Thread: First Kamisori Shave

Today I had the knock on the door I've been waiting for, a man from Parcelforce bearing a package from Japan. It was my vintage Inoue Tosuke razor purchased last week from O_S.

It was sent shave ready, so all I did was got out my new Kanoyama strop (from JimR) and gave it 15 passes on linen, and 20 passes on leather. The edge was bright and shiny, and very evenly ground, it easily popped hairs on the back of my arm.

I lathered up with a new Simpsons Eagle brush, and Fitjar Fjellheim soap, did a couple of hot towel treatments, and lathered up again.

I started shaving, using only the omote (non-stamped side), and immediately noticed big differences to a regular straight. I tried a shallow angle to begin with, but found the back of the razor just suctioned onto the skin, and the blade seemed to skim over the whiskers. I found it was hard to move across my face due to the suction. So I added a little angle, and it started shaving. I found I needed to use a steeper blade angle than I normally would with a regular straight, but not too steep, this thing is almost as sharp as a DE or Feather AC blade, and I can tell it will slice right into the skin with very little pressure if I let it.

So I continued with the shave, stretching the skin is more important for a good shave with a kamisori, perhaps because the razor is sharper and maybe less forgiving than I'm used to?

I managed to shave my whole face with the correct side of the razor, using some fairly creative contortions and face pulling. No cuts or nicks, so far so good.

Next was a second pass, trying to go everywhere in a different direction to the first pass. This was also pretty successful, some parts were very tricky to reach at first, but you can manage it if you take your time and experiment with different grips/angles etc. Again, no nicks or cuts, but I was starting to get a bit of razor burn so I decided to stop at this point - quitting while I was ahead.

So a successful shave, my observations.

1. The razor is tiny, and I found it hard to grip. So much so that the effort was giving me pins and needles by the end of the shave. I'm sure I'll relax and get more used to this in time, but I'm seriously tempted to try and find something to bulk up the handle and provide more positive grip - ideally a blue rubber Tosuke handle.

2. It's quite different to shave without a folding handle. It is obviously more rigid than a folding razor. If you get it nicely positioned in your fingers, it stays put.

3. It's sharper than I'm used to, so I'll have to be extra careful to avoid making mistakes.

4. It has two spike points to watch, at the heel and the toe. Watch them both, closely!

Overall, I'm really happy with it. Obviously I need to practice and the shave should improve a lot, which is a great prospect because it's already pretty nice.

Yep, as you've found out the angles have to be a little steeper than with a western razor.

Hi O_S, yes please, if you find any spare handles I'll take one (or two).

I do want to try a lovely japanese straight someday, but I just can't picture spending that much on something I'm not sure I will even like. Oh well, such is life.

I had shave #2 with this razor yesterday.

Again mostly BBS all over, but with a bit of razor burn. No cuts or weepers again, I used Proraso this time.

I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but even with practice I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to match the speed and comfort of a 2-handed Western straight razor shave. I have the feeling it's always going to be slow and fiddly in some areas, if one sticks to tradition and only shaves with the correct side of the blade.

I see you put this thing up for sale. What a shame! If you had held off a few more weeks I might have been interested, since I'm on the list to try one out. Oh well though, if you know its not for you then there is no harm in admitting it.

How do you manage to shave both sides of the face with only one side of the razor?

It looks really neat, I don't know if I could ever manage to get comfortable using it though. I am still learning to shave with a regular SR and know that this one would probebly drain a lot of blood from my face. Sorry to see you list it, but at least you can say you been there, done that. Is there any history with the blade? Previous owners etc.

Originally Posted by rupert87

How do you manage to shave both sides of the face with only one side of the razor?

It's like the old story of the guy on the bus in NYC and one asks the other how do you get to Carnegie Hall and the other says practice man practice.

Originally Posted by whalersailor

It looks really neat, I don't know if I could ever manage to get comfortable using it though. I am still learning to shave with a regular SR and know that this one would probebly drain a lot of blood from my face. Sorry to see you list it, but at least you can say you been there, done that. Is there any history with the blade? Previous owners etc.

Hi,

There's probably a lot of history to this blade, but I don't think I'll ever find out much more than the little we know already. When O_S received it, it was wrapped in Japanese newspapers from the 1960s, so we can hypothesise that it's at least that old.

My girlfriend took one look at it and exclaimed "urgh, I wonder how many people have been cut with that".