Here are a couple of pictures my new purchases. As you can see, two are ball end tech's and the other is a superspeed. I have only used the gold tech so far. It has been easy to use and has a nice weight. I am learning how to shave....again!! But, so far, my shaves are closer, with less irritation. To top it off, it feels really cool shaving with a razor from the 40s. I am starting with the ball end techs and once I get comfortable I will try the superspeed. I believe I need to buy some better soap or shaving cream. My shaving soap and hungry man jack shaving cream don’t foam very well and has been a little frustrating. I am thinking about buying some of the TSD limited run shaving soap because there don’t seem to be many good options in the local stores.
Those are some nice looking razors you have there. Nice begining to your future collection. The techs are nice shavers, when you get a chance you should try and get a "Fat Handled Tech", same head but the handle is nicer IMO. Van Der Hagan is ok soap, it's cheap and usually you can find it locally at CVS,Walmart and Grocery stores. Again welcome to the addiction.....
The fat handled techs look nice, but the ones I have seen for sale have been pretty expensive. The soap I have is Van Der Hagan. It came with a brush/bowl set that i bought. I will keep working on it, maybe it will just take some practice.
Well the brush is not the best, the bestshave #6 is a good cheap horse hair brush, thats the brush I use and yes I think if you keep trying you will begin to get a good lather. Are you using alot or a little water. The water amount used does make a difference in lather production. Other cheaper soaps that work HoneyBee,RazoRoc and Rays of Colorado goat milk soap.
I have about 10 pucks of Van Der Hagen soap. Their brushes don't tend to last as long as others, but once you learn to lather with them, they do the job well. I still have and use my VDH brush and bowl from the shave kit I bought at Wal Mart. Learning to lather takes practice. Remember, you want it creamy, not foamy. Creamy lubes better than foamy. You'll get it. Just be patient. Before you know it, you'll be a couple of years into this sickness and lathering will be second nature. I haven't been able to get Williams shave soap to lather worth a darn for shaving. It dries out too quickly. However, it works great as a hand/body soap. Welcome to the fold. My first two DE razors were a fat handled Tech and a Gillette Super Adjustable. Before long, you'll wonder why you ever scraped your face with a cartridge razor.
As an alternative to Scrubbing Bubbles (or CIF foaming bathroom cleaner as a UK equivalent), I cleaned my Valet Autostrop with WD40 and then polished with an electic toothbrush (an old head not the one in use!) and a whitening toothpaste. Worked well.
I stumbled across this thread today and wanted to say welcome to TSD. I hope you are doing well in your new experiment in manly shaving. There is another branch of wetshaving you will need to explore. Single edge safety razors. Particularly Schick and Gem. It will add to the fun.
Thanks, everything is going good with my shaving. The best thing that has helped is I wore a beard for a few months. I was just shaving my neck every other day. This gave me time to learn better technique. Now I am shaving my whole face again and it has been good, with no nicks, cuts, or irritation. I just can't envision going back to the old way......since I found the real old way of shaving. I have even turned a buddy of mine to safety razor shaving. As for a single edge, maybe one day.
