Thread: About to take the plunge

Welcome! Nice find and some good sense shown in your post. Even just knowing/deciding to send it off to get professionally hones means you're over the biggest initial hurdle. It's always interesting coming over from the world of DEs because for all their similarities they are worlds apart. As you've no doubt already noticed, there is no shortage of folks happy to share their knowledge and experience with you. Cheers!

Welcome from SE Washington State USA,

Sounds like you've got a good head about you, with patience you will love this age old art.

Welcome from CO! I am also a new shaver. I’m roughly 40 shaves in and have about 6 months under my belt. My original strop was the poor mans from Whipped Dog. It works well. It’s ugly but works! Absolutely practice with a dull object. I thought I had technique down, then I started stropping for real and I believe I rolled my blade like so many new shavers do. Gasman helped with a very ugly razor making it shave worthy again. Research helps. I try to read a bunch when I can. Good luck and I hope you enjoy. It’s a great ride!!!

Thanks everyone! I appreciate all the encouragement and openness to take new questions. Specifically the advice about stropping has probably saved me from wasting a bunch of money! Looking forward to the ride!

One questions while I'm thinking of it. I typically shave with creams, is there a cream vs soap preference you find with straight edge shavers or is it pretty well mixed as with DE? I've seen a lot about using very wet lather and didn't know if that drove people more toward the soap side for the slickness.

Welcome to SRP! You have a great start.

Hi and welcome aboard. Plenty of soaps, croaps and creams that work well with straights. Still mainly personal preference. There's a thread by Obie That's got a lot of information about lots of all of them. Worth a look if looking for something to try.

https://sharprazorpalace.com/soaps-c...ps-creams.html

Welcome. Like with a de pay attention to grain direction. Start with your cheeks and finish up with your de the first time or two, keep adding more straight and less de until you get through an entire pass. Once you get a little muscle memory and good angles of attack worry about doing another pass or two. I go wtg, xtg, though that’s just my routine.

Originally Posted by eddy79

Hi and welcome aboard. Plenty of soaps, croaps and creams that work well with straights. Still mainly personal preference. There's a thread by Obie That's got a lot of information about lots of all of them. Worth a look if looking for something to try.

https://sharprazorpalace.com/soaps-c...ps-creams.html

That's an extremely useful thread to help me part with my money! My go to is usually proraso, lately I've been trying their single blade line and enjoying it. That list gives me a lot of others to put on the Christmas/Birthday list!

Random rookie question of the day.

Would it be wise for me to spend a few weeks with my razor and something like a homemade denim strop learning technique. And do all of that before I send my razor off to get sharpened and purchase a real strop. While I like the idea of getting started soon. I also like the idea of not immediately dulling the razor I paid to get sharpened and completely destroying the piece of leather I just procured! I know that's an opinion questions. Just curious what people think.

You could made one from newspaper as it would only take a couple minutes and practice the flip etc but you won't know how effective your stropping is as you won't be maintaining the razor just practicing. Never hurts to practice the flip though and keeping pressure to the spine while leaving the edge just trailing.

There's a video in the top of the stropping forum that shows the technique well. Is worth a look.