100 shaves in!

[TrueStereo]

Mixed shaving emotions this last week. I got my shavette right at the new year and my straight honed and ready a couple of weeks after that. Apart from about 5 shaves with a cartridge since then on days when I really could not make time for a shave with either open razor and the odd day off, I have shaved almost every day which means that this week saw my 100th shave! Thanks to all those posters who said that it takes about 100 shaves to be properly competent - they are right. I had my final 'get those jawline whiskers' breakthrough moment a few days ago. My chin a day or so later! And no blood at all for the last 2 or 3 weeks (although the last proper cut was right over the jugular - that was a fun sight - artery throbbing just under the wound ).

However - competent though I now feel at shaving, this week also marks the (hopefully very temporary) retirement of my straight due to my clear incompetence at keeping anything like an edge on it. It now struggles to cut hair at all. BBS and smooth shave from the shavette - stubble and razor burn from the straight. I shall send it back to be honed at some point soon and hope to do a better job at keeping it sharp after that. I have a couple of natural slate stones that cut at about 12k and 16k according to the vendor but I will have to use them much more regularly to keep the edge. It's too far gone now.

Back to the positives, I have also picked up a lovely old blade from ebay, as mentioned in another thread. Not quite sure what to do with it yet - get it honed as is or have a go a making some new scales for it and then getting it honed. Other projects need finishing first though

[Ryan82]

Congrats on the milestone shave and your diligence in counting shaves - I think I stopped counting around #20 or so hehe