seanusa's Straight Razor Shave Journal

[seanusa]

Thanks to a very generous member here at B&B "Krodor" I officially have a straight razor on its way. The razor is GD that has had the shoulders removed and is shave ready, other than that I have never seen it and know nothing about it but am very excited to get it. I just ordered a travel strop from Larry at whipped dog for $11 so if I shred it no big deal. I will need to learn an X stroke but I figure that's a good thing to learn anyway. I have had several offers made for re-honing when needed until I get the equipment and skills necessary to do it myself. All in all I am very stoked and can't wait to post pics and info and ask questions. Thank you all, and thank you B&B for opportunities such as this. Wish me luck!

 

[rockviper]

And so the fun begins!!!

 

[The Don]

Excellent! Post some pictures when everything arrives, and enjoy your shaves in good health!!

 

[Krodor]

Looking forward to hearing how it goes. Do you have any maintenance equipment other than the strop? As with many things about this hobby, the better you get, the less you need. Thus a super expert shaver knows all the tricks to keep the edge healthy for ages, so needs to hone less often. A newbie might find that after 4-7 shaves, the edge has taken a turn for the worse and needs a touch up to get back to happiness. Thus the Poor Man Strop kit fills that niche nicely.

Regardless, the point here at the start is just to have fun and don't give up. The BBS should not be your goal...as I think Ouch (Gash? I get mixed up) likes to say, the goal is not to die.

 

[seanusa]

Looking forward to hearing how it goes. Do you have any maintenance equipment other than the strop? As with many things about this hobby, the better you get, the less you need. Thus a super expert shaver knows all the tricks to keep the edge healthy for ages, so needs to hone less often. A newbie might find that after 4-7 shaves, the edge has taken a turn for the worse and needs a touch up to get back to happiness. Thus the Poor Man Strop kit fills that niche nicely.

Regardless, the point here at the start is just to have fun and don't give up. The BBS should not be your goal...as I think Ouch likes to say, the goal is not to die.

I have been thinking about lapping film or paste and balsa or something along those lines but not sure yet.

 

[seanusa]

Got some goodies in the mail today!

 

[seanusa]

and...

 

[seanusa]

I have a little razor burn from trying a new razor so I'm gonna wait a few days before I give her a try. I am very excited that my next shave will be with a straight!

 

[rockviper]

Looks good, and i see you've been researching your grip. On to the final exam!

 

[Krodor]

new toys! always fun. betcha he takes a few swipes tomorrow anyway, just cuz...

come on...you know you want to....

 

[seanusa]

new toys! always fun. betcha he takes a few swipes tomorrow anyway, just cuz...come on...you know you want to....

I almost did right after I got home and unpackaged everything but I want my first try to go as well as possible so I'm gonna use some self restraint on this one and wait it out. You better believe I'm gonna have straights on the brain the next few days at work though.

 

[seanusa]

Well today was the maiden voyage... and I survived! I showered, dressed then ten minutes later decided to do it, so I went back to the bathroom put a warm towel on my face and soaked a B&B boar brush. I lathered up with Arko and tried to make it a little wetter lather but didn't really change much from my normal lather, put on Proraso green pre-shave cream, lathered up and started in.

It was like the first time in the back seat with your high school sweetheart when your not sure what to grab and where to... and........... well you get the picture. I tried various grips and tried switching hands and didn't like that. Man, its hard to see what yer doing with these things. In the end I straightened the handle and went at it like it was a Japanese stile razor and stay with using just the right hand. I did a total of three WTG passes and had a few little weepers around my chin and some razor burn on my neck. It feels smooth WTG but still stubble ATG. It also looks a little uneven, if I look close there is stubble that is a touch longer in spots. The alum and the Clubman aftershave about put me on my knees and after five minutes or so I washed it off and put some of the Proraso pre-shave on it to sooth the burn and if feel OK now. Kinda like I just shaved with a knife. I cleaned, dried and stropped the razor with about 15 slow passes and put it away. Until next time.

OK, so I have at her boys! What do I need to do different or what advice would you give?

 

[global_dev]

Keep practicing. Use back of a butter knife to approximate feel.
WTG is usually only gonna get you so far.

 

[Krodor]

First, off, congratulations! It sounds like the first shave went spectacularly. To have the cojones to do 3 WTG full passes on your maiden voyage portends great things.

All that patchiness you mention will get taken care of with experience and XTG passes. You'll figure that out, no problem at all.

The grip you showed in the picture looks about right for the WTG on the cheeks, and yes, it kinda does get in the way of the view in the mirror. I often just go at it by feel. That being said, folks often start their very first pass up at the sideburns which is (to me) the hardest thing to view. Shaving with it "straight out" sounds really awkward and hard to keep things stable / angle right, but if it works for you, ok. Other passes (for example, for me neck, ATG, off-hand side) will have the grip be very different from that "classic" grip in your picture.


so a few questions here.

• first one: you'd said before that you were going to wait a couple days to let your face recover from a bad experience with a different razor. Did you jump the gun due to excitement and this built on that?
• second one: how much angle were you using? You should be targeting having the spine somewhere close to a spine-width away from flat on your face.
• third one: stretching skin. If you are shaving north-to-south, you'll wanna be pulling the skin behind the edge up in the northerly direction. a couple passes of your damp fingers on your alum block can turn your fingers into a decent velcro replacement for this task.
• last one:
• the "ah-ooogah, ah-ooogah", sirens blaring, damage control part... Let's do a quick check the edge, shall we? It will help at least level-set a little bit. Knowing the "shave test" is the Right Way, let's at least try the Floating Arm Hair Test:
  • find a part of your arm that has plenty of hairs that are not flat against your skin. I find that up on my shoulder things get more curly/fluffy than the forearm, but I'm me, and you are you. I also have fluffy chest hair, so that works too.
  • very carefully hold the razor what-would-be flat against your skin, just not touching it. Note that the face of the blade in this position is not parallel to the skin, since the spine has some width to it.
  • raise just the spine about a spine-width or two more up from that "flat" position.
  • now put the whole razor off the skin so the edge is about an 1/8" from your skin
  • float the razor through the fluffed-up arm hair / chest hair...you should hear "ping ping ping" as it pops the hairs. If you don't, that doesn't mean the end of the world, but I will feel better if you say you hear it. If you don't, holler, I will prep another razor and send it to you with a couple bucks, you pick the one you like best, and send me back the other.

I did take a few swipes on my own face before sending it, and it felt good -- took off whiskers with no issues. FWIW, I inspected the bevel with a loupe and was happy with smooth it was. Given that, and the fact you didn't use the word "tugging" in your description, I'm pretty sure things should be good regarding the edge itself. But hey, the above offer stands, just in case, ok?

 

[global_dev]

Shoulder hair shave test. That's a new one for me. Plus i dont have shoulder hair... so i will pass on that one for the future.

 

[seanusa]

So I did jump the gun and just went for it
I was trying to do about a spine width for my angle.
I could have done much better with stretching my skin I think.

There was a slight bit of tug to the shave but I get that even with a Feather blade in a DE. My whiskers are like wire.

I'm off to do the blade test BRB

 

[seanusa]

Gave it a few passes on the strop and did the hanging hair test and heard little pops and hair on the blade. It didn't cut the test patch even, some of the hair laid over but the others went ping and popped off

 

[seanusa]

• • float the razor through the fluffed-up arm hair / chest hair...you should hear "ping ping ping" as it pops the hairs. If you don't, that doesn't mean the end of the world, but I will feel better if you say you hear it. If you don't, holler, I will prep another razor and send it to you with a couple bucks, you pick the one you like best, and send me back the other.

Very generous! Thanks for the offer

 

[Krodor]

Gave it a few passes on the strop and did the hanging hair test and heard little pops and hair on the blade. It didn't cut the test patch even, some of the hair laid over but the others went ping and popped off

Ok, it's pinging some hairs, so that's good. For the hone sequence, I went DMT to norton 4k to coticule (dilucot) to oiled coticule ....got pinging hairs off the rock, then stropped a bunch, louped the bevel, and the few swipes I took were comfy, I'm gonna hafta guess the razor burn is technique related, not the razor...whew!

Yeah, I made that offer cuz it's just not right to give someone a gift that doesn't work. Sounds like you've got just normal startup learning to go. You know what's fun? Shave with the straight maybe 3 times with no DE for clean up. Then use the DE. You'll feel so friggin' confident with your DE. For me, I can't figure out how not to nick up my neck with a DE, so I keep running back home to the comfort of the straight if I ever stray from it for more than a day or two.

If you are feeling up to it, make the angle of the razor path not head-on to the edge. Think "gillette slide" but with a straight (check mantic59 vids for the DE version). It will make the whiskers cut easier, less tugging, and give your edge longer life too.

 

[Bird_Flu]

Sounds like an awesome first shave, even with the burn. Congrats on taking the plunge! Are you letting your whiskers go a couple of days to give the burn time to heal?