New to SR shaving

[bond5400]

I have been reluctantly shaving with an electric and carts for decades. Rbscebu has been trying to convince me to get into SR shaving. Today I received a shave-ready Titan ACRM-2 SR, Chinese leather/denim strop and Chinese synthetic badger brush.

What do I do now?

 

[rbscebu]

Welcome to B&B @bond5400. You have a good little straight razor (SR) starter set there. You will also need some shaving soap. As a n00bie to SR shaving, I recommend that you start with face-lathering with a shaving cream.

I know that you live in Maaroom, a very small coastal town on the costs of Queensland, Australia. Try your best to get a tube of Palmolive shaving cream. If you can't get that, just get any other brand of shaving cream.

Your SR is shave-ready (to my high standard) and will not need stropping before your first shave.

 

[Straight up]

Woolies sells Jack the Barber shave cream for $10 but often discounts to $6, it also sells Jack the Barber synthetic brushes for the same price as the soap. While not top end products, they are great value for money & easy to come by especially when first starting.

 

[camoloc]

shave like a gentleman.

go slow. stretch the skin. just shave little areas to start with. use both hands if your able or daring enough.......it pays off in the end if you stick with it.

camo

 

[Slash McCoy]

Is My Razor Sharp? The Treetopping Test | Badger & Blade

Shave Ready used to mean a lot. Now it can mean anything but a lot of sellers just use it as an ad copy buzz word and they do not even shave with straight razors, let alone understand what makes a shave ready edge. I say this to help you better troubleshoot your first shaves, should they be less than what you expect. So make sure that your razor is sharp enough to do the job, first. The ability to "Shave" arm hair is not a test for a razor, it is a test for your pocketknife.

You want your whiskers to be nice and soft before shaving. Try showering first, but do not dry your face. Lather up immediately. And shaving cream, real shaving cream, does not come in an aerosol can. I prefer shave soap but (real) shave cream is fine. You don't need much, maybe a blop about the size of a kidney bean or an almond. Wet your brush and give it one little flick to dump the excess water. There are many ways to make a lather but a nice simple way is to squeeze out the cream into your hand, rub your hands together and rub your wet face with your hands, then rather than wash the remainder right off your hands and down the drain, use your brush to pick up what you can from your hands, then rinse them. Start working your brush vigorously on your face and walah, the lather appears out of nowhere. Add more water as needed. You want it a bit loose and runny. You don't need a Santa Clause beard of lather. If you look like you were in a pie fight with the 3 Stooges, your lather is too heavy.

Let the lather stand on your face while you strop your razor. If it comes to you from almost any vendor known and respected on this or any other shaving forum, then it is likely already stropped and due to the risk of actually making it worse, you could skip stropping for the first shave and only the first shave. Otherwise youtube is your friend. Hang your strop from a hook or towel bar or door hinge or even door knob. Pull it tight, firmly but not with all your might and bodyweight. Lay the razor on it spine first. The spine MUST ALWAYS touch down first, before the edge. The edge is last to land on the strop. As you stroke the razor away from you, spine first of course, also ease it to the right a little so it comes partway off the right hand edge of the strop. At the far end, to turn and stroke back toward you, flip the EDGE up and over the spine. The spine must remain on the strop. Stroke the razor back toward you, again with a slight sideways motion. At the near end of the strop, flip it and prepare for the next away stroke. That is one lap, and the technique is called the x stroke because you are making an invisible X pattern with your strokes. 50 laps is pretty standard.

Some here will advocate only shaving your cheeks on your first shave, and finishing up with a DE or other type razor. I think you should skip the training wheels and go for it all the way.

One thing I waited to mention is mapping your face. It is important to be aware of which way the whiskers grow on every part of your face, so you can attempt to shave WTG, With The Grain, or as close to that as you can get. There is also XTG and finally ATG and I will let you guess what they are but your first shave should be only two WTG passes. So anyway start where you like. I happen to like starting with my neck and my razors are sharp enough that I can start in any direction I like, but you should shave as close to WTG as practical, within the topographical limitations imposed by your facial features.

Begin by placing the razor flat against your face. Now, ease the spine out away from your face with the edge still on your skin, so that there is a gap between the spine and your face equal to the thickness of the spine. That is your standard shave angle. A very dull razor requires one and a half spine thicknesses or so. A very sharp razor calls for half a spine thickness. With the spine too far out, you are scraping instead of shaving. Very traumatic to the face. And if you are forced to use too large an angle, you are probably shaving with a razor that is simply too dull to do the job. Get used to the standard angle. As you shave, at any time feel free to re-acquire the angle with the above technique. Angle is very important.

Tight flat skin resists cuts, and loose, flappy skin invites them. Stretch the skin tight, preferably "upstream", pulling the skin up against the direction of whisker growth. This exposes more whisker from out of the follicle, and also makes it stand out better from the face instead of laying down flat. You can wrap a fingertip in a washcloth to give it more traction on the face. You can also make "shaving faces" to help with the stretching.

Your pressure should be very light, almost as if you are satisfied to simply scoop the lather off your face with the razor. If the razor is sharp enough, the whiskers will come off with the lather, without pressing the razor hard against the face. The razor should already be in motion when it touches your face at the beginning of a stroke. Think of touch and go landing practice in an airplane.

Re-lather as necessary. Your brush should hold enough soap and water for a quick relather if a spot dries out. Don't shave dry!

When you have covered your entire face, that is one pass. Lather up again and have another go at it, to catch what all you missed on the first pass and get it down a little closer. Make a second pass, and you should be good. Your first shaves will not be perfect and certainly not BBS, or Baby's Butt Smooth. Don't even try for that. Try to simply survive the experience unscathed. A first shave with zero blood loss is a solid WIN. Closeness will come with experience.

Later, you can add a final XTG or ATG pass, if you like. Me, I just shave with a single pass, and it's good enough for me.
More Gold Dollar Stunt Shaving! Shaving several weeks growth with a Gold Dollar #66 Straight Razor! - YouTube

That's what you can do with a little experience and a sharp razor. The straight razor is in no way an inferior shaving tool to the "modern and improved" gear like 6 bladed disposable cartridge "shaving systems". You can do this. Your first attempt might suck. That's okay. Michaelangelo probably couldn't even color inside the lines when he first picked up a crayon. It's a journey, not just a destination.

There are lots of other youtubes out there that are maybe a bit more instructional. Don't be in a big hurry to dive in just yet. Do some research, watch some vids, read up on straight shaving here on B&B and on other forums. If you just jump right into it, your face will not thank you, believe me.

 

[5whiskey]

What others have written is good advice and will get you started well. I also will reiterate start out with the grain only for a little while. Eventually you shave against the grain and your face will feel like you never had hair there... but don´t shoot for that feeling for a bit.