Thread: 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. Your thread makes me feel better about getting started. Hopefully I follow your path and am having great shaves soon!

Originally Posted by Chreees

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

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

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

Originally Posted by Grazor

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

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

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