Loving the straight razor

Hi, I started looking for a better shaving option around 4 months ago after becoming fed up with the chore and expense of cartridge shaving. My initial thought was to look into "cut throat" razors so I researched lots of online articles and foum posts from here.

After a few days of getting my head around it all, I ended up buying a nice Shumate and a couple of lovely Gotta's from ebay and leaned what I could about honing/ stopping while waiting for them to arrive. At the same time I picked up a couple of DE's and haven't looked back from wet shaving.

I spent a good day honing the 3 straights with honing film and made a strop out of some veg tanned leather. While still nervous for a while, I stood in front of the mirror with minor shaking that first time as I VERY carefully used the straight on my cheeks and neck. It all went well and over the last few months I have built up enough honing, stropping and shaving skills to do complete straight shaves now and I love it :)

I still use a DE to finish up if I am in a serious hurry, but 8/10 shaves are straight only now. It is probably a newby or sharpness issue but I still end up with a little roughness under the jaw after 3 passes, but the rest of my face, including my chin is pretty smooth.

I really hope to get involved in the community and put back in what I can as I learn more and get that elusive Baby Bum shave. Thanks very much for feeding my curiosity over the last couple of months and have fun out there, shaun from Adelaide, Australia.

Hello parsec, and welcoome to SRP!
Wow, you did not make an easy entrance, did you, but well done on lingring through it all. It gets so much more fun when the shaves start to come along, and by the sound of it the worst part is behind you.
Roughness can be caused by unsharp razors or by poor technique (usually too much pressure and too steep an angle). I am guessing yours is a little bit of both perhaps? Anyways, it does sound like you are on the right track, just keep it up and you'll be there in no time.

Happy shaving!

I'm very impressed with your resourcefulness and progress. It only gets better.

Thanks very much for the welcome and tips. I absolutely love that I look forward to shaving now- i is no longer a chore :)

I do need to work on my technique and sharpening but it is all enjoyable.

cheers

G'Day and welcome to SRP.

As has already been said - it only gets better from here.

You might like to edit your profile and let us know where you are in the world - you never know, another member might be close enough to help you on your journey.

Keep us posted on your progress

You sound like me right now, mate! I just ordered my first kit to get me started and I'm going crazy looking at tutorials online. Glad to see I'm not the only freak on here. :p Your thread makes me feel better about getting started. Hopefully I follow your path and am having great shaves soon!

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Originally Posted by Chreees

Glad to see I'm not the only freak on here.

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Your not the only freak on here, i think there is about 40,000 of us. :roflmao

Hi Shaun and welcome to SRP and the whole CT/SR scene

Interested to see you went the route of "learning to hone while learning to shave". I did that too and it's a great moment when you realize you've created a shave-ready razor from something blunt, rusted and useless. Not having a reference razor set up by a honemeister is a disadvantage but there is no mistaking the moment when the razor glides down your face without pulling and actually takes off hair!

On the subject of honing I'd strongly recommend you get hold of a Norton 4k/8k. You can get them in Adelaide from Henry Eckert. There are many threads on SRP about the Norton stone including some very informative videos from gssixgun.

A shame you're not in SE QLD; we've got a reasonably active group that hold semi-regular meetups in Brisbane. Anyway, we're all here ready to supply opinions, advice and encouragement :gl:

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Originally Posted by Grazor

Your not the only freak on here, i think there is about 40,000 of us. :roflmao

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Yes, I figured there had to be more, considering this is a forum dedicated to straight shaving. :D

Before I got to the end of your post, and even though you only used the word cut-throat once and had it in quotation marks to throw me off the scent, I knew you were an Australian! At risk of putting some noses out of joint, I'm going to say that it seems an almost uniquely Aussie thing in this little shave den of ours, to go against all the advice of 95% of the people here and get a razor, slap a decent edge on it without any actual foreknowledge and go at shaving most of the whiskers off your face in one go, having also made a strop out of any handy suitable material we have laying around the house. Well maybe sot as simplistically as I made it sound, but you get the guts of what I mean.

Welcome to the forum mate!


Mick

MickR, thanks for the smile :)
Yeah, well I did cheat a bit and shaved a few bold patches on my legs first, but pretty well jumped right in. It kind of went like this:
1. google lots
2. youtube lots
3. buy some decent steel Preferably old)
4. cut a 2' long, 3" wide bit of 8oz leather and add a buckle cut out of an op shop belt to mount it to something solid
5. glue another piece of veg tanned leather to a flat board so I can annoy the wife and strop while watching tv
6. head down to a tile shop, ask for a bit of polished tile/ stone and get them to cut it for free :)
7. watch more videos on honing with film
8. buy all the grades of honing film available from a jewellery/ gem polishing store
9. carefully hone the 3 razors as best I can
10. strop on the leather (no compound yet)
11. try the hanging hair test, swear, strop, try again, strop, try again, hone back to film3, then film1, strop, try again, swear, strop, try again, "oh yeah...", show the extremely disinterested wife, be laughed at...
12. look at razor, look at hairy leg, ... yeah, why not ..., gee that bald patch looks funny ...
13. try the 1/4" off the leg test- it almost works- kind of grabs them, but obviously not as sharp as it should be
14. think what the hell, and head to the mirror
15. have a shower, sqeeze some of the highly hyped Proroso (green) into a ceramic bowl which has been sitting filled with hot water along with the brush while showering
16. stand in front of the mirror for 10 minutes in complete fear
17. delicately shave my cheeks and neck WTG
18. get completely addicted and really annoy the wife buy buying more stuff
19. Discover cheap indian creams and faulding shave cream that the missus loves the scent of and all is forgiven :)

All in all it has been an awesome eperience, and hopefully I will get that BBS shave soon.

Thanks heaps for the warm welcome
5.

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Originally Posted by parsec

18. get completely addicted and really annoy the wife buy buying more stuff

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Personally i never understood that, because women traditionally buy every beauty product under the sun.
Surely they would understand why anyone would spend a little in order to look their best? ;)

Btw m8, welcome to SRP.

Cheers,
Paul

Parsec, I a similar thing except when I first had a go, I didn't have the benefit of google, youtube or SRP. Internet was around, but not in common household use...And I was living on an island at the time too :).

So my method was:

1. Buy razor, put strop on back order

2. Believe advice given about razor being ready to shve with and strop not required just yet anyway.

3. Spend two weeks trying to shave (in the shower using a bar of soap just like I usually did with the cartridge razor) and persisting through razor rash, pulling and tugging, nicks and cuts.

4. Give up until I get strop.

5. Get strop and proptly start nicking it with bad stropping techniques

6. Have another go to find it just as bad as before.

7. Decide the razor needs a bit of a sharpen up and whip put my pocketknife sharpening stone.

8. Hone razor and try again after fresh stropping (and more nicks added to strop).

9. Shaving now next to useless. Figure it's just bad technique, and persist for a while longer.

10. Give up and put razor away in the bottom of my backpack where it travelled with me for the next several years.

11. Eventually drag it back out some time after settling down and start to wonder if it could have gotten magically sharp again.

12. Try it out...Again and again...Every so often over the next few years. Finally put some effort into expanding my knowledge of cut-throat razors and their maintenance.

13. Buy better hones than I've ever owned before and decide to hone this razor, to destruction if needs be!

14. Finally get my first, albeit rough, shave. It's enough to light the fire again and my journey began in earnest.


See what I'm talking about now. Aussies are like the proverbial bull at a gate. Too thick headed listen to sensible advice that doesn't sit well with their own ideas, and go at something until they can do it, having relied on nobody but themselves, until they finally figure it out. Learning as much as possible all at once, never mind that it would be easier if they stuck to one lesson at a time....Well, that's just my thoughts on the subject, but I'm biased :).


Mick

Mick, its all about being resourceful, Australia was built on it by the pioneers of our great land.
Remember, Aussies can fix anything with a piece of wire ;)

~Paul

Lets not start knocking a good bit of fencing wire mate. I use the stuff for everything :).


Mick

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Originally Posted by MickR

Lets not start knocking a good bit of fencing wire mate. I use the stuff for everything :).


Mick

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I've read a good many of your posts Mick, I wouldn't doubt it in a minute.
You sound like a True blue Dinky-di Aussie to me ;)

And 'parsec', you've gotta be a fan of Star Wars with a nickname like that?

~Paul