Thread: something ain't right - help please.

Bob: YTou are right, the feather is different. I love the feel of a regular straight much more, in fact, there is nothing like it. i tend to get better shaves on my neck and near my ears with the feather straight as it has a shorter length of blade, allowing more manuerverability. but your suggestion of short strokes, i will try. i get the best shaves on my cheeks with straights, but they do not get as close as i would like on my neck. i have to touch up with the merkur DE razor.

sam

Sam -
I would spend some time with your neck and a magnifying mirror. I just can't see how you could be doing so poorly there that a DE would be used for cleanup. I like my Merkur DE, but there is no way it could be as close as a str8 in my experience. Something sounds wrong there. What I like the DE for is speed if I am in a hurry. But I never seem to be in that much of a hurry.
Bob

I just (really and finally) started shaving with a str8 week ago or so, and found out that the first few shaves were horrible, although I used pre-honed razors from Lynn and str8_razr (Andrew). Indeed, my face was red all over. I didn't get any bad nicks, though. The razor didn't seem to slide well enough on my heavy beard and I imagine shaving against the grain is still impossible at places. It also gave me kind of a dissatisfying feeling when the razor passed over the whiskers on the sides of my chin. I could say it hurted a bit.

My stropping couldn't have been so bad since the razors still pass the hanging hair test after a week of use. I can clearly feel them becoming sharper after stropping.

Now, after the first few days, the shaves have started gradually get better. It's quite amazing how things have changed and how my skin has adapted itself on the razor. In fact, last night I had a superb shave with almost no irritation whatsoever and only a small nick on my chin, healed with cold water.

I have still much to learn on this: shaving my chin, shaving against the grain, etc., but there's no turning back now, as the sensation of shaving with a str8 is just so great.

BTW, I've used 5/8 and 6/8 full hollows. I ordered a 6/8 wedge from Andrew few days ago and gonna try how it does the job.