Hello there! New wet shaver here!
For starters I'm a 21 year old engineering student and obvious firefly fan with pretty sensitive skin and what seems to me like pretty tough facial hair that's also a bit curly. I've been shaving regularly (every day or every other day) with a Gillette Fusion and whatever canned stuff I had on hand for about 4 years and it's never really given me good shaves. Tons of irritation, ingrown hairs, and pain pretty much every day but until recently I didn't know there was any alternative and figured that my skin would "toughen up" as my father always told me.
I recently changed up my routine a bit after discovering this site and lurking for a while by making an attempt at multiple passes with the Fusion (very light and usually doing 2 WTG, 1 XTG, and 1 ATG if I felt brave and had a middle-of-its-life cartridge) and being much more careful about my pre and post shave routine which got me good, but not amazing, results and still left my skin too irritated and unsightly for comfort. Even still it wasn't nearly as miserable as before, at times my shaves even bordered on relaxing!
Now that summer is here and I'm out of school with little besides a part-time job to worry about (and fusion cartridges are up to a whopping 15 bucks!) I decided to finally give the full wet shaving kit a proper go so that I might actually enjoy shaving in the morning. I didn't want to sink too much into the whole enterprise just yet (I'm prone to ADs in whatever hobby I attempt, being a poor college student is not conducive to this) so I think the brush might have suffered a bit but overall I think it seems decent enough to start. So after a few weeks of research and video watching (thanks mantic59 wherever on the internets you may be!)
I've decided to finally stop lurking and try to get the advice of people more experienced than I. Im also going to try to make my own contribution to what has so far been an extremely helpful community (even for a lurker) by starting a shave journal detailing my own successes and failures, hopefully day by day, and hopefully for at least a month until I get the hang of DE shaving. Hopefully itll be something helpful to newbies like myself and entertaining to veterans like well everyone else!
To kick it off here's a list of my equipment:
For starters I'm a 21 year old engineering student and obvious firefly fan with pretty sensitive skin and what seems to me like pretty tough facial hair that's also a bit curly. I've been shaving regularly (every day or every other day) with a Gillette Fusion and whatever canned stuff I had on hand for about 4 years and it's never really given me good shaves. Tons of irritation, ingrown hairs, and pain pretty much every day but until recently I didn't know there was any alternative and figured that my skin would "toughen up" as my father always told me.
I recently changed up my routine a bit after discovering this site and lurking for a while by making an attempt at multiple passes with the Fusion (very light and usually doing 2 WTG, 1 XTG, and 1 ATG if I felt brave and had a middle-of-its-life cartridge) and being much more careful about my pre and post shave routine which got me good, but not amazing, results and still left my skin too irritated and unsightly for comfort. Even still it wasn't nearly as miserable as before, at times my shaves even bordered on relaxing!
Now that summer is here and I'm out of school with little besides a part-time job to worry about (and fusion cartridges are up to a whopping 15 bucks!) I decided to finally give the full wet shaving kit a proper go so that I might actually enjoy shaving in the morning. I didn't want to sink too much into the whole enterprise just yet (I'm prone to ADs in whatever hobby I attempt, being a poor college student is not conducive to this) so I think the brush might have suffered a bit but overall I think it seems decent enough to start. So after a few weeks of research and video watching (thanks mantic59 wherever on the internets you may be!)
I've decided to finally stop lurking and try to get the advice of people more experienced than I. Im also going to try to make my own contribution to what has so far been an extremely helpful community (even for a lurker) by starting a shave journal detailing my own successes and failures, hopefully day by day, and hopefully for at least a month until I get the hang of DE shaving. Hopefully itll be something helpful to newbies like myself and entertaining to veterans like well everyone else!
To kick it off here's a list of my equipment:
- Merkur HD
- Derby Extra Blade (out of a West Coast Shaving sampler pack of Feather, Merkur, Astra, Derby, and Israeli)
- Tweezerman Brush
- Random ceramic bowl (deep and fairly wide. Pretty much hemispherical because i'm not sure what shape is best yet)
- Tabac Soap (in the nifty ceramic bowl)
- Thayers Witch Hazel with aloe
- Col. Conk Styptic Pencil
- Nivea for Men Post-Shave Balm
- Neutrogena for Men Face Lotion (spf 20)
- Derby Extra Blade (out of a West Coast Shaving sampler pack of Feather, Merkur, Astra, Derby, and Israeli)
- Tweezerman Brush
- Random ceramic bowl (deep and fairly wide. Pretty much hemispherical because i'm not sure what shape is best yet)
- Tabac Soap (in the nifty ceramic bowl)
- Thayers Witch Hazel with aloe
- Col. Conk Styptic Pencil
- Nivea for Men Post-Shave Balm
- Neutrogena for Men Face Lotion (spf 20)