- Messages
- 13
Thought I'd say hello. I've been dabbling in open/straight razor shaving off and on for 9 years. My shaving career began, I think, in either 1982 or 1983, with the purchase in Boots in Union Street in Aberdeen (where I was on holiday at the time - much less embarrassing for a shy pubescent boy than in my home town) of a Wilkinson Sword Profile razor, a shaving brush and a bowl of Boots own brand shaving soap. This was my shaving regime for almost 30 years, apart from soon moving from the shaving soap bowl to a shaving stick, either Boots, Erasmic or Palmolive, depending on what was available. Yes, I was an old-fashioned teenager and had seen adverts for Erasmic and Palmolive in a collection of 1924 Punch magazines I had bought. There were also adverts for the Valet Auto-strop and Rolls Razors, and I actually bought a new old stock Valet at an antiques fair when I was a student, but I never used it. In 2011 however I bought a n.o.s. Rolls on eBay and did use it. Wow! That was an eye-opener into the real shaving world. I also, at the same time, bought one of the n.o.s. Ford & Medley Sheffield straight razors that the Invisible Edge had for sale at the time. I soon ruined the edge through my own ineptitude, but acquired a few other vintage Sheffields, had them honed, and slowly and sporadically began to learn how to shave with them and maintain the edge. I tended to use the Rolls or a straight at the weekend and the Wilkinson through the week. Then, in 2016, frustrated at how difficult it was to get blades for the Wilkinson, I suddenly thought "Why on earth are you still bothering with this, when you could use something a little more traditional and just as convenient?" So I bought an Edwin Jagger DE, which I've been using with Feather Blades as my daily shaver ever since. I rather neglected the Rolls and the straights after that, but came back to them a few weeks ago (working from home means less rush in the morning). I even succeeeded in getting an edge on an eBay purchase with a newly-bought Japanese double-sided whetstone. So these last couple of weeks I have been shaving every day with one of my 7 vintage Sheffield straights. I am still making mistakes, still learning, but getting there, I hope. It's nice to be still learning a new skill at the age of 52!