Thread: Hello from Ct. 45 year journey.

Hi and welcome aboard. I had a razor I couldn't get going for about 10 years before finding the forum. The information here is amazing and sure it will help you too.

Hello and welcome on the forum. When I discovered how a pleasure it was to use a straight, I sincerely had a regret to have broken my grand pa's one when I was 15.
Shame on me!

I can relate. My stepfather, a Barber gave me a Straight Razor, a Red Imp, a strop from 1957 and a Swatty Barber Hone. I struggled for years to sharpen and maintain an edge on a straight. In 95’ I got internet for the first time. I searched for straight razor shaving information and found one article. There was a link in the article to Green Pond a now defunct internet based Men’s grooming supplies website. There I bought a silver tip badger brush and some Trumper Hard soap. A year or two later I ran across a video of Lynn Abrams at an event in Knoxville honing a razor using Naniwa Stones. His email was provided and we exchanged several emails and talked on the phone about a dozen times. This was before this site or SRD store. He absolutely put me on the correct path to honing stropping and shaving with a straight razor. Shaving is the easy part. If you razor is shave ready that is. Just take about a 30 degree or so angle on your face and shave sideburn to jaw bone. Let the razor do the work. If it pulls stop. Strop the razor and try again. If it still pulls it needs to be honed. Never continue a shave with a razor that pulls. Welcome to the world of craziness!