Thread: At what point did your shaves improve?

Just curious as to how long it took for your guys shaves to improve? Being a long time DE user I knew what a proper shave without irritation was like when I started with straights. I've been using straights for a few months an have progressed much faster than expected IMO. I am now doing 3 pass shaves an getting very good quality shaves. It was frustrating at first. I was used to excellent shaves then took a major step back when starting with straights. Glad it has started to come around. Makes it much more enjoyable.

I seem to recall it was somewhere around the 3 month mark where I noticed some marked improvement. I think that was technique-based improvement. I had another epiphany somewhere around the 6-9 month mark when I finally cracked stropping and basic honing.

I still have those moments sometimes on a particularly nice razor, or after leaving the shave for a few days. That's what I like about this hobby - for me it never just becomes a mundane chore. There's always something to learn, or fix, or improve.

James.

I shaved very randomly for a very long time, most of the time sporting a beard, I only shaved about three or four times a year. When my job required me to be clean shaven it became daily, after a couple of weeks I got the big stuff down and by the time 3 months had gone by most of the refinement had been accomplished and it has just been a little ahha here and there.

The 3 Months or 100 shaves seems to be a theme that many of us share.
By then the muscle memory seems to set it, you have a bit of a routine to help the process.

For me - I had these "moments" - they seemed to be every 25 shaves - when I could suddenly so something that had been a struggle until then.
The one that always comes to mind was around #25. I bought a 6/8 Chas Randal for Pete S on the classifieds. The breakout was I could shave my chin, the razor made the pass from my lower lip and down like it was on rails. It was the right razor & edge at the right time and I knew this was going to work out.

It's a lot to learn and master - but if you hang in there you get these moments that end up being a great start (or end) of your day.

Smooth Shaving...

Well I am glad to see that my small victories have been about the same as others. I started late march this year. My first breakout was after taking time to get comfortable wtg xtg, I tried atg. Being able to make a full 3 pass shave an get a nice smooth shave was my major ah ha moment to this point. Narrowing my straights to the ones that work the best also has helped. I am finding I enjoy two of my straights out of 7 the most. An my shavette also.

Every fifteen shaves there was a big improvement. About three months in I could get a comfortable DFS.

After about 2 weeks for me. I never used anything but a straight from the plastic stuff. I remember sitting in my truck waiting for the signal to change and it dawned on me that my face actually felt great. No nicks , no cuts, no burn. Now I wasn't perfect but all the improvements after that first 2 1/2 pass shave were subtle and I still get them. Now, I shaved off an 8k the first year so although my honing skill improved there wasn't much difference in any leaps and bounds. Then when I moved on to finishers I could see how and why things I was trying before didn't work so well. And once again learned to do things a little different. There are so many variables that even if you change something like soap your going to learn something.

Little bits of improvement slowly accumulated for me. 3/4 of my face got really really good after about 3 months too, but there are still problem areas of my neck that cause me grief. Those areas are slooowly improving as each component improves - stropping 100 laps beforehand, working really hard on lather, really watching angles, messing around with different approaches. Still got some way to go!

It was a good couple of months to get it working in the right direction fully without razor burn etc

Once I got a sharp straight the learning curve was cut in half (if not more). Of course I am still learning everyday.