Hello Gents, I thought I'd come by these here parts (straight razor forum) and introduce myself. And what prompted me to post tonight (er, early this morning=
, I had my first truly, kick butt straight razor shave Sunday night, and I wanted to acknowledge a few of the gentlemen here that have been responsible for my progress
First off, although I'm fairly new to wet shaving, I'm 54 so I've been slinging a razor around my face for a few years prior. I started w/a DE about 6 weeks ago and it was 3 weeks ago last Friday that I bought my first straight razor from the affable Jarrod Connerty (thesuperiorshave.com). I'm only a few hours ride from Jarrod's shop so I made my way up there with the intention of bringing home a straight razor, strop and a hone to sharpen the razor. I met those objectives and have been using the straight most every night to shave with
Prior to actually buying a straight razor, I'd been PMing with Luc (regarding straight razors) as I have read where he's shaved steady with one for a bit and after reading what Luc had to say to me (pointing me to particular threads and videos), I decided to take the plunge and visit Jarrod's shop firsthand to acquire the appropriate schwag
While Luc and others concentrated on learning the straight before learning to hone, I decided to lump the two tasks together. I've been sharpening my ZRT mower's grass cutting blades on a rotary blade grinder since 2003 (every 5 hours use, each blade) so I thought how difficult could it be to learn straight razor honing? Like most esoteric pursuits, it's an art, but I'm a program guy so with the right instruction I can accomplish just about anything if I put my mind to
=
I stumbled around in the beginning learning how to shave and learning how to hone (using a straight razor), then one night while perusing the honing forum I was following the thread "show us your coti", or some such and saw a poster who listed his location as north central Fla. I PM'd life2short1971 and he invited me over to help me along with my honing and stropping, after confessing to him I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing
Wifey and I made the trip up to Scott's place and was generously shown the basics of how to hone and strop. Now mind you, Jarrod gave me some basic instruction at the time of purchase and I seemed to retain some of his teaching but spending some more time with Scott helped me immensely. BTW, Scott really put quite the edge on the stainless steel DOVO Master's straight razor I brought up with me. Scott went over stropping with me too which helped me a lot as while he watched me strop, it was evident I was letting the strop sag too much and I was probably doing more harm to the DOVO's edge vs. helping straighten it. And we were running out of time to visit so towards the end, Scott stropped my razor as time was short and sent us on our way. When I got home and shaved with the DOVO later that night, I was shaving with an entirely different, better razor, and I had a monumental shave that evening. No cuts, no bleeding, just smooth shaving, and my best straight shave up to that point
Fast forward to last Wednesday when a 6/8's Le Dandy shows up in my mailbox from the UK TI dealer. I'd been wanting to try TI's carbonsong blade and Mr.Dempster was the only vendor I found carrying it in the size I wanted. Although Steve stropped the factory edge with diamond paste, it felt a little too rough for my tender skin so I immediately worked to reset the bevels with my coti bout (Jarrod sold me a LPB bout and requisite matching slurry stone)
I spent the better part of an hour or so using a deft touch (& X strokes) on my well slurried bout before I felt the edge drawing. After several PM's with life2short1971 (Scott), I finally got an edge worthy of shaving me cleanly and w/o any irritation, but all the while, in this short past 3 week adventure, I've had to endure a few mistakes (cuts/nicks/burns) with the striaght due to my unfamiliarity with how to properly wield it, and I have learnt a thing or two about the importance of making a good lather (thanks to Scott) so as to eliminate razor burn, something that was holding me back from getting a good shave on my chin. Yes, I found out I can make an inferior lather and get away with using it shaving with a DE razor but with the straight razor, my lather must be immpecable to counter the dreaded razor burn, which prompted me to write this post tonight
I freakin nailed a few aspects together this past evening and ended up with an irritation free DFS, even on my chin. Once done shaving and rinsed my face, I used Clubman A/S and felt no burn. Yes, the holy grail for me, my chin, I learnt how to shave it and got it cleanly shaven, and irritation free. Sorry, I digress, but the planets have aligned= No doubt, I have a long way to go and many straight razor dues to pay but what a wonderful feeling to be on top and feel like I've got the bull by the horn
Best,
Jake
Reddick Fla.
, I had my first truly, kick butt straight razor shave Sunday night, and I wanted to acknowledge a few of the gentlemen here that have been responsible for my progressFirst off, although I'm fairly new to wet shaving, I'm 54 so I've been slinging a razor around my face for a few years prior. I started w/a DE about 6 weeks ago and it was 3 weeks ago last Friday that I bought my first straight razor from the affable Jarrod Connerty (thesuperiorshave.com). I'm only a few hours ride from Jarrod's shop so I made my way up there with the intention of bringing home a straight razor, strop and a hone to sharpen the razor. I met those objectives and have been using the straight most every night to shave with
Prior to actually buying a straight razor, I'd been PMing with Luc (regarding straight razors) as I have read where he's shaved steady with one for a bit and after reading what Luc had to say to me (pointing me to particular threads and videos), I decided to take the plunge and visit Jarrod's shop firsthand to acquire the appropriate schwag
While Luc and others concentrated on learning the straight before learning to hone, I decided to lump the two tasks together. I've been sharpening my ZRT mower's grass cutting blades on a rotary blade grinder since 2003 (every 5 hours use, each blade) so I thought how difficult could it be to learn straight razor honing? Like most esoteric pursuits, it's an art, but I'm a program guy so with the right instruction I can accomplish just about anything if I put my mind to
=
I stumbled around in the beginning learning how to shave and learning how to hone (using a straight razor), then one night while perusing the honing forum I was following the thread "show us your coti", or some such and saw a poster who listed his location as north central Fla. I PM'd life2short1971 and he invited me over to help me along with my honing and stropping, after confessing to him I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing
Wifey and I made the trip up to Scott's place and was generously shown the basics of how to hone and strop. Now mind you, Jarrod gave me some basic instruction at the time of purchase and I seemed to retain some of his teaching but spending some more time with Scott helped me immensely. BTW, Scott really put quite the edge on the stainless steel DOVO Master's straight razor I brought up with me. Scott went over stropping with me too which helped me a lot as while he watched me strop, it was evident I was letting the strop sag too much and I was probably doing more harm to the DOVO's edge vs. helping straighten it. And we were running out of time to visit so towards the end, Scott stropped my razor as time was short and sent us on our way. When I got home and shaved with the DOVO later that night, I was shaving with an entirely different, better razor, and I had a monumental shave that evening. No cuts, no bleeding, just smooth shaving, and my best straight shave up to that point
Fast forward to last Wednesday when a 6/8's Le Dandy shows up in my mailbox from the UK TI dealer. I'd been wanting to try TI's carbonsong blade and Mr.Dempster was the only vendor I found carrying it in the size I wanted. Although Steve stropped the factory edge with diamond paste, it felt a little too rough for my tender skin so I immediately worked to reset the bevels with my coti bout (Jarrod sold me a LPB bout and requisite matching slurry stone)
I spent the better part of an hour or so using a deft touch (& X strokes) on my well slurried bout before I felt the edge drawing. After several PM's with life2short1971 (Scott), I finally got an edge worthy of shaving me cleanly and w/o any irritation, but all the while, in this short past 3 week adventure, I've had to endure a few mistakes (cuts/nicks/burns) with the striaght due to my unfamiliarity with how to properly wield it, and I have learnt a thing or two about the importance of making a good lather (thanks to Scott) so as to eliminate razor burn, something that was holding me back from getting a good shave on my chin. Yes, I found out I can make an inferior lather and get away with using it shaving with a DE razor but with the straight razor, my lather must be immpecable to counter the dreaded razor burn, which prompted me to write this post tonight
I freakin nailed a few aspects together this past evening and ended up with an irritation free DFS, even on my chin. Once done shaving and rinsed my face, I used Clubman A/S and felt no burn. Yes, the holy grail for me, my chin, I learnt how to shave it and got it cleanly shaven, and irritation free. Sorry, I digress, but the planets have aligned=
No doubt, I have a long way to go and many straight razor dues to pay but what a wonderful feeling to be on top and feel like I've got the bull by the hornBest,
Jake
Reddick Fla.
