Thread: Length of Time required to learn

I was wondering how long it took each of you guys or gals to master each basic aspect of straight razor care and use. For example how long did it take you to learn how to shave, hone, strop etc.

It took me about two weeks before I was even beginning to feel comfortable with a straight and probably 3 months before I was getting good shaves. probably seven or eight months before I felt full facility with the razor. Stropping took me a few sessions to learn and honing is something you are always learning even after years but you can do a basic none job probably with a few days of practice.

i think these will be much harder questions to answer then you think. as far as stropping goes once you get good at it then you are pretty much set but when it comes to honing and shaving who has really mastered either of them? i can get a good shave and i can put a nice edge on my razor but in no way have i even come close to mastering either, not to say there aren't some guys on here that are masters. there are whether they will admit it or not.

i have been shaving with a straight for about a year and 3 months (though i did hit a period where i was using a disposable as time was a major factor for about 3 months) and i would still consider myself a noob even though i can get better shaves then with any disposable. as far as honing goes i am very happy with my progress in that ( it has been about 6 months i think) but am still learning. though the edges i get are good enough to shave with for sure.

sorry if this didn't answer your question so much, maybe i should have left things to the more experienced guys in here, oh well.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

It took me about two weeks before I was even beginning to feel comfortable with a straight and probably 3 months before I was getting good shaves. probably seven or eight months before I felt full facility with the razor. Stropping took me a few sessions to learn and honing is something you are always learning even after years but you can do a basic none job probably with a few days of practice.

A year in and the above post sums it up for me.

Yeah, theBigSpendur knows of what he speaks. The very basics of shaving should take a week or two, but it takes quite a while to get consistently good results. I am still improving my stropping and honing and shaving each week. I have a feeling it will never end, but that is a good thing.

James.

Like among other things the results will differ based on your prior experience with straight-like shaving. I am coming to straight shaving from double edges, which require much of the same skills as the straight does thus the learning curve may have been somoothed a bit here. I am not braggig but I am on my fouth shave with the straight and I believe that I have the basics down and I am getting a pretty good shave with it. Of course I came to double edge shaving three years ago from electrics and now I have eight double edge super speeds in the shave den. Double edges require the very light pressure and damand the same angel as the straight does, however are different enough that one needs to learn how to use the straight even if you are comming from the double edges.

I have another ten years before my son needs to start learning to do this job, but I think that I will use double edge shavers as a way to teach him to use the straight without his mother claiming that I am trying to kill him ith the double edge. For murder weapons the double edge is not much good, don't quite understand how this might be done.

Shaving - About 30 minutes (got it right on the second try)
Stropping - from the get go
Honing - from the get go

I bit the bullet at the beginning and went the using left and right hands method of shaving. 15 months down the track and I'm just getting my left hand to do the real tricky jobs . But boy my left hand was real useless at the start.

Brian

After 6 weeks I can finally get a great straight shave. But I am so slow at it you wouldn't believe. 30 minutes is fast for me, and approaching an hour is not that unusual. Perhaps if I was under pressure to do it faster I would, but for now I just seem to get caught up in the process.

It took me six weeks to consistently get smooth shaves without irritation. Two years in, I'm still working on the honing part. I can get a razor shave-ready for my needs but I'm not quite comfortable doing it for someone else. That's why even though a razor may be fine for me, I don't mark the razors I sell as shave-ready.