Thread: A WHOLE WORLD OPENED UP

I have been using a straight razor for about 3 years - not everyday, it tends to be a weekend luxury. I won't shave at night, and in the morning I'm too bleary-eyed to concentrate properly with a straight edge.
I was in the barber's, and the chit-chat turned turned to complaining about the deterioration in quality of double edge safety blades. I liked the way a sturdy heavy butterfly-opening Gillette held the heat from the water, but the amount of shaves I could get out of the only freely available blades here in England (Wilkinson Sword) shrunk - to two! I suppose production has been moved to you-know-where, and that's the end of that. I remarked on the strop hanging by the side of the basin, and he said it was only for decoration, no demand any more (the Aids thing being the final nail in the coffin). I ended up leaving the shop with the strop, a pocketful of straight razors in varying states but all extremely salvageable, and all thank goodness with rounded toes. One in particular slopes like the shovel nose of a '74 TransAm. And a little hand-size blue-gray stone. These are still the only ones I've got. I cleaned up the strop with saddle soap, the blades rigorously with Solvol Autosol, which was the gentlest thing I could think of, and after honing them the best I could, I got the idea from someone of gluing chamois leather to 4"wide offcuts of formica-covered kitchen worktop which as you know is very very flat. One of these I pasted with a little Solvol to polish the bevel - I had no idea real pastes existed! - and stropped on newspaper in between - I thought that was my invention! - before finally going to the barber's strop. Inching my way through all this took months on end, but hey 3 years on it's all far better than shop bought disposables, and has definitely caused me less "cut throats"! I thought I was some sort of relic, until just for something to do I typed "cutthroat razor" into eBay, saw a myriad of razors for sale, and followed the e-trail to this site. What an absolute revelation, I feel like Captain Kirk landing on Planet Sensibleshave. Do we all feel our way blindly like this? Perhaps I've horrified you, but if that friendly barber had not given me the little stone as well, I shudder to think what i might have done to hone them. When the chamois gets a bit too discoloured I just rip it off and glue some more on. Pennies. BUT I'm promised a brand new Dovo as a birthday present, and I hope it will come as no surprise to you that, as a direct result of what I have so very recently learned from Straight Razor Place - all of you - I shall get it straight off in the mail to a professional honer! Thank you all so very much for all your help and experience, and thank you for reading this.

welcome to the site....looks like you lucked out with your razors.

Being new to this site i should let you know everyone will chime in any minute now and be bugging you to show pictures of your beautiful toys, lol so ill give you a heads up so you can prepare!

Welcome to SRP Blackpool

If your new razor comes from SRD it comes straight from one of the best honers out there
so i would not worry about that too much

Welcome to the site Blackpool. I'd be interested to know if it's a belgian stone you have there or an escher.

Sounds like you figured out the straight razor using common sense.

Originally Posted by claytor

Welcome to the site Blackpool. I'd be interested to know if it's a belgian stone you have there or an escher.

Sounds like you figured out the straight razor using common sense.

Thank you all
Basil:- No camera to humiliate myself with!
Janiva123:- Ah, if only.....but then again, an Italian girl wants to buy it for me, and she's a lot prettier than him!
Claytor:- It has a sort of cool, not cold talcum powdery feel to it, but any distinguishing lettering probably disappeared decades ago err.... hold on, what's that on the underneath......... thou shalt not commit adu..... can't make out the rest of it...
Tell you what might interest you: years ago, somewhere in the mid-70's I owed a fellow in London a big favour for saving me in a business deal. He smoked Havanas which he bought from a private importer in Charing Cross Road, and it was pointless me buying him a box, so I went to Alfred Dunhill's in Jermyn Street, behind Piccadilly, who sold all manner of high end tobacco products, leather goods, menswear and personal sundries - solid silver and real ivory handled razors, badger hair bone handled toothbrushes - you can just imagine the shaving brushes!! - and exquisite cigar humidors. I bought the best one I could afford, and the salesman disappeared for a moment, coming back with a stack of newspapers under his arm. "Don't think I'm being cheap or anything," he said "but anything you pack french-polished wood like this in is liable to scratch it, except, believe it or not, newspaper." I have never forgotten that - try damp newspaper on your spectacle lenses - and when it came to cleaning a razor in between processes, I have found it, dry usually, but sometimes slightly misted, invaluable. Thank you all again.

oops i guess i misread the last few lines in the OP