First shave, santa came early

I opened a present...or several, a little early this year. My favorite mother got me a Thiers-Issard carbon full hollow 5/8 razor in buffalo horn (picture to come soon, too lazy to get my camera put together), along with a strop and some soap in a walnut bowl. The kit also came with a boar brush, but I already have a badger that I got with my safety razor, so it went under the sink never to be seen again.

Shave started off a little rocky. I messed up the lather and didn't get it wet enough, so it was drying out on my face, causing the razor to grab. I also didn't shower and my prep was awful. Once I got the lather straightened out it went relatively great. I read to take your time, learn one part of the face per day, for a month.....That's not how I learn. Not only did I do my entire face, I made 3-4.5 passes: WtG, XtG, AtG, XtG. The AtG pass was by far the most terrifying, but I survived the whole endeavor with 1 microscopic cut and the only spots I missed were around the corners of my jaw on the neck side and the chin/neck transition (which I've always had trouble with).

In conclusion, started rocky, ended better than anticipated. I have never sweat so much doing such a minor activity. It's all uphill and an empty bank account from here.

G'Day, welcome and the compliments of the Season to you.

Glad things went well - the good thing about sweating so much is that it keeps the lather moist....:shrug:

Look forward to sharing more of your journey

Laughing as I read your post here, moderngent, cause I went through the exact same sweating moments during my first straight shave two days ago...and with my second shave coming up in the morning, I'm looking fwd to it, and to learning more from the "older brothers" here.

Well done. You must be a natural. That's significantly better than I did when I tried to do atx & xtg a couple of weeks ago. My mush has just about recovered from the ordeal. Until wtg feels natural I'm not risking my face again with more. On the other hand, my most recent shaves have been blood & a styptic pencil free so I'm making progress.

Merry Christmas

Congrats, my first was Christmas eve also. It was a little stressfull and I walked away with 3 nics. 2 of them I didn't see until a little later and 1 that I saw coming and didn't realize until it was too late. but its all good. My mentor tells me it only gets better. I enjoyed it and by your post I would guess you did too. Keep it up!

Haha I'm sure some of the senior members check this and have a bit of a nostalgic chuckle. I watched a whole minute of an instructional video and decided to just have at it. The oddest part of all is that I'm right handed, but shaving the left side of my face with the razor in my left hand came much more easy than the dominant side. Across the grain felt much more natural than with for some reason, but that might have something to do with the fact that I fixed my lather. And as far as the sweat, I didn't actually sweat, but I had that feeling where you know ALL of the blood is rushing to your head out of stress. In my head I was screaming "oh sh!t oh sh!t oh sh!t".

I still have a few bumps on my neck from cartridge razors and my safety razor (kept cutting them because I shave daily) but the straight razor just glided over them somehow. Not one drop of blood was caused by a razor bump.

nice job .. my first ( a couple months ago ) led to 2 cuts in the same spot except one on each side of my face and a whole lot of redness where i scratched the hair off instead of shaving it off ...lol

Boar brushes arn't that bad, esp when using soap rather than cream, I find...

I might be able to use it then. My badger works really well with the cream I have, but the kit my mom got me came with soap. I'll give em both a shot in that case.