The first nickless shave

Having bought my first straight razor 6 months ago, I recently got my first truely TRUELY nick-free shave with it. And this morning I had an almost truely nick-free shave with a different razor. It would have been nick-free if I hadn't been nitpicking about the right half of my upper lip.

Made me wonder: how long until your first nick-free shave? Or describe in any way how long it took you to develop your technique and what really helped you on your way. I find that I have to focus real hard on keeping a light touch and moving my razor along my face and not slightly pushing it into my skin as I did with the Gilettes.

Hey Laurens,
Aha, the first nick-free shave, well that took me also a handful of shaves.
I lost count since it’s been a couple of years now.

My way was to get familiar with a DE razor and get comfortable with the idea to put a single sharp edge to your skin. The Gillette slim I used, could be adjusted so that helped in this. But also putting a ‘heavy’ razor to your skin and letting the razor and its weight do the work.

To start I bought a good starter's razor honed by Lynn, so I knew the edge was sharp.
Then I watched as many shave videos as I could find, here on SRP and on youtube.
What stuck to me was: use short strokes, keep the angle of the blade constant and take your time.

Get familiar with the edge on your face, get to feel comfortable and slowly grow confident. Know your face; the easy spots and the difficult spots, every bump and curve and how the skin folds and ripples when you don’t want that. Stretching your skin is essential.

More importantly prepare your face with steamy towels and preshave and build a good lather. Even with a killer edge razor but a bad lather it can get messy!

And above all: enjoy the shave. Relax, take your time. In quoting Lynn: have fun!

Hartelijke groeten uit Nijmegen

Regards,
Paul

It took me six months to get shaves that I really felt good about and that others could confirm were great as well as bloodless. It just takes time.

I am almost exactly two months into straight-shaving (Dovo from SRD) and can honestly say that I no longer draw blood, and haven't for some time now.

Since I changed my stropping technique and upped the number to around fifty each side I've felt much more confident in my shaves. Making sure the blade is good…feeling better, less tentative, about really following the contours of my face…these are the major factors in improvement, for me. Also I haven't concentrated on keeping a shallow angle, as it hasn't seemed to be a strain to cut at any angle recently.

A lot is said about the importance of pre-shave hot towels, lotions etc, but when you think that literally thousands, millions, of men were shaving, or being shaved, with these things well before the advent of the double-edged razor, they can't have all spent their time in perfect preparation before each shave, and yet they lived to tell the tale. That's a heartening thought…it means that it isn't as difficult as many would have us believe. It's simply a process whereby we cut our whiskers off daily with a well-sharpened blade. Don't sweat it. It comes, or will come soon, as a natural process. In short, stop worrying and learn to love the blade!

I am 2 months in, and a friend at work told me that he was going to take up a collection to buy me some disposable razor cartridges, since I come to work every day with new nicks esp on my neck. I look forward to the day of a bloodless shave.

My girlfriend once said that it was a good thing I learnt to shave with a straight now, while I'm still at university, so that I will have mastered it by the time I start working :) Perhaps you can shave in the evening?

Good idea, Laurens! I think I will try shaving at night.

I like your original post, where you talk about having to be mindful of a light touch and not pushing into the skin -- I think that might be what I'm doing on my neck.

Seeing this thread is like rubbing salt into a wound for what I just did. Just a word of caution make sure you are awake before shaving. A nice sharp square point nicked me pretty good on each cheek.