Howdy from Denton TX

Howdy folks. I don't know if it's strange or not, but I came across Lynn's DVD first, and found these forums because of the video. There's a lot of information at hand, so I have a lot of reading to do!

About my shaving background, it's been years since I started down the path of wet shaving. Absolutely love the shaves I get from my Merkur heavy duty DE, but a couple of years back I started getting more and more interested in moving to a straight razor. Last year, for Father's Day, my wife surprised me with a Thiers Issard 5/8" straight razor from Art of Shaving and a strop. It's been a very interesting experience since then.

I've gotten over a lot of the nervousness of using a straight razor, gained a lot more confidence, and now I'm starting to get involved in the maintenance and upkeep of my razor. I'm starting off with sending it off to Glen (gssixgun) for a honing so that I have a standard to measure against when I start honing on my own. I have a Norton 4000/8000 and am still looking for a finishing stone (leaning towards the Naniwa 12k this week, but we'll see where I am next week).

In the meantime, I recently got a Geneva 6/8" from silverloaf on eBay. Had my first shave with it last night and got more razorburn than normal. Shaved great, but felt more scrapey. I think it's probably because I have been using more pressure than I should with the duller TI. It'll work out though.

I look forward to learning more from you guys!

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Welcome to SRP.

Hello,and welcome to the SRP family.

Hi and welcome. A lot of razor aren't quite there out of the box so your pressure is probably too much now with a properly honed razor. Any questions feel free to ask.

With the last of my tax refund, I pulled the trigger and got a Naniwa 12k and also a belgian yellow coticule from Fendrihan.

Now, I'm on the hunt on ebay for a cheap razor that's not too far gone that I can practice honing with.

Oh, also... now that I have a couple of shaves under my belt with the new Geneva, things have started to get a lot better. I'm using a lot less pressure, and getting a smoother shave. I even got an ATG pass done on my neck without incident (one of my problem areas due to how the hairs grow).

I see now some of the bad habits I developed as I continued to shave with my TI as the edge went further and further off.

Now I'm trying to get better at stropping without nicking the leather. I've got my strop laid out on the counter, and I see where when I finish a stroke, instead of just stopping it looks like I back the edge up just a hair. Results in just barely biting the razor edge into the edges of the leather (meaning I'm not stopping flat either). Going back to square one on stropping now and going super slow. Practice, practice, practice.