Hello from Pittsburgh, PA

Hello,

So, after considering it for a bout a year or so, I finally decided to jump into the world of straight razor shaving. It came time to buy another $20 pack of Mach 3 Turbo cartridges, and instead of gritting my teeth and shelling out the dough again, I figured now was the time to make the switch and put the money into a longer term solution. After some exploration of this site (which is incredible by the way) I picked up a DOVO from Vintage Blades, LLC and a Poor Man's Strop Kit from Whipped Dog. Everything arrived last week and I'm 2 (very slow) shaves in! I can tell this will take some time to learn, but I feel that this will be very rewarding.

I did make one careless mistake though. During my first shave, out of force of habit I lowered the blade into the water-filled sink, and (just like I would do with my Mach 3) shook it around to clear the cream and stubble. Well, as I'm sure you can guess, I knocked the edge of the toe of the blade against the side of the porcelain basin. Afterwords I closely inspected the blade and noticed an ever so slight imperfection right near the toe on the edge of the blade. It's not bent at all, but when I shine a light directly on it, I can se a small speck of light reflecting back at me off of the edge. Is this something that will work itself out with regular stropping, or it is an immediate problem that I need to send the blade away to get repaired? I haven't noticed any problems in performance, but I've only used it twice so I probably wouldn't know what I'm looking for anyway.

Thanks for this wonderful resource, and I'm glad to be a part of the community!

Welcome to SRP! My wife's family is in your neck of the woods.

As of the blade... I'm not 100% sure, but you likely can't fix it on the strop (I've never had the joy of doing that to mine, but I have stones just in case I do). If you got the balsa with the strop kit, you might be able to fix it on there, depending on how bad it really is.

Enjoy, and have fun!

Welcome to the forum! Sorry I don't have any words of wisdom for you. I also never had that happen, and wouldn't know what to do if it did. Kinda sucks, cause you're so green with it, you won't be able to tell. But for my part, I say drive on. If it's not cutting into your face, or making a big gouge in your face, it might not be an issue just yet. If you can feel that little speck cutting you, or you end up with tiny red lines all over your face, you'll know it needs fixing. That's just a guess btw. Again, welcome to the forum!

Hello and welcome to SRP! Congrats on making the decision to dispose of the disposables :) As for the tip of your razor a pic may help us to help you. It may need to go to the hones or it may be something you can strop out...hard to tell, but we'll help if we can.

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Originally Posted by Crzylizard

Welcome to SRP! My wife's family is in your neck of the woods.

As of the blade... I'm not 100% sure, but you likely can't fix it on the strop (I've never had the joy of doing that to mine, but I have stones just in case I do). If you got the balsa with the strop kit, you might be able to fix it on there, depending on how bad it really is.

Enjoy, and have fun!

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Thanks! I'll give it a shot on the balsa with the chromium and iron oxide. I think I'll wait a few days until I become more comfortable with my stropping technique though :)

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Originally Posted by Catrentshaving

Hello and welcome to SRP! Congrats on making the decision to dispose of the disposables :) As for the tip of your razor a pic may help us to help you. It may need to go to the hones or it may be something you can strop out...hard to tell, but we'll help if we can.

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I'll work on getting some pics this evening. Thanks!

Here's a pic of the blade. The nick is up near the toe. This may be too tough to tell from a picture if it's a disaster; experience will be the best indicator. I'll keep shaving and see what happens.

Attachment 87280