Hello everyone. My name is Cros, I live in Dubai and I am only 5 hours into shaving with a straight razor. I got my first straight razor, Dovo Prima Klang set today from Straight Razor Designs. From my very limited knowledge of SS community and vendors, this is the best place to get a pro-honed razors, especially when you a newbie in the world of cut-throats. I have done my homework prior to the arrival of the package and read tons of material about stropping, shaving, lathering and various ways to test razor's sharpness/keenness etc. When I just go the razor I decided to run all of the tests and take notes, along with a little video footage to remember the results and compare those later on to my own honing. I basically wanted to establish a gold standard to work my way towards later in my 'honing career'. And there was my little disappointment when the 'hanging hair' was pretty much ignored by the lower part of the razor and would cut it only closer to the toe. Somewhere in the middle the blade agreed to the 'violin' way of cutting the hair. I tried with 5 different specimens of hair, of different diameter, length and color, always holding them root away from my fingers. The result was consistently the same. I should also mention that I removed the oil from the blade thoroughly by gently rubbing the blade with soapy fingers and rinsing under water. After 20 rounds of stropping on poly-web and 60 rounds of leather I got somewhat better results on HHT, but not what is described as a good result.
Alas, I did shave with the razor and it was the best shave I ever had. Compared to my old Shavette, this was really smooth and much less pulling and tagging. Again, the only thing I can compare it to is Shavette, not any other straight razor.
My question is to the more experienced members on this forum: have you experienced somehting like that in the early days of your SS or have any possible explanation for this? Your comments will be greatly appreciated.