Thread: First attempt with a straight today!

Yep...baby steps. You have to do a lot of faceturbating to see which way your beard grows to plan your attack with the blade.Good quality soap/cream with plenty of glide..slickness..is a must !!! After 100 shaves you will start to get an ok shave.It only gets better with time and practice. Hey ..if it was easy...everyone would try it ..LOL... Were here for ya...cus we have been there done that ....

Congrats! I am hoping to be in your situation soon, I just need the razor.... I have my first DE coming in the mail though! Keep it up, the one thing I have noticed most about this forum is that everyone is more then willing to help!

I just did my First Straight shave today and did both my cheeks but left my neck line till I get more acquainted with the razor. after that being said I think I might need to get it honed. it left a lot of whiskers on my face but after everything my face smelled really good. can anybody shed light on the art of honing of direct me to a place where I can send it to get honed

Thanks!

If it's a razor that comes from the factory (even when sold as 'shave ready') or from a shop that doesn't offer a separate honing service then just look around on the forum subsection dealing with honing, several posters offer these services and have a very good reputation. I wouldn't recommend honing it yourself the first time, you need to establish a baseline with a razor that you know is truly shave ready. Just get a good strop. That being said, the first couple of shaves it's more likely that your technique is the cause of any problems. This is normal, it takes time to develop as shaving with a straight is very different (angle wise etc). But sending it out for honing to a specialist is always a good idea.

Congrats! "What a long strange trip its been". Enjoy.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. After a couple weeks of difficulty I finally worked my way over a big hurdle today. I've been having a lot of trouble moving past shaving my cheeks. Whenever I'd get to my goatee area, the razor would just get stopped cold by my whiskers and I couldn't seem to get past that.

Well, today I had plenty of time so I spent an hour and a half trying different ways of attacking that. I tried guillotining strokes and was able to get through. I went very slow to avoid slicing myself so the shave took a long time but once I finished the WTG pass and everything was going well, I decided to keep going. I went XTG and even did an ATG pass (very slowly). I tried scything too and I found once my beard was thinned out a bit, that worked very well.

My shave isn't nearly as close as I normally get but it's not bad and I resisted the urge to finish it up with a DE just so I could walk around today happy that my shave was 100% done with a straight. First time but definitely not the last.

Good Job!! I am looking forward to doing that same thing someday. Congrats

I enjoy reading posts like this. I often forget the first go I had with a straight and the utter lack of confidence I had.

With every stroke I found myself shaking and altering my angles wildly. The results were about as good as my attempt with an electric shaver (no cuts, but no closeness either).

The second shave brought on a determination and false confidence (I read and believed that confidence is the key...and it really is, but it must be genuine). Anyway, I brought the blade up quickly and started a (little too fast) down stroke on my cheek and cut skin...a lot of it.

I lived, and I got better...and am still improving every once on a while. The good news is, after a few weeks the "improvements" were only needed to appease my OCD faceturbation that always uncovers an area that can be improved upon.

I still maintain that if you think you are BBS all over, then you simply are not *that* good at faceturbating

Originally Posted by JCBUSCG

I just did my First Straight shave today and did both my cheeks but left my neck line till I get more acquainted with the razor. after that being said I think I might need to get it honed. it left a lot of whiskers on my face but after everything my face smelled really good. can anybody shed light on the art of honing of direct me to a place where I can send it to get honed

Thanks!

gssixgun honed 2 for me and I also got one of his bench strops which seems to be working pretty well for me as a beginner.