Ghetto Straight Setup

OK, let's be honest - the classic straight razor is the manliest. "Gillette Fatboys" take note - you are in no way there. Like all of this "wet shaving" business, you can spend an absolute ton of money on NOS gold-washed Solingen seven day sets, combo coticule hones, Eschers, or a Shapton 50k. The fact of the matter is, you can indeed get a nice, smooth shave from a cheap Chicom razor, with hones and strops that are anything but fancy.

The idea I had was to see how cheap I could go on a setup that would actually work well.

THE RAZOR

I had read that of the currently manufactured cheapo straights, the Chicom ones were the best quality steel, and with a 'bit' of work could hold an excellent edge. In fact, certain straightrazor geek personalities fround themselves BANNED from straightrazorplace.com for daring to assert that one can get an excellent shave from these razors! The Solingen/Sheffield snobs just could not handle it! I bought the cheapest, most bare-bones Chicom razor available, the Double Arrow #66. The front 90% of the blade or so was actually very nice right out of the box, but the heel was a complete joke that required several sheets of 400-grit wet/dry to whittle down to where the blade would lie flat on a hone.

THE HONES

The first hone I got was a 1000 grit Naniwa Lobster waterstone, purchased from Great Sun in Seattle for $7. I have never seen a 1k Naniwa this cheap anyhwhere. An excellent "bevel setter" in addition to being a stone I can use on all of my kitchen knives.

Next I watched a number of barber hones on Ebay. The forums all sang the praises of the Swaty, so I was excited to win a Swaty-esque Austro-Hungarian hone in superb condition for only $6! This hone is pretty versatile but small even by barber hone standards.

My original plan was to have the barber hone be my finisher. I therefore required a midrange stone to use after the 1k. The straight razor establishment suggests the Norton 4k/8k combo, but that's $75! The barber hone being around 8k, I just needed a 4k to bridge the gap. I went with the Ice Bear 4k from my local woodcraft store - this has turned out to be a really nice stone to use.

THE STROPS

A straight user typically has both a linen or canvas strop for 'refreshing' and a leather strop for 'maintaining' an edge. This is 30-100 bucks I didn't feel like spending, so I improvised. I had a glass push plate from a swinging door left over from a remodel, but I could just as easily have used a board. For a "felt" strop I use a Trader Joe's made in Germany shamwow style kitchen towel. On one side I applied some classic Tom's toothpaste. This 'strop' polished the hell out the edge, but I still needed something to replace leather stropping. Sources for the last century talk about how great newspaper works as a finisher. The more black on the pages the better the action. So my strops were basically free. Do they work? Yes they do, and they cost nothing! Don't take my word for it, here's Popular Science magazine from August 1921:

Popular Science Newspaper Strop