Hello from a learner

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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!
 
Nice to have you in TSR...especially someone with such excellent taste and great intelligence...the EJDE razor is of course the razor used by those who know the real truth about wet shaving...that the EJDE89 is the finest razor ever created:cool:;) (I'll overlook all that other nonsense about straights:rolleyes:)
 
Thanks for your welcomes. I am now in my fourth week of daily straight-razor shaving and it is starting to come together and become more of a pleasure. It's having the time to do it every day, thanks to working from home, that is making the difference from my previous attempts. So I have one thing to be grateful to the pandemic for!
 
There is a learning curve but it's not that bad. After six weeks or so I feel quite comfortable shaving with a mild edge. Just as well because that's about the best I can do with my novice honing/stropping skills...
 
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