After shaving with straights for 9-1/2 years, I took up shaving with safety razors again as I hadn't really used them all that much at the start of my wet-shaving journey. Would I be able to shave as closely with an SR as with a straight? Would I find it a quicker process with less maintenance involved? And so on. And now, after around six months of shaving with 3-4 safety razors of varying aggression, I can say that I can come pretty close to shaving as close with them, the more aggressive razors with a mild blade or a mild razor with an aggressive blade. But not quite as close, or as close and smooth simultaneously.
Today, I had my first shave with a straight in around six months. Wiped the oil trace off a Dovo I had been using before the pause and gave it a mild stropping to enliven the stored edge a bit. No problem in stropping, the muscle memory worked just fine. Ditto for the shaving, with the result being very close with a little bit of harshness. Perhaps my angle was off a little bit or the edge had fallen off after the first pass, needing further stropping.
A problem area for me in shaving has always been an area beneath my jawline towards the chin. To deal with it, I have always gone XTG during the second pass with straights, pulling the area up along my jawbone for support, which usually suffices. With safety razors, this is never enough; so there I discovered a way to mitigate things by shaving upwards, or ATG, from just above the base of my neck all the way to the jawline. In returning to straights, I was excited to give this a try. I started the upward approach with no problem, but my fingers lacked the dexterity to turn the razor following the sharp curve beneath my jaw. I called things off at the last moment to avoid the blade digging into the skin there, which would have been a disaster.
My safety-razor sojourn was a pleasant diversion, and I was able to bring my ambidextrous straight-razor approach to safety-razor shaving as well. As for the safety razor alternative being potentially quicker as to process, I found that this was not necessarily the case, as I spent a lot of time at the end of the shaving session blowing standing water off both the razor and the blade with a Giotto photo lens air-cleaning device to prevent them from oxidation. Also, I noticed that with safety razors, I had a tendency to let my sideburns grow out a little bit longer and wider. Trimming them with a straight is easier, with the result being that they tend to be shorter and narrower.
And if you've made it this far, thank you for your kind indulgence in this, my self-indulgence...
Today, I had my first shave with a straight in around six months. Wiped the oil trace off a Dovo I had been using before the pause and gave it a mild stropping to enliven the stored edge a bit. No problem in stropping, the muscle memory worked just fine. Ditto for the shaving, with the result being very close with a little bit of harshness. Perhaps my angle was off a little bit or the edge had fallen off after the first pass, needing further stropping.
A problem area for me in shaving has always been an area beneath my jawline towards the chin. To deal with it, I have always gone XTG during the second pass with straights, pulling the area up along my jawbone for support, which usually suffices. With safety razors, this is never enough; so there I discovered a way to mitigate things by shaving upwards, or ATG, from just above the base of my neck all the way to the jawline. In returning to straights, I was excited to give this a try. I started the upward approach with no problem, but my fingers lacked the dexterity to turn the razor following the sharp curve beneath my jaw. I called things off at the last moment to avoid the blade digging into the skin there, which would have been a disaster.
My safety-razor sojourn was a pleasant diversion, and I was able to bring my ambidextrous straight-razor approach to safety-razor shaving as well. As for the safety razor alternative being potentially quicker as to process, I found that this was not necessarily the case, as I spent a lot of time at the end of the shaving session blowing standing water off both the razor and the blade with a Giotto photo lens air-cleaning device to prevent them from oxidation. Also, I noticed that with safety razors, I had a tendency to let my sideburns grow out a little bit longer and wider. Trimming them with a straight is easier, with the result being that they tend to be shorter and narrower.
And if you've made it this far, thank you for your kind indulgence in this, my self-indulgence...
