Greetings gents and ladies.
I have been wet shaving for some years now, but was only recently introduced to the concept of method shaving after I encountered Charles Roberts at his shop in my home town, Austin. I did not start this thread for a discussion of his products. Rather, I wanted to comment briefly on an element of his method shaving manifesto that has served me well.
Elsewhere on this forum I have seen mention of the learning curve many of us safety razor users follow. Several initial touch and go shaves with loss of a few red blood cells, followed by some fantastic shaves that get us hooked on wet shaving, followed by a decline in shave quality, before reaching a level of proficiency with more consistently excellent shaves.
I recently found myself doing as much damage as good with my morning shaves. I was obsessively scraping every last micron of hair off my face, in the process removing some important layers of epidermis. It would take several hours for the redness from the razor burn to calm down. My routine was a three pass shave followed by touch ups. The passes were WTG, XTG, and ATG. I'm certain now that it was the ATG pass on my neck that was doing the damage.
I went back and had a look at CAR's shaving forms - the diagrams dividing the face into quadrants, with arrows denoting the direction of shave. I noted that for the lower neck, only a north-south direction of shaving is prescribed on any of the three passes. Furthermore, you never truly shave against the grain with this "method."
Adhering to these diagrams has solved my problems and restored my thorough enjoyment of DE shaving. I've enjoyed BBS shaves without going ATG, and with whatever products I desire (i.e., non-Hydrolast). I realize YMMV, but my mileage has improved with this technique.
A few more comments (and with the length of this post, I'm sure some might think I'm CAR posting under a pseudonym). Perhaps the reason Charles can shave the way he does on his videos (lightning fast, with a million passes) is because he adheres to these shaving forms, rather than because of his product. Think about it - how many WTG passes could you make before experiencing razor burn? For me, I could shave all day WTG without getting the burn. As for the shaving forms, I'm not concerned with whether or not CAR actually invented them, as he claims. And beware - the neck beard often grows in swirls, rather than in one direction, so YMMV, especially in this case.
I have been wet shaving for some years now, but was only recently introduced to the concept of method shaving after I encountered Charles Roberts at his shop in my home town, Austin. I did not start this thread for a discussion of his products. Rather, I wanted to comment briefly on an element of his method shaving manifesto that has served me well.
Elsewhere on this forum I have seen mention of the learning curve many of us safety razor users follow. Several initial touch and go shaves with loss of a few red blood cells, followed by some fantastic shaves that get us hooked on wet shaving, followed by a decline in shave quality, before reaching a level of proficiency with more consistently excellent shaves.
I recently found myself doing as much damage as good with my morning shaves. I was obsessively scraping every last micron of hair off my face, in the process removing some important layers of epidermis. It would take several hours for the redness from the razor burn to calm down. My routine was a three pass shave followed by touch ups. The passes were WTG, XTG, and ATG. I'm certain now that it was the ATG pass on my neck that was doing the damage.
I went back and had a look at CAR's shaving forms - the diagrams dividing the face into quadrants, with arrows denoting the direction of shave. I noted that for the lower neck, only a north-south direction of shaving is prescribed on any of the three passes. Furthermore, you never truly shave against the grain with this "method."
Adhering to these diagrams has solved my problems and restored my thorough enjoyment of DE shaving. I've enjoyed BBS shaves without going ATG, and with whatever products I desire (i.e., non-Hydrolast). I realize YMMV, but my mileage has improved with this technique.
A few more comments (and with the length of this post, I'm sure some might think I'm CAR posting under a pseudonym). Perhaps the reason Charles can shave the way he does on his videos (lightning fast, with a million passes) is because he adheres to these shaving forms, rather than because of his product. Think about it - how many WTG passes could you make before experiencing razor burn? For me, I could shave all day WTG without getting the burn. As for the shaving forms, I'm not concerned with whether or not CAR actually invented them, as he claims. And beware - the neck beard often grows in swirls, rather than in one direction, so YMMV, especially in this case.
