So...............

[5whiskey]

I have read how a shave with a SR can be one of pure bliss - closer & more comfortable than with a modern day razor. Surely, with all the forums being full of guys who swear of the close and comfy a SR can bring, i unfortunately am not one of them. The SR bliss i so often read about is proving quite elusive.

So i ask myself, if SR shaving is so great why did modern razors emerge???

i guess its the logic of if it wasn't ever broke why was it fixed??

As almost everyone else indicated, modern razors emerged not to be better. They emerged to be MUCH MUCH MUCH more convenient. What's really sad, though, is this convenience isn't all it's cracked up to be. I've been shaving with a straight for a touch over 2 years. Now that I have a little time under my belt, I can shave in about 10 minutes. Most guys with canned goop and a Mach 3 won't save very much time over this. Maintenance isn't even that time consuming. Now that I have my shaving, stropping, and honing technique a little more polished, I can go 2 or more months on one razor without needing to hone. So 6 times a year, I break out the hones and spend 20-30 minutes touching up a razor while I drink beer and watch a partial rerun of The Rifleman, Bonanza, or Andy Griffith. All this for a drastically better shave.

What people have lost patience for is the time spent to learn how to maintain a straight razor such that it isn't a major inconvenience. I do believe most of our great-grandfathers probably used a cheap barber hone to maintain their razor, to varying degrees of success. I don't think shave ready 120 years ago for the average home shaver meant anywhere close to what it means to most here. I could see the DE being a significant improvement to many guys' shaving experience back then. Alas, today we have the internet and cheap lapping film at our disposal. Even a set of suitable Arkansas stones can be had for around $60 USD or so. And we have all the knowledge of the internet at our fingertips to learn how, plus relatively inexpensive tools to do so at our disposal. Learning how in 1905 meant your dad had to show you, and he had to be good. You could read a book, but how many men set out to read a book on razor maintenance?

A well maintained, decent quality SR will shave drastically better than what any other shave method can. It takes a lot of patience, discipline, and determination to learn to unlock that ability. And that is true even today, even with a world of knowledge at our fingertips. So take it for what it is. Convenience may be way more important to you. Maybe you don't have the time, or desire, to master a SR and it's maintenance. It's fine if you don't. But it is shaving in style, and it shaves closer and more comfortable than anything when done right.

 

[Steve56]

I don't think shave ready 120 years ago for the average home shaver meant anywhere close to what it means to most here. I could see the DE being a significant improvement to many guys' shaving experience back then.

That’s some wisdom that a modern wet shaving forum doesn’t consider very often. A DE shave is likely better than a SR shave when the SR was honed on a 6k Carborundum barber hone.

People back then were savvy with a dollar - they knew that a SR setup was cheaper than DE, and still is to use in the long term, a lot cheaper. They would not have spent more unless they thought that it was worth it, which most of them did.

 

[Possum092]

During the war years when steel was being used to build arms, disposable razor blades were re-honed and reused on the stones intended for SR honing. My grandmother explained they couldn’t afford the luxury of throwing out the blades because they became difficult to obtain and afford. I’ve never tried but it might be interesting to see if I have their level of skill to keep a disposable razor blade going.

 

[razorboi]

...So 6 times a year, I break out the hones and spend 20-30 minutes touching up a razor while I drink beer and watch a partial rerun of The Rifleman, Bonanza, or Andy Griffith...

If you can hone a razor whilst drinking beer, you're a braver man than I.
And if you can hone a razor and watch telly at the same time, you're co-ordination definitely exceeds mine.
But why you don't finish the episode is the real puzzler...

 

[APBinNCA]

During the war years when steel was being used to build arms, disposable razor blades were re-honed and reused on the stones intended for SR honing. My grandmother explained they couldn’t afford the luxury of throwing out the blades because they became difficult to obtain and afford. I’ve never tried but it might be interesting to see if I have their level of skill to keep a disposable razor blade going.

I don't know if I can find it again, but there is a video out there of a guy who taped up a vintage Auto Strop blade to get the right angle and got it shaving pretty well. I have a mint pack of these from the early 40s and have shaved with one and I plan to try this out, but I don't know what stone I would have to start on. I guess I can try my finisher since the blade is still cutting fine. They are an amazing blade to look at out of the package, I think they may be the peak of technology before stainless.

 

[steveclarkus]

One item neglected in these well thought out comments is the simple beauty of a straight razor. That alone is what first attracted me to the use of one. They are sublime aren’t they.

 

[Possum092]

I don't know if I can find it again, but there is a video out there of a guy who taped up a vintage Auto Strop blade to get the right angle and got it shaving pretty well. I have a mint pack of these from the early 40s and have shaved with one and I plan to try this out, but I don't know what stone I would have to start on. I guess I can try my finisher since the blade is still cutting fine. They are an amazing blade to look at out of the package, I think they may be the peak of technology before stainless.

My first choice would be a finishing ceramic/glass with 12K abrasive and mineral oil.

 

[razorboi]

I don't know if I can find it again, but there is a video out there of a guy who taped up a vintage Auto Strop blade to get the right angle and got it shaving pretty well. I have a mint pack of these from the early 40s and have shaved with one and I plan to try this out, but I don't know what stone I would have to start on. I guess I can try my finisher since the blade is still cutting fine. They are an amazing blade to look at out of the package, I think they may be the peak of technology before stainless.

I think you'll just end up ruining the blades.
If you don't match the original angle perfectly (and you can't), you're just setting a new edge, and I don't think anyone can successfully do that with an auto-strop blade.
Many of the pre-war disposable double and single blades were thick (by to-day's standards), and had a longer edge that (with the right equipment), could be stropped and maintained, at least for a while. There were devices marketed for this purpose, rotating "honers," edge refreshers and automatic stropping devices.
They are easily found on eBay.
What most of them share in common is that they remove the manual (free-hand) element of stropping and replace it with a device that sets the blade at a precision angle during the process. Only through such a fixed-angle device could successful stropping of these blades be achieved by laymen. By the 1950's blades got even thinner (eg. blue blades), and the ground edges got much smaller/shorter, culminating in a micro-edge that was nigh impossible to strop or maintain beyond it's pre-ordained lifespan. These are impossible to hone and light stropping may, at best, give you a few extra shaves. That's one reason disposable-blade stropping devices disappeared in the 1950's.
The Auto-Strop was designed with a blade that would benefit from fixed stropping. The blade was thicker than the average disposable blade of the day and had a relatively long edge built into it. They were designed to give longer life through stropping, but eventually, they too would need replacing. Hence, replacement blades were commonly sold in multi-packs. They were never intended to be honed.
If you have a mint pack of replacement auto-strop blades, you may get a decent shave just from stropping them with an auto-strop device. A common blade-holder for free-hand stropping might work, but only if you're quite adept at it.
I would consider honing them a significant challenge, even for an expert.

 

[Benson2777]

Thanks for the many responses. All of you gave solid answers. Safe to say my question has been answered!

 

[razorboi]

Sorry, we digressed, segued, went off topic...as we are wont to do.
So, be careful what you ask round here.
Actually, there's probably already enough historical material in the straight razor threads here to make you an expert on the subject...if only you'd care to read that much!