Timeframes Survey

Gentlemen,

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to success factors in any new endeavor and the induction of frustrations into the new endeavor. I have been thinking that aligning one's expectations with the reality of the new endeavor is extremely important to reducing frustration and possibly abandoning the new endeavor.

For any beginner and sometimes even the veteran, this art is wrought with frustration.

What I thought might be useful is to gather the learning curve timeframes that most of us took to become proficient at the different aspects of this art, average them and create a beginner's expectation chart. My purpose here is to align expectations, not to generate an "I'm never going to get this" conclusion, but an "I need to try something different or get some help" conclusion.

Now, I know that there are people at both ends of the spectrum on all of these areas. Those that came out of the shoot able to do something (like I could with ambidextrous shaving) and those who may have taken 6 months to become proficient. In addition, I also know that most of us could say "I'm still learning" for any of these areas. I am not after the extremes, nor am I after the incremental improvements. What I think we want is when did you get a bloodless comfortable shave without destroying your razor or strop. What I listed in my timeframes contains my time to make/break bad habits, create muscle memory or just find the right thing than my skin liked.

So for me:

Beard Prep (finding a consistent preparation for my beard) - 1 month
Stropping (no strop nicks and smooth consistent motion) - 3 months
Ambidextrous Shaving (switching from left to right hand and back)- 0 days
WTG (know the angles and control the blade for a WTG Pass) - 2 weeks
XTG (know the angles and control the blade for a XTG Pass) - 4 weeks
ATG (know the angles and control the blade for an ATG Pass) - 4 weeks
Beard Growth Direction (telling the direction my beard is growing and adjusting angles for it) - 4 months
Lather Building (learning the right water/air/cream or soap mix and what my face likes) - 1 week
Bloodless Shave (no knicks or weepers, though still get a weeper once in a while)- 2 Weeks
Razor Burn-less Shave (no white knuckles while applying Bayrum - correct pressure) - 6 months
Skin Broken In (skin responds and replenishes after ex-foliation)- 6 months
Post Shave Treatment (finding what your skin likes after a shave)- 1 month

In addition (does not add to the shave quality unless a beginner decides to hone out the shoot):
Honing (consistent shave ready edges on straight and smiling edges) - 1 1/2 years

So please feel free to add a dimension I may have missed and your own experience times. I will wait about a month and then average the values we post.

I am always open to suggestions from our long term veterans as to the usefulness of this idea. It may not be as useful as I anticipate.;)
Alembic

I am not a veteran by any means but I do have over a year in:

Beard prep: 1 month
Stropping: 0 days (haven't nicked it yet) but proably 2 months before I got the most out of my strop edgewise
Ambidextrous shaving: 2 weeks
WTG: 6 months (originally I started XTG)
XTG: 2 months
ATG: 2 months
Beard growth: 2 weeks
Lathering: 4 months (had to switch to bottled water)
Bloodless shave: 0 days (although I do something stupid at a few times a month)
Razor burnless shave: 1 year+ (still working at making this a constant now 1 in three shaves stings a bit too much
Skin broken in: 1 week (I have tough skin)
Post shave treatment: 1 week

I've only tried my hand at honing a couple times

I might add post shave caring for razor for me it took one blade to start to rust= 2 weeks

I think when you try and quantify the learning of a skill/art and break it down into little sub components and assign timeframes you creating problems for yourself. Of course you could do this for learning anything from driving a car to flying a plane. What you're really doing is creating a flow chart of progress. It's kind of like these old correspondence courses, in lesson one you will learn to...Then you move on and learn everything in this structured program in so many lessons/weeks.

I think with shaving people are so different and their rate of progress unequal if you wanted to do this you would have to keep the categories as general as possible and as few as possible.

I could never answer you're question here because I could never remember how I progressed in such detail with something done years ago.

After 18 years, new razors still teach me how much I don't know about stroping and honing. And after 18 years, my left hand sometimes still acts like it belongs to someone else.

I continue to learn new things every day. Other than that, most of the timeframes above seem likely.

Started shaving with a Straight razor at 16 but didn't really get into wet shaving until last summer. I say i learned quickly ;)


Beard Prep (finding a consistent preparation for my beard) - 1 month
Stropping (no strop nicks and smooth consistent motion) - 4 months
Ambidextrous Shaving (switching from left to right hand and back)- 0 days
WTG (know the angles and control the blade for a WTG Pass) - 1 week
XTG (know the angles and control the blade for a XTG Pass) - 1 week
ATG (know the angles and control the blade for an ATG Pass) - 1 week
Beard Growth Direction (telling the direction my beard is growing and adjusting angles for it) - 1 week
Lather Building (learning the right water/air/cream or soap mix and what my face likes) - 1 week
Bloodless Shave (no knicks or weepers, though still get a weeper once in a while)- 0 Weeks
Razor Burn-less Shave (no white knuckles while applying Bayrum - correct pressure) - 0 months
Skin Broken In (skin responds and replenishes after ex-foliation)- 1 week
Post Shave Treatment (finding what your skin likes after a shave)- 1 week

Hello Alembic,

I like what you are trying to do here, but I feel there are so many variables that to quantify each item so precisely is counterproductive, perhaps look at it in larger sections,
1st two weeks - gain confidence & shave whole face
5 weeks - consistent stropping and noticeable improved shaves
and so on, also note that honing for example is not such a scary thing as it can take up to 1 1/2 years if you are honing 1 or 2 razors which is not performed so frequently where as if you are restoring razors right from the onset your honing skills will develop rapidly.

Also as bigspendur quite rightly notes it is hard to give the accurate detail for the period where we were all novices.

Sam.

Gentlemen:

On the day I decided to shave with the straight razor I threw the clock and the calendar away and let my natural abilities captain the journey.

Regards,

Obie

After reading "The Inner Game of Tennis," I have always taken a different approach to learning a new skill. While I know there are fundamentals that are important to learning to shave with a straight razor, I try to get in my "right brain" as much as possible and develop a Zen-like frame of mind. I shave best when I concentrate on letting the shave happen rather than thinking about technique. This works best for me but I know it will be different for others. The more I concentrate on technique, the less enjoyment I get out of my shave. YMMV!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Obie

Gentlemen:

On the day I decided to shave with the straight razor I threw the clock and the calendar away and let my natural abilities captain the journey.

Regards,

Obie

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Obie,

So are you saying that you don't know or that nobody should care?

Alembic

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alembic

Obie,

So are you saying that you don't know or that nobody should care?

Alembic

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Good morning, Alembic:

No, not at all. I chose to embrace the ritual and to hone my skills within my natural capabilities and without the need or interest to keep a diary. Whether other gentlemen should care or not is not for me to dictate.

Regards,

Obie

So before I abandon this quest for data (I am an engineer, I like data. Data tells me stuff), I want to be clear about the purpose for gathering the data.

I am not trying to remove the enjoyment of the ride. Many many posts in the forums have delt with aligning timeframe expectations for beginners from beard prep to honing. And they reason timeframes get posted is because beginners want to know if they are on the right track or not. I clearly remember the beginning honer being told that your not even beginning to learn until you're honed 1000+ razors. That provides an expectation.

proper expectations can help people keep motivated and remove discouragement.

I don't know if the granularity of the data is too deep or not, and I realize some people just don't remember because its been too long. But it was a place to start.

If nobody wants to do this that is fine too. I still think trending data is valuable.

Alembic

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Obie

Good morning, Alembic:

No, not at all. I chose to embrace the ritual and to hone my skills within my natural capabilities and without the need or interest to keep a diary. Whether other gentlemen should care or not is not for me to dictate.

Regards,

Obie

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Ah - thank you Obie I understand. I was in the same camp as you. I did not care how long it took and enjoy the trip no matter where it takes me. Others are not. Now we could say that if you need to know how long it will take, then maybe this are is not for you. But I feel that is too simplistic an answer to a complex question. We do this all day long. Encouragement aimed at getting somebody to understand that the individual is doing great, stay the course, many of us have taken months and years to learn what we know. That does not detract from the journey, but mearly helps people to understand that they are still on the right road.

That is the point of encouragement - No?

Ah-ha, that's the problem here. You're an engineer.:)

Because of that you looking to over analyze this and trying to break this down to a set of statistics. It's no different than asking an artist-painter to analyze how he developed his skill and how long it takes to create a painting from sketch to signing and how he mixes colors and uses his brushes and makes his strokes and gets his ideas.

There are some things best left for folks to just find out by doing.

Having said that you could probably get what you want by having just a very few broad categories and that would make more sense and be more helpful to guys starting out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Ah-ha, that's the problem here. You're an engineer.:)

Because of that you looking to over analyze this and trying to break this down to a set of statistics. It's no different than asking an artist-painter to analyze how he developed his skill and how long it takes to create a painting from sketch to signing and how he mixes colors and uses his brushes and makes his strokes and gets his ideas.

There are some things best left for folks to just find out by doing.

Having said that you could probably get what you want by having just a very few broad categories and that would make more sense and be more helpful to guys starting out.

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Yeah - you would not believe how popular I am around my house even picking a hot dog brand:p

Ok so how about just something like

Beard Prep
Stropping
Comforatable Bloodless Shave
Post Shave Treatment

Still too broad? :thinking:

I think if I was to do what you want to do I would be inclined to first keep it to strictly shaving with a straight and leave out the before and after things. Probably the first irritation free shave, facility with the razor, ability to shave entire face with what strokes? first BBS shave. Things along those lines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I think if I was to do what you want to do I would be inclined to first keep it to strictly shaving with a straight and leave out the before and after things. Probably the first irritation free shave, facility with the razor, ability to shave entire face with what strokes? first BBS shave. Things along those lines.

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Thanks, that was the kind of input I was looking for. You never know the value of this kind of stuff until you compile it and see what it says. Sometimes it says nothing :)

I'm not even through learning yet, but so far ....


Beard Prep (finding a consistent preparation for my beard) - 1 week
Stropping (no strop nicks and smooth consistent motion) - hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
Ambidextrous Shaving (switching from left to right hand and back)- hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
WTG (know the angles and control the blade for a WTG Pass) -1 month
XTG (know the angles and control the blade for a XTG Pass) - hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
ATG (know the angles and control the blade for an ATG Pass) -hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
Beard Growth Direction (telling the direction my beard is growing and adjusting angles for it) - 1 day
Lather Building (learning the right water/air/cream or soap mix and what my face likes) - 3 months
Bloodless Shave (no knicks or weepers, though still get a weeper once in a while)- hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
Razor Burn-less Shave (no white knuckles while applying Bayrum - correct pressure) - hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
Skin Broken In (skin responds and replenishes after ex-foliation)- hasn't happened yet (after 4 months)
Post Shave Treatment (finding what your skin likes after a shave)- 1 month

That's about right....

Cool post. Show's where you are in the process too.

M