Thread: Hello from Ct. 45 year journey.

Hi All,
When I was 15, I bought a straight razor and strop at Hoffritz in Grand Central Station. That was 1973 and I couldn't find anyone to teach me how to use it. Local barber declined.
In 1976, at college, I bought a DE razor, shave soap, and a brush and cut my face to shreds.
In 2017 I found my college brush and DE razor in the attic and watched some YouTubes on wet shaving and went to work & enjoyed it.
I now use straight razors and am learning to hone them. I have too many soaps but love shaving. It only took 45 years!
The internet has made it all possible or at least a lot easier. Forums like this are the best. Happy to share what little I know. Wish I started a lot sooner and wish I could find that 45 year old razor and strop from Hoffritz!
-Blackbeard (More graybeard at this point.)

It's a journey well worth it and never to late to start.
Cheers,
Jer

Hello and welcome to SRP.
Good to see you getting interested in straight razor shaving again.
Good luck finding your old razor.
Enjoy your time here on the forum and have fun learning.

Pete <:-}

Welcome to SRP!
I think all of us wished we would have started straight shaving at an earlier age.

Welcome to SRP! Glad to hear that you've worked your way back into straight razor shaving.

Oh, I will say that maintaining a beard -- be it black, grey, or whatever -- simply deprives you of more shaving fun.

Welcome.

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!