First Straight Razor Arrived today

[Anonymous]

I had my third shave today; now that I'm past the first few shaves I'm going to turn this thread into a kind of shaving journal and will complete future entries in the following format for ease of use:

Pre Shave Stropping: 35 laps on leather
Face Prep: Rinse face in sink with warm water and apply Pacific Shaving Company Pre-shave Exfoliating Wash. Take hot shower. Work hot lather into beard with Heinrich L. Thater fine badger brush for 3 minutes.
Cream Used: TOBS Jermyn Street.
Shaving Passes: 2 WTG + Touch Ups.
Post shave: Rinse excess lather off face with water and then cleanse. Rinse with cool water and apply alum block. Rinse alum off with cold water, dry, and apply Thayers unscented witch hazel toner. Allow witch hazel to dry/absorb and apply moisturizer.
Irritation: Almost none. There was a small tingling sensation when applying the alum but otherwise my skin felt great; better even that a typical DE shave.
Cuts: 2 small knicks on left side of face due to too steep an angle when placing the blade on face. I believe this is because my left hand is my bad side.
Closeness of shave: Presentable. There was stubble which could be felt when feeling ATG but that is to be expected without an XTG pass. The stubble was short, however, and it all appeared to be even in length with no areas missed.
Post Shave stropping: 10 laps on linen followed by 25 on leather.
Observations: This was a surprisingly succesful shave, it was presentably close with little to no irritation and only two small knicks that hardly bled at all. I believe that one of the major contributing factors to this success was the lather; I made it unusually wet and slick and this seemed to help the blade glide without catching or scraping. I also learned how to use the heel of the edge. Previously I had only used the toe and middle of the blade but I discovered that the heel is incredibly useful for maneuvering around the center of the face and neck.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, sorry for the delay in my updates but I've been running into some issues with straight shaving the last week or so and I wanted to try to narrow down what I thought the problem was before coming here.

Anyways, my third shave with a straight razor was very good as was mentioned above but then I went onto the fourth shave and I just couldn't seem to cut any hair with it. Now my first thought was that I had dulled the edge somehow, but being fully aware that technique was likely to blame rather than the razor, I decided to keep up with it. Well, it's been over a week of trying with it and I haven’t been able to get a single good shave out of it. I don't know what it is, but on all the shaves up to the third it cut effortlessly and then on the fourth it just suddenly stopped cutting. I've tried everything I can think of: thick lather to thin lather, fast short strokes to long sweeping ones, every angle from resting the spine on my face to 90 degrees, and even varying pressure from light as a feather to pushing it into my face so hard it scraped skin off. Nothing and I mean nothing seems to get it to cut. I can hear it going over the stubble but when I check the areas I’ve gone over I can see that nothing has come off and there is no hair in the removed lather. I've also tried it on arm hair and although it will eventually cut after a few attempts atg it refuses to do so wtg.

So, after all this I am fairly certain that I must have done something stupid and dulled the edge. Problem is I'm not entirely certain what it was. I've essentially rounded it down to three things that could possibly be the culprit:

1. I rolled the edge when cleaning the razor. After my third shave, which was the last good shave by the way, I was cleaning the blade under the tap and rubbing lather off with my thumb and my thumb kind of slipped over the edge as I was doing so. I didn't cut deep enough to bleed but it did go through my calluses and I could feel the side of the edge sliding into the skin. I currently think that this is the most likely culprit but I have to wonder if catching the edge with my thumb is really enough to ruin an edge.

2. Poor stropping technique. I have no reason to believe I've done anything wrong whilst stropping, but it would of course be foolish to discount it seeing as how if I am doing it wrong then I wouldn't really know it in the first place. However, I am positive that I have never rolled the razor over the edge and there are no Knicks or scrapes on the strop whatsoever. I was always very careful when stropping and I only applied enough pressure to get an even sound along the length of the strop.

3. Catching the blade on the scales. The blade in my particular razor doesn't sit too well in the scales. In fact, the edge comes within a fraction of a mm of touching one side of the scales when opening or closing the razor. Once when opening it I didn't pay attention and the edge caught the side of the scales as I was opening it.


So if anyone could think of what I might have done wrong then please let me know.

Also, I don't have a spare razor or any means of sharpening the one I have which leads me to my next course of action. Should I:
a) send it in to SRD for its free rehoning
b) Buy a hone and sharpen it myself
c) Send it for rehoning and buy a second shave ready razor as a back up.
d) Send it in for rehoning and buy a hone to maintain my one and only razor myself.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to afford both a new razor and a hone so I have to choose between either having a hone and only one razor or two razor but no hones.

Thank you for your time, hopefully I'll be able to get this sorted out soon and get back to straight shaving.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Another option is to get a whippeddog for now. www.whippeddog.com. You should have a backup, anyway. In light of your difficulties, I would suggest not jumping into honing just yet... give it a few weeks. Send it back for the free honing while you shave with the dog.

Possibly your shave angle was too high. Possibly your stropping is the culprit. Shave angle should be as flat against the face as you can get and still get a shave. Typically this is regarded to be one spine thickness between spine and flat skin.

Get yourself a block of balsa, 3" wide, 12" long, and 3/4" or 1" thick. Sand it flat and smooth on a flat countertop or glass plate. Get some 1u and .25u diamond paste from www.tedpella.com. A little goes a long way. Apply a couple of bb's worth of .25u to one side, and 1u to the other. After every shave, strop a half dozen laps on the 1u, wipe the blade clean clean clean, and then a dozen on the .25u side. This ought to keep your edge sharp for a long time.

When you figure you are ready to jump into honing, do a search for threads on lapping film. Film is cheap and easy to get really great edges.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the advice. I was looking at whipped dog and saw that they offer a pasted balsa strop. It uses iron and chromium oxide instead of diamond paste but I'm wondering if I can use this the same way as the diamond pasted balsa that you recommended.

 

[California Cajun]

Hi guys, sorry for the delay in my updates but I've been running into some issues with straight shaving the last week or so and I wanted to try to narrow down what I thought the problem was before coming here.

Anyways, my third shave with a straight razor was very good as was mentioned above but then I went onto the fourth shave and I just couldn't seem to cut any hair with it. Now my first thought was that I had dulled the edge somehow, but being fully aware that technique was likely to blame rather than the razor, I decided to keep up with it. Well, it's been over a week of trying with it and I haven’t been able to get a single good shave out of it. I don't know what it is, but on all the shaves up to the third it cut effortlessly and then on the fourth it just suddenly stopped cutting. I've tried everything I can think of: thick lather to thin lather, fast short strokes to long sweeping ones, every angle from resting the spine on my face to 90 degrees, and even varying pressure from light as a feather to pushing it into my face so hard it scraped skin off. Nothing and I mean nothing seems to get it to cut. I can hear it going over the stubble but when I check the areas I’ve gone over I can see that nothing has come off and there is no hair in the removed lather. I've also tried it on arm hair and although it will eventually cut after a few attempts atg it refuses to do so wtg.

So, after all this I am fairly certain that I must have done something stupid and dulled the edge. Problem is I'm not entirely certain what it was. I've essentially rounded it down to three things that could possibly be the culprit:

1. I rolled the edge when cleaning the razor. After my third shave, which was the last good shave by the way, I was cleaning the blade under the tap and rubbing lather off with my thumb and my thumb kind of slipped over the edge as I was doing so. I didn't cut deep enough to bleed but it did go through my calluses and I could feel the side of the edge sliding into the skin. I currently think that this is the most likely culprit but I have to wonder if catching the edge with my thumb is really enough to ruin an edge.

2. Poor stropping technique. I have no reason to believe I've done anything wrong whilst stropping, but it would of course be foolish to discount it seeing as how if I am doing it wrong then I wouldn't really know it in the first place. However, I am positive that I have never rolled the razor over the edge and there are no Knicks or scrapes on the strop whatsoever. I was always very careful when stropping and I only applied enough pressure to get an even sound along the length of the strop.

3. Catching the blade on the scales. The blade in my particular razor doesn't sit too well in the scales. In fact, the edge comes within a fraction of a mm of touching one side of the scales when opening or closing the razor. Once when opening it I didn't pay attention and the edge caught the side of the scales as I was opening it.


So if anyone could think of what I might have done wrong then please let me know.

Also, I don't have a spare razor or any means of sharpening the one I have which leads me to my next course of action. Should I:
a) send it in to SRD for its free rehoning
b) Buy a hone and sharpen it myself
c) Send it for rehoning and buy a second shave ready razor as a back up.
d) Send it in for rehoning and buy a hone to maintain my one and only razor myself.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to afford both a new razor and a hone so I have to choose between either having a hone and only one razor or two razor but no hones.

Thank you for your time, hopefully I'll be able to get this sorted out soon and get back to straight shaving.

Having been through the long learning curve myself, it sounds to me like you are doing well. There are so many variables that not only involve the actual shaving, but taking care of the blade as well. It is hard to think about what you're doing and shave at the same time. The good news is that all of this will eventually come together.

There is some doubt in your mind whether the blade was honed correctly. The best way for me to find out was to buy another razor from an experienced shaver who made it shave ready according to his own standards. If money is an issue, you can get a Parker Shavette for around $20 which uses a double edge razor blade split in half to compare with your straight razor. If I had it to do over again I would have started with the Parker so I could learn how to straight shave before tackling the stropping and honing.

I learned a lot from videos as well, on shaving, stropping, and honing. Here's the shaving video that helped the most:

 

[California Cajun]

Here's the honing video that helped me the most:

 

[California Cajun]

Here's the stropping video that helped me the most (I'm still struggling with this!):

 

[Anonymous]

Having been through the long learning curve myself, it sounds to me like you are doing well. There are so many variables that not only involve the actual shaving, but taking care of the blade as well. It is hard to think about what you're doing and shave at the same time. The good news is that all of this will eventually come together.

Thank you for the Kind words Cajun, but I'm not sure that I'd say I'm "doing well" considering I managed to dull a freshly honed razor after three uses, haha. But on the bright side, I guess that's how you learn right? And it's not as if I thought this was going to be easy; if I had wanted that I would have stayed with a Mach 3. Still though, I feel like a real idiot.

But anyways, I've reserved a whipped dog straight and poor man strop kit and I will hopefully hear back from them soon and I'm also sending my first straight in for a free rehoning. It will probably be a couple of weeks but with any luck I'll be back to straight shaving soon.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Yes you can use the pasted balsa that Larry sells. I do think that diamond paste is better but the green and red combo will work. And the price for the whole kit is a good deal. The CrOx does not cut as aggressively as diamond so it will be of limited usefulness in restoring a dull edge. Stay on top of it with regular post-shave use.