Thread: Newly Purchased Razor Doesn't Shave

I just received a Dovo razor from straight razor designs and it doesn't shave. It was supposed to be received shave ready but does not cut hair. It has no problems cutting paper, however it won't cut mine or my girlfriends hair, facial or otherwise.

Now being my first time attempting with a straight coming from double edged safety razor for years, I thought I may be doing it incorrectly and asked my beautician friend to show me how as she was actually shown how to shave professionally and does so occasionally at work. She was unsuccessful with my razor but with hers she was fine shaving me.

I made sure to wipe the oil off the razor and we both stropped several times wroth the leather/mesh strop that came with it.

This was a relatively pricey purchase and just want to make sure if there's a way to test and see if it's a possibly defective blade, or is this a common issue from purchases at straight razor design? I heard only good things about them and that's why I went with them. Any help is greatly appreciated, as I would like to be able to start straight razor shaving.

I got one razor from them, it shaved fine. I'd send it back to get the edge freshened up and you'll be able to shave with it fine. If you can't, they'll tell you.

I doubt something like this is common for them. Did you email or call them first to see what they'd do about it?

You are NOT suspossed to strop it first.
More than likely you killed the edge.
Wipe the blade off and shave are the instructions given I do believe.

Oh yeah.
NEVER EVER.... EVER cut paper with your straight.

Hi. The razor would have come shave ready without the need to strop. If you stropped improperly you may have inadvertently dulled the fine edge. Cutting paper is a no no with a straight razor and would have definitely ruined the edge.
Give SRD a shout and in sure something can be worked out.

You used your brand new SRD straight to cut paper and then to do other tests and then strop.
You have made a huge mistake. You need to now take advantage of your free honing and get that razor back to SRD for honing. When you receive it back just shave with it right out of the box.

You may have ruined the edge just by using it to cut paper.

For the price of shipping you can get your stropping mistake corrected.

As others have stated:

Razors that come from reputable dealers (And SRD is as good as they get) come Shave Ready...as in "gently wipe them clear of oil and shave, and mind the edge"

Stropping - or specificity "bad stoping technique" is one of the fastest ways to degrade a shave ready edge - you can render a shave ready razor un-usable in one bad spine off the strop pass.

My family has had Barbers and Beauticians going back over 100 years and my Uncle Custy was the last to use a conventional straight.
He stopped using them in the late 60's/early 70's when a Hep B outbreak traced to a poorly sanitized straight razor caused governing bodies to push the change to disposable single use edges.
My sister was trained as Beautician in the 70's - No strops, no conventional straights - she put it all down years ago and writes thrillers..

Your razor came with a free honing - so now you get to use it.
Look for a mentor in your area and spend some time with the Wiki on how to strop, but a good place to start is less pressure, keep your elbow up and if the tension thing is a question lay the strop flat on the counter, clamp the snap end to the counter and use enough tension with you free hand to hold it in place (this is how I learned)

Learning to shave with a Straight takes some time and effort. We often use the term "100 Shaves" but for most it gets better in stages of 10 to 20 shaves as you master different skills and difficulty levels.
100 years ago you would have grown up seeing your Dad or older brothers use all of this stuff, Hard soaps and brushes and strops and barbers hones.
Now you have to learn on the Internet if you can't find a Mentor to help out.
That's like learning how to tune and play the piano by correspondence course - hard to do when you have no frame of reference.

But learn it you can if you are willing to invest the time and effort, and for those of us here, it is worth it...

Smooth Shaving...

Thank you guys for all the info. Unfortunately it was my mistake at some point. It was stropped after the first failed shave strokes. And the paper test was wrong. Well, now I know at least. I'll have to have it rehoned.

I would recommend watching these youtube videos before your next shave. The Lynn Abrams "Introduction to Straight Razor Shaving" is a good one to start your S.R. shaving journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r24ar_SSGVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIM0Coix6Gg