The cool thing about aggressive razors is that you can tune your shave by playing with the shaving angle (not with pressure, IMO). For a starter, riding the cap is excellent advice.

Been "riding the cap" since the second week I was here at TSD.
Best piece of advice ever

I ride the cap on every new razor until I'm familiar with it and then experiment with the angle a bit. This is the best advise for a novice DE, SE, shaver. The next best tip came from Mantic59. Beard reduction passes, not elimination.

Oh yeah, I've been riding the cap since I started on TSD!!!

Oh wait, that is only 3 weeks ago
I did not know about Riding the Cap before then. Only started DE shaving Feb 1!!! LOL

2 weeks ago, I read Bama's 'ride the cap' technique, and I've been learning how to do it. I need more practice, it's not easy for me to unlearn the scraping technique, my face is like hills and valleys, always a change of attack. You might think its easy to get the 15-25 degree blade angle, you might think that all you have to do is set the handle 15-25 degrees off vertical to your face, but it's subtly not just that, because the blade is bent slightly downward toward the comb or bar, so you have to modify slightly and you have to follow all of the hills and valleys. When your face is smooth and very little sting from after shave balm, you are on the right track. Thanks Bama Samurai.

Great post.

You're most welcome and thank you for your good words. So glad to see you were able to use the technique to maximize your experience!

Using a shallow angle is what works best for me. No matter what razor I'm using as long as I use a shallow angle I'll have an effortless and irritation free shave. Good post. For newbies and veterans alike.

So this works for every de razor?

I use it on every DE. It's a method to force the user into the minimum effective cutting angle, reducing the chance of scraping the skin. High angle blade scraping is far and away the leading cause of newbie irritation issues.

Post a picture of the proper angle?

By riding the cap, angle stays low like 24 degrees. 20-25 degrees, blade to skin, is ideal for most people.

It's lopsided lol and those 2 angles is sort of confusing. Maybe a different picture?

I have always done this also. Did not have a name for it though. Great job here pointed the folks along the path oh great mostly bald headed butter knife on side in bath robe one.

Not gonna get better then that. Its more a by feel thing.

Just give the technique a try. ;-)

Thanks. I had stand still forever for that daguerrotype photo, and then wait for the photographer to hand color the powder blue. There was a Nuggets home game that night.

So for a steeper angle i need to raise the handle higher and shallow means lower the handle? And 25 degrees would be lifting the handle of the razor higher?

Relative to the picture, raising the handle (increasing the red angle) would lower the blade angle (in blue).

He did a good job.