Thread: Anticipation

Well, tomorrow morning will be my first shave with a straight edge. I'll be using a Landers Frary & Clark, maybe not the best, but you will hear just how well it goes. May the finer days of shaving begin and may the facial hair lose the war!

Congrats on your soon to be first shave

Looking forward to hearing about your shave!

Originally Posted by crowballs

Well, tomorrow morning will be my first shave with a straight edge. I'll be using a Landers Frary & Clark, maybe not the best, but you will hear just how well it goes. May the finer days of shaving begin and may the facial hair lose the war!

Actually one of the higher rated American razors, you might be surprised with how well they can shave....
Good luck on the shave in the morning!!!!!!

Did you remember to do that Autologous blood donation?

Just kidding. Good Luck.

For the briefest of moments I was deeply concerned bigspendur, well done. But, as for the shave, I'm still able to type, talking on the other hand......
No, I believe it went as well as it could for a noob. Got to work on my edge that's for sure, but the blood was still minimal. Did/do ya'll have a hard time with the upper lip and chin hairs, the chin in particular was on the verge of pain, but I have endured worse from lesser razors. I'm just going to strop the crap out of it and give it one more go round before I put it back to the hone. I didn't even think about using it until it cut arm hair in "mid air", I would think that's sharp enough as my arm hair is somewhat fine, or should it be sharper? Lot's to learn still, but I do believe I am here to stay.

Just be careful when you "strop the crap out of it." Improper stropping can fold the edge of the razor, making it need to be honed again. Just strop around 40-50 laps (out-and-back) before your shave, and you should be fine.

Most importantly is to work on your blade angle - it should be around 30 degrees to your face (or the width of the spine) - the tricky part is rotating the blade so that it stays at that angle as your face contours - hence the chin and lip being the hardest areas to shave.

When I started, I only did the cheeks, then progressed to the neck when I was confortable with the relatively flat cheeks, and finally tackled the goatee area. Keep at it, it just gets better from here.

Just a question though - did you have your razor professionally honed? If not, that's something you'll definitely want to look into - knowing a benchmark of how sharp a razor should be saves the lion's share of the learning curve.

Keep us posted, and congratulations on surviving your first shave!

Mark

Using a scything stroke as you shave should considerably reduce any pulling, but if it was painful around your mouth, it seems likely that your razor isn't quite sharp enough. If you send your razor to a honemeister, you'll have a benchmark against which you can compared your own edges.

I think I will be taking ya'lls advice with sending it out to be honed, until then I will be working on my technique. But on a positive note, only one nick today. And I do think I "over stropped". Just got to keep on keeping on.