Thread: Hitting the brick wall.

Originally Posted by Disburden

Thanks again, everyone. I am going to try improving my stropping and perhaps send a razor out too. I will keep the thread updating on how things go throughout the week with my new stropping knowledge.

I think it's also weird that I have never gotten razor burn from using the razors.

once you get the one back, you will have a good baseline for honing your razors.

DE blades are good too if you are trying ot get teh feel of the TPT and TNT tests.

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

once you get the one back, you will have a good baseline for honing your razors.

DE blades are good too if you are trying ot get teh feel of the TPT and TNT tests.

I never thought of doing the TPT or TNT tests with a DE blade. That is a very good idea! I will test a feather out tonight.

Hey Disburden,

I'm shaving with a straight now since november and I'm still improving.. at first I would get a great shave every now and then and now I'm at a point where I just sometimes have a not so smooth shave.. Irritation is down to a minimum..

I have a light beard so I'm ok with a good shave every other day..

For me a comfortble shaving experience is more important than the closeness of the shave.

So keep it up and enjoy your shaves.. they will improve as your technique gets tuned.

Maarten

Im a newb as well so I can't add much to what the experienced guys have said, except, If it's a sound your hearing, try listening to the sounds on the Wiki page.. it may or may not be of any help to you, or maybe you have already heard it

Razor stropping - Straight Razor Place Wiki It's Near the bottom above the videos, just click and they download and play on any music player.

I never really got any kind of razor burn from my straights, even going ATG on my neck and chin. When I first started DE shaving though, I got crazy razor burn until I figured it out. I am lucky I have tough skin that doesn't get irritated easily, I guess. Now I am trying to practice stropping before bed, and I am trying to figure out if a flat angle isn't for me. Maybe I need a more aggressive angle on my type of beard. I saw some videos of Turkish barbers using a pretty steep angle when going ATG on someone (a spine's width off the face). Made me curious.

I'm a newbie too but if you are getting that ringing sound with just how fine the razor's edge is you are rolling the edge back and forth and it will fatigue the metal and break the cutting edge off or leave it rolled over from the last strop. There should be some youtube videos on stropping. Learn proper technique slowly until you've developed the muscle memory to develop speed.

Never apply any side pressure to the blades or even drag your finger across the edge.

Ray

I think that the first step towards fantastic shaves is to convert from wanting to get the best shave to wanting to have as much fun as I can while you shave. Even if you shave with a straight all your life, you continue to improve with every shave, even if it does not looks that way. You said that you have been shaving since you are 13, correct? but only less than 2 months with a straight, correct? If your shaves were already better with the straight, I would say that either you learned the straight method remarkably fast, or you wasted your time shaving with the double edge razor ;-). It is almost impossible to pitch a perfect game the first time you pitch..., I would say, give it time and enjoy your shaves. Aim for comfort rather than closeness, this may be the key.

About your stropping technique, I am not going to refer you to the wiki, because I know you have already done that. I believe stropping may be, at least in part, the problem that you are now experiencing. There are 2 key issues with stropping: 1) keep the strop tight; 2 flip the razor on the spine. You are probably doing both already. However, you say that you cannot tell if your razor is not flat on the strop, you may want to make sure that is the case. Slow down a bit and use less pressure when you strop. Let gravity work for you. Work on the technique and the speed will catch up.

Finally, when you shave, try to use the razor as a guillotine, that is at a small angle. I am not talking about the angle between the the plane of the razor and your face, that you already know should be controlled. I am talking about not bringing the razor flat and parallel to the floor but rather leading at an angle. People often lead with the toe of the razor. This is in case that you are not already doing so.

With a bit of patience and I think that you would be ok. Happy shaving!

Al raz.

Originally Posted by Big Red

First, stropping. one, get used to the feel of it being flat as much as watching it.

Just what I was going to suggest. (I wear glasses too.)

When you think about it, it's impossible to push the edge onto the strop while keeping the spine lifted, unless you are providing torque. That means you can learn to feel what is happening, and correct it.

The shank is closer to the spine than the edge, which helps. Focus on the forces you are appyling to the shank. A light downward pressure on the shank will push the spine into the strop harder than the blade edge, which is what you need. Try to maintain that feel while you are moving the razor across the strop.

This is a lot easier to do with a wide blade. A 7/8 gives much more feeback than a 5/8 I find.

If all else fails just use incredibly light strokes. My first strop was very smooth with no draw to speak of, yet gave a huge improvement when I did 60 light laps on it.

I'll chip in from the point of view of another pseudo-newcomer (I've been at this about a year).

I started with a brand new razor and tried to hone it myself and my first few shaves were quite bad until I started to get the honing down. Then one night I sat and stropped on the linen side of my Illinois strop for the whole length of a movie, paying more attention to stropping lightly and flatly than I did to the movie (lucky for me I'd seen it a few times already). This made a _very_ marked improvement in the quality of my next shave.

I'm still working on getting my technique consistent, and I still have to be very careful about what I'm doing to get that BBS shave, and even then sometimes I'll have a spot on my jawline or lower neck that is a tad rough. But, after a year I can say that the shaves are still getting better, and even the times I'm not willing to put in the time and care for BBS it's getting smoother in more places.

So make sure your razor is sharp, your stropping technique is good, and settle in for the long haul. Despite the fact that we're climbing a long, long learning curve at least it's an enjoyable one.

Tried again this morning with my new knowledge of stropping. I also used a higher angle on my face rather than flat against it when going WTG and XTG. First two passes felt ok and weren't painful. ATG still hurt on my neck though so I stopped and went to the DE again. Thanks for all the advice guys. I think my razors just may be too dull for my facial hair.