Thread: Going Straight

Greetings All
This is my first post on the SRP. I have lurked for a long time and gained much knowledge. I practiced with a butter knife and learned to brush my teeth left handed (that was like recovering from a stroke) I order a starter set from vintage blades. I watched Lynn's DVD, I lost my courage. I found my courage and my desire to document my first shave. This is only my 3rd try at time lapse but it is not bad for using up only 3:22 minutes of your day vs 30 minutes it took in real time.

YouTube - Going Straight

This shave was good enough for the Corp, the shaves afterwards have not been has good.
Things I have learned.
More and better lather I used Grandpa's Pine Tar Soap. It worked ok but a true passion requires STUFF
Stropping the razor is difficult to get the feel has to whether I have over stropped or under stropped. The razor no longer passes the hair cut test. I can sharpen wood chisels to shave hair so the razor should be easy.
So how do I decide if the razor is over stropped or under stropped?
The straight is now my tool of choice for shaving. I look forward to the next shave and more shaving gear.
Thanks all

I don't think it's possible to over strop a razor. It is possible to over hone. Honing a razor is totally different than a chisel. Make sure to read up on it before you attempt it. Don't worry about the shave quality. It'll get better. It all comes with time. Also, congratulations on "going straight."

David

Benton432, welcome to the play ground. You are right, it takes a lot of courage to show a video of yourself shaving with a str8, especially so early on. I really enjoyed the facial expressions and contortions. I had a hard time however appreciating the actual shave ie stroke technique etc due to the stop motion. Seems really jerky to me, but what do I know of film making? Nothing. Hope you have continued success in your shaving.

Mark

Good stuff, keep us posted on your progress!

That took some years off you along with the whiskers!
Interesting grip. It looks like a grip used with the one handed technique when doing the off side, only you can use it two handed!
Great start

this video was awesome. I really liked the way you did it and welcome aboard!
One thing you mentioned is you feel that the stropping may have effected the edge on the razor.
If you feel something, it's usually true.


Stropping improperly (not over or under by numbers, but by the way you DRAW the razor on the strop and the flatness of the razor on the strop), can pretty much erase a sharp edge in one-three days. This happened to me when I started, I got really nice shaves when the razors came in the mail shave ready,but then after they got worse and worse.
It took me a while to understand why.

I wasn't drawing the razor completely flat on the strop.
I wasn't doing enough passes on the strop.
I Didn't have linen or cotton on my strop, now I do, then I go to the leather side.
I did know the high pitch sound the razor made on the strop was WRONG and should've been a duller more of a fiction sound (draw).

See if that's the same issue you're having!

Once again, welcome, and I loved the video!

Thanks
I reviewed some stropping videos. I was not stropping correctly, to few strokes. Todays shave was better. New skills always take a while to learn.
The video was a time lapse and only the third time lapse that I had complete. I have improve that skill also. I needed more frames in the video to get rid of the blips. There should have been 10 time the photos in that time frame of the video.
I am already look forward to my next razor. I will post more has I learn more
Thanks again