Hi all,

Just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself; I'm Jon and I live in northern NJ. I've been DE shaving for a while, with my go to set up being my Merkur Heavy Slant (39C, I think?), Rooney Heritage brush, and Penhaligon's cream and ASB. I'd found myself bored with shaving after using the same setup for so many years and recently got bitten by the straight bug - I've been straight shaving now for three weeks and am on my fourth razor already! It's reinvigorated my interest in the ritual and taken a toll on my wallet as well lol, as I sent my Rooney out for repair (years of face lathering and mashing the brush down killed the hair, and the handle had two cracks in it) and purchased a Thater 4125/2 two band and Simpsons Chubby 2.

My favorite razor so far is my Thiers-Issard 6/8 with a Spanish point and ram's horn scales; beautiful to look at and it shaves like a dream. Knock wood I haven't nicked myself too badly since the first few days (first day was nick free, but it also wasn't a great shave) and I'm now getting great shaves. Still working on that upper lip though - talk about a difficult angle!