Plain Stropping - Looking for Advice

[Shaun Mahood]

To open up a potentially dangerous can of worms for my budget, what would be a reasonable expected cost to get started with straight razor shaving and actually be able to enjoy it?

[David Barnett]

To open up a potentially dangerous can of worms for my budget, what would be a reasonable expected cost to get started with straight razor shaving and actually be able to enjoy it?

Weaver's the one who can answer that. I'm a vintage double-edge wuss all the way.

[Chris Griggs]

To open up a potentially dangerous can of worms for my budget, what would be a reasonable expected cost to get started with straight razor shaving and actually be able to enjoy it?

$20-$60 for a rehabbed vintage razor
$15-$80 for a shave brush
$5 to I don't know for a good lathering soap or cream
About $20 for some compounds and some balsa for razor maintenance
I don't how little you can get away with spending on a leather strop. I shave right off of .1 micron iron oxide on Balsa.

Ideally you'd have some type of very fine stone (my favorite for razors is a 2x8 surgical black;but fine waterstones work too). But if you do a good job keeping your razor in shape with compounds and strops you pretty much never need to take it back to the stone.

Dave's been shaving with a straight a lot longer than me. He can give you better numbers, but really you can spend under $75 total and have a perfectly pleasurable straight razor shaving experience...(if you get a decent razor from someone like Dave, who may or may not have a few extras, knows how to prepare them and isn't trying to make a living off of selling/rehabbing vintage razors) and once you've got the basic stuff its FAR cheaper than always having to buy new heads for a Schick Quatro or similar.

[David Weaver]

$30 for a good badger brush (shipped - good cheap badger brushes are made in china, it's where the badger hair is coming from, anyway. Excellent badger brushes are made in england and elsewhere at a much higher cost)
$30 shipped for a basic sharp razor (maybe a little more to canada. There are actually people who do that for a living, they are probably not going to be the best deal, and they're probably going to be the first listings you find. They will want $60 for what I'd pay $25 for)
$40 for a passable strop, one that would improve with use
$10 for chromium oxide and/or iron oxide compound or powder to move your razor from woodworking sharp to shaving sharp
$5 for real shave co cream, or slightly more for some other brand or $10 for a "razorock" brand soap, which is just scented cella (cella is a top of the line old school animal fat based shaving soap with very few ingredients in it)

Another $5 or $7 for a bar of barber's alum isn't a bad idea.

Once you shave with one for a month, you'll never do anything else, with the exception of use a safety or disposable razor maybe on trips away from home. A single properly cared-for razor will probably be good for 50 years of shaving if you never drop it or clang it against a sink.

Not exactly bargain basement to do it, but that will get you a razor as sharp as can get one basically, and get a comfortable shave. You *can* do it cheaper. You can make your own strop, you can use a $10 brush, etc. The strop can be something as simple as clean smooth leather glued to a flat board 2 or 3 inches wide. That may only cost $5.

One other side comment about it, the other benefit is there is never a "is it dull, should I shave with it one more time, i'm not sure" thought with a straight razor. You control the sharpness. If you don't like something about the way the edge feels, you do it differently, but then once you find what you like, the razor is like that every single day every single time and you find your routine and all of those nasty things that occur with dummy razors (razorburn, ingrown hairs, etc,..) never again.

I do have a gilette fatboy and a gilette super speed (those are double edge razors) and that's a perfectly fine way to go if you decide you don't like straight razors or you nick yourself and get spooked (i have not nicked myself for months and months, and never had a serious cut from SR shaving). Good quality stainless steel DE blades (astra would be my choice for inexpensive but still relatively keen and smooth) are available for about 12 cents each, and that's probably good for an average of a week's worth of shaves.

[David Barnett]

The only thing I've really been disappointed with have been art of shaving sandalwood (a fabulous scent but associated with a cream that stuck to a razor like crisco) and the sandalwood cream by proraso, which does not smell like sandalwood should smell, and under it has the hint of the menthol from the regular cream (it's like they made it the same way places make chocolate shakes by adding chocolate to the vanilla shake instead of making a chocolate shake from scratch). Not good!

It's really hard to find a decent sandalwood anything anymore. I have several different essential oils, including some old ones, and today's sandalwood rarely cuts it. I'm not a big fan of AoS but I don't mind Proraso, although it's weak and somewhat thin for my taste.

So glad you expanded on these, though. Need something to look forward to. I'm on a roll. High time I ordered a few things and I simply have to try Martin De Candre.

I would've expected something less masculine from the french, but the makers know just what they're doing.

Imagine roughly slinging one's cherie in a harshly indifferent musette danse apache and say that.

[David Barnett]

I still like the little Edwin Jagger Crabtree-Evelyn Best Badger Ivory, but it's gone up to $65 while the pure badger has filled the lower price point. Still, I use it more often than I'd have imagined and it's pretty much my everyday brush.

Just ordered a hundred Astra from West Coast Shaving, thanks again. Still have Merkurs and a few others I've been working on but the Feathers will sit in that drawer a long time—as a friend says, "too damned sharp!"

I like my FatBoy, too.

[Shaun Mahood]

Wait, are you telling me that I can dispense with ingrown hairs AND razor burn? Sounds tempting.
Maybe I should look into a good double edge razor to start. How big of an improvement would that be over a normal electric or multi-blade razor?

You know, I was also researching scythes the other day even though I've got a perfectly good gas mower. I think this forum is way too contagious.

[David Weaver]

Good luck with the MDC site. Sometimes it responds, sometimes it doesn't. In reality, their soap is a $35 soap with $25 of express shipping. That's just how they do it there. It's packed as if they actually care about what they are doing.

When you use it, you think "did I just pay $60 for what I think is a hard cream", and you go back and forth between "i think that's a lot" , and "ghee...there's just nothing I can find wrong with it, though, I think as a cynic, that means it's very good, or I would find something to be disappointed about".

They also have hard bath soaps that really do have masculine stinging scents that are at the same time not unpleasant, they are like the filterless cigarettes of soaps....no BS. The scents are real things that grow on the earth that you can identify and not something contrived by some guy wearing vinyl shoes who dreams of getting off of work to watch reality TV and eat "real italian" at the Olive Garden on his birthday. They are also expensive at about $12 per large bar, but a treat made by people who practice what they do as if they intend to do it exactly right every time.

Be sure to order in english to avoid the VAT, whatever you do.

And, agreed on proraso. It is sort of the walmart of shaving soaps. You can survive on it. You can often find it cheaply, but there is nothing particularly good about it even though it's passable. It has a little bit of that greasy feeling that AOS has a lot of, and RSC has none of that (the version with a brown band on the tube that just says "moisturizing"). MDC, RSC, Cella and Tabac all have that quality where they go on, provide a completely cushioned but close shave, but rinse right off. Tabacs downfall is that it lathers much less well than the first three if you face lather (consequently, if you lather in a mug it takes longer in a mug though it can be worked up in a mug to a level that it will not go to on the face).

[David Weaver]

Wait, are you telling me that I can dispense with ingrown hairs AND razor burn? Sounds tempting.
Maybe I should look into a good double edge razor to start. How big of an improvement would that be over a normal electric or multi-blade razor?

You know, I was also researching scythes the other day even though I've got a perfectly good gas mower. I think this forum is way too contagious.

I have skin more sensitive than anyone I know who doesn't have an outright dermatological problem. If I shave it wrong, it burns, and it actually gets worse two days after the shave.

That said, I have never had an ingrown hair, not a single one, when shaving with a straight razor. When I shave with a DE razor for a period of time (like several days at the inlaws), I will get some ingrown hairs. I get a closer shave with a straight, but not the three-layers-lower-than-the-skin type against-the-grain shave or I'm right back dealing with razor burn. I can't get that with any razor of any type.

Straight razor shaving is the way to get the exactly the same every day kind of shave where you get the same superb shave without having to go against the grain or do things that will light you up like a christmas tree if you have sensitive skin.

[Chris Griggs]

This stuff makes an awesome inexpensive lathering shave cream. Works wonderfully even with my crappy cheap $10 synthetic brush.

http://www.kissmyface.com/body/grid/...oisture-shaves

Yes its marketed towards ladies. My wife introduced me too it. It blows the pants off any canned cream I ever used. Works pretty well just as a cream, works something special as a lathering cream.

[Steve Bates]

I've been using a straight razor for a couple of years. I only shave once a week because I've a full beard. I don't like the whiskers on my neck or just under my lower lip. Because of this thread this week, my stropping skills have vastly improved. I've shaved twice this week and I expect to again. Just for fun!

My costs have been so far, three vintage razors, free. Ask around, folks have them collecting dust in drawers. Shaving mug, cheap coffee cup, free.
Brush, Walmart, $5; soap, Williams, $1; Steptic pencils, 2 for $1. Used these a lot at first because I had to learn how to hold the razor and it wasn't very sharp and not smooth.

It's been educational so far. Mr. Griggs turned me onto graded rust a couple of weeks back. That's been a major smoothing improvement. When I ordered that I also added a couple of trial soaps. Maggardrazors.com also sent a sample soap with after shave lotion and a sample preshave oil. Including shipping, that was $12.

Just ordered a strop from Tools for Working Wood. Don't know if it'll do for a razor, but I can abrade (sand) or scrape it. Thanks, Mr. Barnett.

As you can tell, I'm really cheap! Reading Misters Griggs, Barnett and Weaver is wonderful! But I fear it could be expensive as well.

My two pennies

[David Weaver]

I asked two years ago when I went to shaving only with a straight razor, if anyone on wood central used a straight razor, and sure enough, warren mickley does, and has for forty years (hopefully I'm recalling that correctly). Anyway, warren said he's been stropping with one of those TFWW strops. If you get it and find it's a bit abrasive, just keep working with it. Leave it loose for now, because once it's glued to something it's practically like wood and that's not quite how you'll want a razor strop to be.

I've gotten my wife to use cella soap (because she wanted something that wasn't chemically enhanced), and she's using a best badger brush from china. It's a very nice brush with a big knot and soft hair, about $25. I've got a fine badger and a a silvertip knot that I put in a cocobolo handle. They do lather soap better than an inexpensive brush, and hold moisture better. Compared to the fine western world brushes, both were inexpensive, though,the former about $20, and I think the big silvertip knot was about $27 on ebay (directly from china).

Of all of the things I mentioned, I could get away with one razor, one vintage linen, one brush, $10 worth of horse butt strip (which is what my strop is, just self cut horse butt strip) and any one of the soaps. I have williams, too, it's just hard to get a good quick cushy face lather with whatever the new williams is (apparently, the old williams was a lot like the new premium tallow soaps, but williams lost focus).

All of the other soaps are complete extravagance, just things you'd buy with money you can blow. I have seen soaps for as much as $160 and never had the slightest desire to buy those, and even MDC is really a $35 soap, we just can't get it here for that because they send it express postage.

[Russell Cook]

Hi all,

The other day I spent the best part of 3 hours regrinding a 3/4 inch chisel from about 30 degrees to around 15 degrees.

Today I honed it up to my Sigma 6000, then did about 50 strips on my palm, alternating sides.

It was my first time to use a blade at such an acute angle, so it's hard to say how much influence the stropping had, but the edge felt smoother to the touch afterwards and was able to cut end-grain pine rather than crush it.

Cheers for all the help, I'm definitely gonna add palm stropping to my sharpening routine

[Chris Griggs]

Glad it worked for you Russel. Just an FYI...you probably don't need to it 50 times. 10 or so should be sufficient...maybe less. I usually do a few on the bevel, than a few on the back, and than just flip it back and forth for a couple swipes. Of course, as you continue to do it you will find what is optimal for you.

[Chris Griggs]

It's been educational so far. Mr. Griggs turned me onto graded rust a couple of weeks back. That's been a major smoothing improvement.

I couldn't remember who I made that recommendation too and was wondering how that ended up. Glad it worked out for you as well as it has for me!