So you’ve arrived here. DE razor shaves have become too easy, and you’ve decided it’s time to grow up and master the ultimate expression of shaving. The learning curve is an order of magnitude greater than for the DE razor, and I guarantee you’ll cut yourself while learning.
As I said earlier, I think every man should take a month or two with a straight razor at least once in his life. A man should know how to wield a blade against his face. It’s only my opinion. But it’s a good one.
Straight Razor Anatomy
Holding the razor
Open the razor 270 degrees, so the blade points down. Place your thumb under the tang next to the heel, your index and middle fingers on top of the tang, and your ring finger on top of the tail. Pinky floats. Like so:
Alternatively, your ring finger can go on top of the tang as well, your pinky on top of the tail.
Your grip should be firm enough to hold the razor more or less in place, but not be inflexible. Your fingers form a kind of safety shock absorber or ‘spring’ that has some give. This takes up minor stresses on the blade as it moves across your skin, to avoid the blade taking out these stresses on you flesh. My father once taught me how to hold a golf club, and I think the same concept would apply here: “Imagine you’re holding a bird in your hands -- you want to make sure it can’t fly away, but you also don’t want to hurt it.”
Straight razor techniques
Straight razors offer the ultimate flexibility in a razor. But with this flexibility comes a healthy dose of responsibility. There are skills to master and failure is punished.
The same general concepts as with a DE razor still apply, but you have even more control.
Blade angle: To find the proper basic blade angle, carefully place the razor flat of the razor flat against your cheek, cutting edge pointed down. Gently rotate the spine away from your face until the edge is at about a thirty degree angle to your skin:
If the hair feels like it’s being wiped off your face instead of cut off, you have found the perfect angle for that part of your face.
Pressure: As before, gentle, gentle, gentle. Just firm enough to hold the razor in position, but not so firm your fingers can’t take up any minor adjustments the blade makes as it runs across uneven skin.
Skin stretching: More important than with a DE razor -- place fingers against face above the razor's spine and gently pull skin taut. As before, I usually use the muscles in my face or head angles, but whatever.
Matîre de coup! This is the French name for a specialized razor stroke for shaving WTG under the nose, and translate as “stroke of the master.” Since the blade will obviously not fit between your nose and mustache at the proper angle, one must begin in a terrifying, near-90 degree cutting angle then rotate the blade during the stroke.
Specifically, one places the razor flat under the nose so that the cutting edge touches the top of your mustache area as in the ‘cattle butchering’ position in the graphic above. Now, you simultaneously rotate the blade down towards your top lip while sliding the whole razor down. If done carefully and properly, the moustache area will be cleanly shaved without irritation or injury.
Stropping: The cutting edge of the straight razor derives a great deal of its sharpness from being ludicrously thin, and therefore quite fragile. By the end of a shave, it’s been pushed out of position every which way at a microscopic level. Some of it will spring back by the time you need to shave again (in fact, rich folks used to own a razor for every day of the week for this very purpose), but you must also finish the job before shaving again.
To accomplish this, you’ll need a strop, which at its simplest, is a strip of smooth leather. I got mine from ruprazor.com, a very attractively-priced strop, his $23 Filly. Great price, great piece of equipment. Sometimes you can find stuff in antique stores worth restoring, or you can go hog wild and spend obscene amounts of money on really fancy strops. Hell, if you want to go real cheap, you can use a genuine leather belt that is flat and in good shape.
General stropping rule: NEVER DRAW THE CUTTING EDGE INTO THE STROP, ALWAYS LEAD WITH THE SPINE.
To strop your razor:
I know, I know. 1984-vintage Sierra On-Line (and their abso-fucking fabulous computer games) called and wants their graphics back. Shut the hell up.
Attach the end with rope or hook to something solid, a door handle or towel rack.
With your non-dominant hand, gently stretch it taut (no more pressure than necessary) and horizontal, more or less.
With your dominant hand, open the razor and VERY GENTLY place the blade flat (first angle in the ‘blade angle’ diagram above) on the strop.
“The Stroke” from the above graphic. Leading with the spine and with the cutting edge trailing, move the razor (diagonally, if the razor is longer than the strop is wide, to strop the entire blade edge) in the direction of the spine, one long stroke. Do not rotate the razor during this stroke, keep it as flat as you can with as little rotational pressure as possible. It is fine for the strop to angle slightly up in front of the spine as you do this. But the SPINE should be the point of inflection. If it’s the edge, you’re spinning your wheels. The strop, from the edge of the spine through the cutting edge all the way to your hand, should be as perfectly straight as possible. Any pressure on the edge itself needs to be virtually non-existent, with the force applied to it being almost entirely parallel to the razor.
“The Turn” At the end of the stroke, bring the razor to a complete stop. Rotate the cutting edge about the spine so it ends up facing the opposite direction, flat on the strop. The edge should only ever touch at the first and last instant of this turn.
Perform a second stroke, pulling the razor back your initial stropping location, spine-first with the cutting edge trailing. Rotate the razor again. You have completed one pass.
Perform a minimum of twenty-five passes with the razor. It is now stropped.
Sharpening your razor
Your razors need to be kept as sharp as is humanly possible, and probably will need touch ups or sharpening anywhere from one to a few times a year. As I said earlier, the edge is incredibly fragile. Do not touch it, keep it dry whenever NOT shaving, and definitely don't ding the edge against the faucet (very damaging to the edge). Fail to observe these rules, and you'll be shelling out cash for premature sharpening services whilst simultaneously retreating to the room in your basement your wife has designated as a space for you to cry. Voice of experience...
Why is sharpness important? Paradoxically to the lay person, a sharp blade is infinitely safer than a dull one, at least when handled by someone who’s careful, respectful, and knows what they’re doing. It cuts easily and cleanly, and does so exactly where it’s told.
A dull blade, by contrast, requires extra force to get it to cut. This extra pressure is dangerous, as the superfluous force applied leads to injuries. A dull blade slips unpredictably across surfaces and applies its force where you do not intend it, with painful consequences.
Now, I can sharpen a knife. My reed knives (for making reeds for my bassoon), pocket knives, and kitchen knives are all sharp as lightning. But my attempts to sharpen my straight razor were a complete disaster. Highly specific techniques and equipment are required, and razor edges ended up being beyond me.
My advice? At least in the beginning, leave razor sharpening to the professionals, and content yourself with daily stropping. By all means, sharpen your own blades if you can. But if you’ve never done it, farm this work out to at least get an idea of the desired end result. If you’re lucky there’s a sharpening service or traditional barber in your town who can help you out. But probably, you’ll have to send your razor out. I’ve used Ruprazor.com and found their services good, and badgerandblade.com and straightrazorplace.com will almost certainly offer options. Learning to sharpen straight razors is fun, but I never got the knack of it, and it's expensive to get the proper equipment.
The Shave
As before, start learning the straight with a few shaves consisting of a single WTG pass only. Work your way up. I have abbreviated steps here, assuming you have read the DE razor three-pass shave from the last post and are quite familiar with it. If not, bone up now.
Strop razor first. Prevents your beard drying out during the stropping process. Close razor and set in a safe place.
Fully hydrate your facial hair by hot shower, towel, or splashes. Soak brush (if you made it this far, face it, you’re using one).
Heat the blade under warm water, then begin. Taking care to stretch the skin, make the requisite WTG, XTG, and ATG passes as desired, detailed in part 6a covering the basic DE razor shave. Rinse thoroughly with warm water and reapply lather between passes.
Apply aftershave(s) as desired. Deal with any nicks, cuts, or irritation.
Dry the razor. Best way in my experience is to hold a dry washcloth between your thumb and forefinger. Place the razor, SPINE FIRST, between your fingers so that most of the razor is covered by the washcloth, but not the cutting edge itself. Pull the razor along its long axis through the washcloth, taking care to make sure you stay away from the edge.
To dry the cutting edge, very gently strop a few strokes on the washcloth. Remember, never, EVER lead with the edge on these strokes.
Set razor someplace dry and safe, open, to finish drying any areas you might have missed. Some folks lightly oil the blade with mineral oil at this point to get any lingering moisture and stave off minor atmosphere-induced corrosion between uses, a real thing for carbon steel. Return razor to safekeeping.
And... that’s it. So long as you treat your straight razors with the appropriate respect and care, they’ll last decades and hardly ever bite you. But any shave with a straight requires utmost concentration, care, and attention to detail. It’s a great way to start the day, and is a favorite of mine--but lapses in concentration, extra pressure, bad blade angles, and above all, haste of any sort are punished. Usually by little nicks and minor irritation, but a straight razor is capable of inflicting serious injury if manhandled poorly enough. Currently, I use the Dovo shavette, mentioned earlier, because straights are pretty care-intensive and my time is limited. Also, I have little kids, one of which has proved his willingness to build a man-sized, rickety platform to unlatch my bedroom door where my razors were kept, scale a six-foot bookcase, and break into the locked box with said razors.
Yeah. It happened. And I thought I had taken precautions... Anyway, with the Dovo, I can hide the blade a little more safely. Procedures are the same.
One way to know if you’ve found a REAL barber shop is to ask for a shave. If they say yes, you have found a real barber. A professional who possesses skills far, FAR in excess of anything you’ll find at Great Clips. He may have to use a replaceable-blade shavette due to local health laws but it’ll be fine.
Sadly, this age is passing into memory, most real genuine barbershops going the way of traditional butchers. Skilled professionals are being replaced by changing public tastes for (I think) the worse, and the rise of industrialized mass production. While I’ve never been lucky enough to experience the pleasure of a finely-hand-honed straight with all the service of a traditional barber shop. I’m told a barber’s straight shave may not quite compare to the shaves you give yourself, just because with enough experience and skill you’ll know your face and product preferences better than any barber no matter how good he may be. But the overall experience, I hope, will make up for the difference.
Before I die, I’d like a shave like this. Maybe one day.
Source: CBS Los Ang