUNT of hair wouldn't really be a factor other than dulling a razor sooner. Really TOUGH hair may I guess be harder to cut.

+1 to the idea about getting a shave by a barber; I was going to suggest that. Also, do you know anyone near you who also shaves with a straight? Maybe they could use your razor to shave and evaluate the edge. Of course it would always be a good idea to sterilise the razor prior to sharing...

Just watched your stropping video. I don't know whether thisis being caused by your having the strop haning up so high, but I notice that you're lifting the razor completely off the strop at the end of each completed lap, and setting it back down on the strop flat, instead of spine first. Also, it looked to me as if you started your forward stroke before the spine was down on the strop in a couple of cases. Either of these things could lead to your rolling the edge.

I'd recommend unshipping the strop from its hardware and laying it flat on the countertop or tabletop at about waist height, and strop that way, focusing on keeping the spine in contact with the strop at all times when you flip the razor to change directions at the end of each stroke. You won't want to use any more than the weight of the razor itself to keep the blade in contact with the strop. This will be slow at first but you'll really master the flip land earn how to keep the blade in contact with the strop without bearing down or rolling your edge.