Newb to the straight

[Slowlygettingthere]

Hi guys,
I have always wanted to start shaving with a straight razor, around two years ago I bought a safety razor to make a progression in to wet shaving and a few days ago I ordered a straight razor ‘kit’ (cheapish leather strop, brush that I haven’t used as my other one is better, a 400/1000 grit whetstone and a gold dollar 208 razor).

now I have a bit of experience sharpening knives and this razor came to me relatively sharp and after 3 hours on the 400/1000 and a 3000/8000 stone I have also bought it was Cutting the hairs on my arms relatively effortlessly. I shaved my neck with it and it was pulling quite a bit but persevered as it could have been down to My technique or the length of the hair as I hadn’t shaved in three weeks.

I have since sharpened it on the 8000 grit once more just to see if it was the blade, 30 passes, and cut the remainder of my beard off. Again, pulling and difficulty with a bit of irritation afterwards but nothing my aftershave balm couldn’t sort.

Ive just now shaved again but this time tried to add in an ATG pass as I have read about to get that real close shave on 2 day stubble and it was still really pulling and not as smooth as I’ve seen videos of or was expecting. Blade is skipping a little and I’m not sure wether it is my technique or wether I’ve just not quite got the razor as sharp as it needs to be yet?

Any ideas? TIA!!

 

[Invicta]

Welcome to B&B.
If you post in the straight razor section you should get good advice. Have you tried a few strokes on the strop to get it shave ready? Sounds like the edge is not there yet.

 

[rbscebu]

First, your straight razor is not yet sharp enough and secondly you have not yet developed your technique.

Your 8k stone is probably not fine enough to finish a straight razor edge. As a bare minimum I would suggest that you finish the edge on your 8k stone with a detergent/water mix, then many (like a hundred of more) laps on a pasted canvas strop before finally finishing by stropping on clean leather.

The above will still not give you a good edge but it might improve what you currently have.

To get a perfect (and I mean perfect) shaving edge, read and follow the Method.

Newbie Honing Compendium

I find myself often linking just a few threads rather than give a long winded explanation that takes me 15 minutes to type on my phone. So, here are my favorite threads to suggest that newbies read if they are interested in making their razors sharp. Lapping film, try it. Setting the Bevel...

www.badgerandblade.com

It's a long read. Take notes as you go, the Method is refined along the way.

 

[BigJ]

Welcome aboard!

Congratulations on your progress!!

I also second the suggestion that you check in with the guys on the straights forums.

 

[NickCutlip]

Welcome to the forum !!

 

[Slowlygettingthere]

Thanks for the advice so far guys, really appreciated, I understand I have a long way to go before getting a perfect shave or anything close to that but as I said just wondering if there was any glaring mistakes I have made!

I’ll give that honing method a read through and will have to look in to the chromium oxide paste as I wasn’t sure wether it was something that was needed. At the moment I just have a standard leather strip with a canvas part as you would expect.

I will certainly try the other parts of the forums as well

 

[dmshaver]

Welcome @Slowlygettingthere, enjoy!

 

[ajkel64]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for checking in with us.

 

[steveclarkus]

You may want to use a shavette to get your technique down. The Parker SR1 is about $20 on Amazon and uses half of a DE blade (just snap a DE blade in half BEFORE unwrapping it). These are straight razors and shaving is exactly the same. This will allow you to learn without bothering with maintenance.

 

[alex1921]

Hi guys,
I have always wanted to start shaving with a straight razor, around two years ago I bought a safety razor to make a progression in to wet shaving and a few days ago I ordered a straight razor ‘kit’ (cheapish leather strop, brush that I haven’t used as my other one is better, a 400/1000 grit whetstone and a gold dollar 208 razor).

now I have a bit of experience sharpening knives and this razor came to me relatively sharp and after 3 hours on the 400/1000 and a 3000/8000 stone I have also bought it was Cutting the hairs on my arms relatively effortlessly. I shaved my neck with it and it was pulling quite a bit but persevered as it could have been down to My technique or the length of the hair as I hadn’t shaved in three weeks.

I have since sharpened it on the 8000 grit once more just to see if it was the blade, 30 passes, and cut the remainder of my beard off. Again, pulling and difficulty with a bit of irritation afterwards but nothing my aftershave balm couldn’t sort.

Ive just now shaved again but this time tried to add in an ATG pass as I have read about to get that real close shave on 2 day stubble and it was still really pulling and not as smooth as I’ve seen videos of or was expecting. Blade is skipping a little and I’m not sure wether it is my technique or wether I’ve just not quite got the razor as sharp as it needs to be yet?

Any ideas? TIA!!

If I understand this correctly you don't know how to shave with a straight and you don't know how to sharpen one. If that's correct then I would suggest you get yourself a shave ready straight and learn how to shave. Once you have the technique down then you proceed to the sharpening part.
Doing this step wise you remove the guessing, is it my blade? is it my technique?

The other question is where did you get your GD from? Was it modified? The few GD's I bought years ago, if you didn't modify the stabilizers the heel part of the razor wouldn't touch the stones so you can imagine it wouldn't really shave you. One of them is warped so unless you do a rolling stroke the toe on one side wont hit.
As you can see if the razor isn't right just rubbing it up and down the stones or lapping film or whatever won't make it shave ready.

For fun take a magic marker and mark the edge of the razor on both sides and go to the stones. Just couple laps should remove the marker as long as the edge is coming into contact with the stones correctly. If not then you can see where the problem is.

 

[Slowlygettingthere]

Update, managed to put an edge on it and ow is shaving fine. Will definitely need the stabiliser filing down as the heel is not as sharp as the middle or the toe but not too bad for a crappy Chinese thing that cost 20 for the set! Had a few good shaves already, once I’m happy with the technique completely I’ll certainly be investing in a ‘better’ razor