First Straight Razor Shave was a moderate success--but need help...

[bmiller3230]

Thanks everyone for your advice. Second shave in was great. I used the advice regarding how to approach the throat diagonally to great effect. A couple of things came into play to get the right angle. First is being more flexible in my grip on the razor. I just took a do what works to get the angle but is also stable so that you don't cut yourself approach. A pinch grip came into play a lot.

Shorter strokes, concentrating on getting a 30 degree angle to the face helped too. I think the first time I was using too shallow an angle and that caused me to want to take too many passes.

At any rate, this is definitely the way I want to go, and no doubt this board will continue to be a wealth of info in this persuit

 

[HazMat Shaver]

The shave angle with a straight is much less than the 30 degrees you read about. Look at the thickness of the spine of the razor. That is about the amount of gsp you want between your face and the spine of the razor when shaving.
This keeps you slicing the whiskers, not sheering them off.

 

[bmiller3230]

ok. But whatever I did worked this time. Isn't that what counts? Maybe it wasn't 30 degrees. Maybe it was 25 degrees. I was using too shallow an angle the first time.

 

[CpnStumpy]

Thanks everyone for your advice. Second shave in was great. I used the advice regarding how to approach the throat diagonally to great effect. A couple of things came into play to get the right angle. First is being more flexible in my grip on the razor. I just took a do what works to get the angle but is also stable so that you don't cut yourself approach. A pinch grip came into play a lot.

Shorter strokes, concentrating on getting a 30 degree angle to the face helped too. I think the first time I was using too shallow an angle and that caused me to want to take too many passes.

At any rate, this is definitely the way I want to go, and no doubt this board will continue to be a wealth of info in this persuit

For stability, pinch grip FTW. Variations on it are how I do my entire shave pretty much. People like jimps and thumb notches so they can grip top and bottom of the shank, but that's just too fiddly in my hands I find, gripping the sides of the shank in various ways feels much more stable, good on you for finding this regardless it's not in most beginning instructions