Thread: Decided to go vintage! Help?

If you want to do it on the cheap, I would post in the Buy/Sell/Trade section and see if someone's willing to sell you a shave-ready razor and used strop at a good price.

Several years ago, I tried to get into straight shaving by buying some e-bay specials and a 1k/4k waterstone and some generally inferior gear with not great results. I've just recently got into this again, but bought shave ready razors from a good e-bay vendor and quality gear - huge difference.

While I agree that Tony's starter setup is a great deal and everything will last you a lifetime, its a fair chunk of change for a lot of people to drop on stuff they're not sure they're going to use long term.

If you just want to test the waters, this is what it will cost:

1) Shave ready razor - $20 to $30 from a kind-hearted SRP member (the razor will likely not be much to look at, but will shave well). This will save you a bunch of money - if you're really serious about giving this a try, you will quickly want a second razor, but you can make due with one for the first bit.

2) Daily strop - you can buy a starter strop from Tony for $25 or a slightly better one with lether and linen for about $40.

3) A pasted padle strop - this is what you will use to refresh your blade when it starts to dull (even with proper daily stropping a blade will need to be refreshed periodically (for me I do a touch up every 5 shaves or so) on either a fine hone or strop coated in abrasive paste). Tony's 4-sided padles are terrific and will cost you about $60 pre-pasted.

To save a little money, you can buy a pasted padle with three sides covered with pasted leather and one side in unpasted leather for daily stroping - this option would allow you to omit the hanging strop and save a little more money - the downside is you don't get a linen side (which I like, but is not necessary) and you will have to make more laps on than you would a hanging strop as the padle is shorter than a hanging strop. Having said this, padle strops have been around for ages and this seems to confirm that they're fine for daily stroping as well as abrasive pastes.

If you're really on a budget, you can use a piece of wood that has been made perfectly flat (glass or a polished marble/granite tile) with abrasive microgrit sandpaper - this is a pretty cheap way to go, but is not as convenient as the padle strop.

Finally, you will need a shaving brush and soap - to start with, you can use a drugstore boar hair brush and a cake of Williams soap - which should run you less than $10. However, you will almost certainly want to upgrade to a badger hair brush and these start out at about $30 for anything decent, but there are some deals out there - these guys have some boar brushes on sale for $1.5 and some better ones for $8http://www.cottonblossomcrafts.com/e...ng_brushes.htm - but most drug stores or Target stores carry perfectly serviceable boar brushes for well under $10.

So, unless you can get some good used kit, here's what I think what I think you could get away with to try straight shaving with the right gear (right being what you really need to properly maintain your razor for the first few months at least).

Used shave-ready razor - $20 - $30
Padle strop (3 sides pasted, one side with plain leather) $55
Brush & soap - $10.

Total: $85 to $95 plus shipping.

If you really wanted to do it on the cheap, you could by one of Tony's bench hones with one side pasted and the other side in plain leather for about $30. However, you will almost certainly want to upgrade to the padle and/or hanging strop, so I would recomend the paddle - also, if you decide you don't like straight shaving, the paddle can likely be sold here for %50 to %75 percent of what you paid for it if you've only had it for a month or two and haven't cut it up.

Good luck.

Williams soap keeps coming up, but I didn't have the best experience with it starting out. It tended to dry out quickly on my face, leaving little more than a crust that offered no protection from the blade.

I'd recommend a tube of Proraso shaving cream, available in the spa section at Target, or the Proraso shaving soap. Either will give you a rich lather with little fuss. The cream is about $6 and the soap is $4.

Some members do love the Williams, though; your mileage may vary.

Good luck,
Josh

Good point - I agree that the Williams is not the best, but it is serviceable and cheap - the Proraso is much better and I should have recommended it instead.

Originally Posted by suzuki

Good point - I agree that the Williams is not the best, but it is serviceable and cheap - the Proraso is much better and I should have recommended it instead.

That $.99 price tag is hard to argue with.

Josh

Originally Posted by joshearl

Williams soap keeps coming up, but I didn't have the best experience with it starting out. It tended to dry out quickly on my face, leaving little more than a crust that offered no protection from the blade.

Williams works fine, it just needs a lot more water than other soaps because it isn't as heavily superfatted. I'd recommend the Palmolive lather cream over the Proraso just because too many people have problems with the eucalyptus in the Proraso, but the Palmolive is innocuous enough stuff and works really well.

Where do you live? If you are reasonably close to one of the guys here, you might be able to set up a visit to get a hands on introduction and some help. Ideally, this would be the quickest and cheapest way to figure out if you are doing things right and if you like the process and results.

Originally Posted by joshearl

Williams soap keeps coming up, but I didn't have the best experience with it starting out. It tended to dry out quickly on my face, leaving little more than a crust that offered no protection from the blade.

I'd recommend a tube of Proraso shaving cream, available in the spa section at Target, or the Proraso shaving soap. Either will give you a rich lather with little fuss. The cream is about $6 and the soap is $4.

Some members do love the Williams, though; your mileage may vary.

Good luck,
Josh

Sorry, I had to jump in here and defend my favorite shaving soap that I use daily. William's is actually great soap IF you know how to use it. I agree it can dry prematurely but doesn't have to. Hey, at $0.85 a cake at Walmart, it's worth learning how to use it.

Just my $0.02,

Scott

Scott,

I agree in principle. Williams wouldn't have stayed around as long as it has if it was no good. I think my main difficulty was not knowing what to expect out of a soap. I think I could get a decent lather with it now.

The Proraso was just a little easier for me to get the hang of while I worked on other aspects of my technique. Come to think of it, maybe I'll pick up another puck of Williams soon...

Josh

Thank you for the encouragement and advice! I'll be holding off for a little while while I get some things in order (family first...especially with Christmas around the corner).

By the way, I live in WI.

You may wish to indicate your location in the User CP. That's how I met X, Dave and Jason and they're all amazing contributors to the SRP, always up for a good exchange of info.