Droshi's Shaving Manual

Disclaimer: This guide isn't meant to cover everything, nor is it intended to be perfect. The information presented is possibly biased and may conflict with generally accepted ideas in your head. Improper use might result in blunt trauma, puncture wounds, mental illness, loss of money, loss of blood, a growing need to collect shiny things, death, devastation and random tax audits. Or it might not.



Forward
My approach here is to give newbies and veterans alike a guide that has helped me. I do not guarantee that my methods here will produce the same results for you, but my goal here is to give people an idea for the fundamentals. The sort of things that veterans usually do automatically and have difficulty explaining. My background is that I have been shaving exclusively with a straight for over a year, but only recently have I joined the forum community. This is my attempt to give something back to the community, as I believe it is a good one. :)



Intro
To me there are 2 fundamental points that make a good shave, and surprisingly they have nothing to do with lather or your awesome badger-hair brush. Although those things make a shave much more enjoyable, my belief is that they are unnecessary. And yes that is correct, you heard me say lather is not necessary! I will go into detail on the why later on, but for now just read on.

2 fundamentals:
(1)quality razor
You cannot possibly hope to have a good shave without a quality razor. This does not imply that a cheap razor is not quality. Sharpness and uniform edge also apply here. The things you look for here will be explained below from a pure functional standpoint. Sure we all like razors that look nice, but following my goal here to make this guide purely practical I won't go into the asthetics of straights. Although one nice thing here is that usually nicer looking razors are generally excellent quality (and usually much more expensive!).

(2)good technique
Without proper technique shaving with a straight can be anywhere from uncomfortable to dangerous. One thing to keep in mind here is that if you are sure you have a quality razor that has been professionally honed, and are still getting poor results, you can almost be assured that your problem is in this category.

Quality Razor:
-Quality material
A razor made from an inferior material (or improper) will not work properly. Not much to say here, other than high carbon steel and stainless steel are the standards. Best way to ensure quality steel has been used is to buy a recognized brand of razor.

-Well made
Again goes back to choosing a good brand, but there's plenty of help for that on the forums here, no real reason to go into detail on it here. The only reason I mention these two things is that rarely they can become an issue. Even if you hone and strop a butter knife to a keen edge it will not hold one.

-Superbly Honed
High Sharpness
The one thing most of us know, your razor must be sharp. There are two sides to this. It's possible that if your razor isn't cutting well that it either needs to be honed, or your stropping technique is poor.

Even cutting edge
It's possible for your blade to be very sharp, but have multiple levels to it's cutting edge. Easiest way to make sure this isn't the case is to color the edge with a black permanent marker. Then take it to the hone or pasted strop. If it all wears away evenly you are good...if not, set your bevel again until the edge is straight and even. If you have no idea how to do this. Spend the $20 and send it to someone.


Now we get into probably the biggest problem area for every newbie. How to take that amazingly sharp steel across your face, while taking off hairs and leaving behind your face. Here I'll go into a technique that I suggest newbies at least try. And point out the major keys to what makes up "proper technique".


Technique:
-Stropping
So why is this under technique? Shouldn't it be a sharpness issue? Well although that may be true, the problem is that we all must strop our razor before each shave. Some may debate this...but I'm a firm believer in stropping. Anyway, because you must strop before every shave, it's possible that if your technique isn't good you could be taking that beautifully honed razor and dulling it, or misaligning the edge. If your new, take it slow, watch some movies on how other people do it. And always use very light pressure, you just want to touch the edge to the leather. If your using a hanging strop make sure it's pulled taunt.

At this point, if you have done everything correctly so far, you have a superb razor that is truely "shave-ready".

-Skin Stretching
Mentioned quite a bit, but the only real way to actually get a feel for what happens here, is to watch movies. When I first started, I thought this meant something else. Basically I thought that stretching the skin really meant you had to pinch your skin and really pull. But my technique is mostly just to put a couple fingers nearby where I'm about to shave, and to move it some direction on my face. Generally if the place I'm going to shave is in an awkard spot, I'll try to stretch the skin to a different place to make it easier. Also make sure you actually do this, I used to entirely skip this part for a while because I thought it was difficult to do and that it didn't really matter. The difficulty came mostly with lather all over the place, it makes it much harder to learn to do this. Later it becomes much easier working with lather on your face.

-Angle
An improper angle will give you anywhere from an uncomfortable shave to one that literally "chatters" across your stubble. I had found out that for a long time I was using way too high of an angle with full hollow ground razors. I suspect that this may not be as much the case with a wedge razor, although I'm not sure as I don't own any wedges.

-Long Strokes
All other things being equal, long strokes are much better than a series of short ones. Why? Because after a single pass with a straight, the lubricant you use (lather, water) tends to dry almost instantly depending on your face and climate. If your used to using many short strokes, try to take longer ones, and instead do another pass. This will prevent you from shaving without lather or water.

Up until this point I have somewhat hinted at it, but my suggestion to newbies with a well honed razor, that are fairly confident in their stropping technique, is to try shaving WTG without any lather but water instead. Before I explain I'll just say that you must continually put more water on your face before each pass, which while somewhat bothersome will help you develop your technique. So the big question...why no lather? I love my soaps! Won't it hurt like crazy?? Well there is a couple reasons why I'd recommend you try this. The first reason is that it is much harder to see the angle you are using with a thick lather on your face. The second is that skin stretching is much harder if your trying to learn where to shave first and where to hold with your fingers. If there is constantly lather in the way you'll always pick some place less effective. Later you can work out a strategy to get across your face with the correct stretching pattern. But starting out this allows you to skip that.

One other thing I should mention, is that with proper technique and a quality "shave-ready" razor, lather matters very little in the comfort or quality of my shave. Although it does take much longer and requires a bit of a different approach (and usually I don't go ATG, only sometimes XTG, and usually WTG). Again I should mention, this is for me, but somehow I suspect it should work on most everyone except the very sensitive skin people. I know most people think they have sensitive skin, but lets face it, we are scraping one of the sharpest things known to man across our face.

Hope this guide was interesting, and helps some newbies. I hoped to gather up some of my experience, and some of the things revelant to new people. I think the major reason that there is a lack of this information is that it's pretty difficult for an experienced person to pinpoint exactly what newbies do wrong, and exactly what they do correct. Most people around here know lots of these things, but I hope my way of saying it helps a few people.


Regards,
Droshi

Sorry the formatting didn't come out as I hoped, I'll clean it up some if it ends up being interesting to anyone.

Shaving without lather can be done, although i find it a much slower process than using a lather. I think it is also easier to shave with lather than without. Plus it is just more fun.

I'm definitely not advocating it over using lather. But rather as a tool for learning. Shaving with lather gives you a much more enjoyable and closer shave. But using only water gives you more control over face stretching and with viewing your angle than with using lather.

Hope this clears what I meant up.

Thanks and nice job.

We actually had a member years ago that only used water to shave. I never did warm up to that method......:D

Have fun,

Lynn

I can't really imagine shaving ATG for closeness with using water only. But at times I have gone water only (and only WTG) if I needed to shave quickly and didn't have time to prep. That was sort of how I discovered a while ago that my angle had for a long time been slightly too high. I think had I always used lather or cream it would have covered up the imperfections in my technique.

has anyone else used shampoo to lather up? I do this mainly when using my double edge.