Yes, very much.
Horror.
Horror.
Do you find it hard to go back to milder razors after using aggressive ones regularly?
- Thread starter SharpieB
- Start date
Seems a typical career. Starting in the middle of the road, going towards aggressive to get closer shaves, learning not to nick yourself.
Experiencing that mild razors don't give you a close shave.. Disappointing you..
And then.. Ages later.. With technique getting better back to super smooth discovering that's only been insufficient technique.
I'm experiencing this since a few months. I'm using a feather as-d2 and a Mühle R89 and they give me both extremely close shaves now. Closer than my Rex Ambassador and my Gamechanger Jaws. I refined my technique in terms of holding the right angle and mapping my beard growth. That's all.
Experiencing that mild razors don't give you a close shave.. Disappointing you..
And then.. Ages later.. With technique getting better back to super smooth discovering that's only been insufficient technique.
I'm experiencing this since a few months. I'm using a feather as-d2 and a Mühle R89 and they give me both extremely close shaves now. Closer than my Rex Ambassador and my Gamechanger Jaws. I refined my technique in terms of holding the right angle and mapping my beard growth. That's all.
I tend to use aggressive razors. But today I used a black handle Super Speed. So smooth. And the shave results were great. Especially since I did only 2 passes instead of my usual 3. I want to shave tomorrow, and if I do a full 3 pass shave, I won’t have enough to shave tomorrow. Even with a Super Speed. I definitely find I can shave much better with a mild razor now than years ago.
I suppose razor ratings are a bit subjective....I never perceived the 1.35 WR2 as aggressive...to my face,
it's just a smooth, refined gap with a nice bit of efficiency. A 1.55 in the same family is aggressive. To me.
But to answer your question and it addresses an important insight. Shaving is not a natural behaviour.
We do it of our own accord to groom. So every time we shave, we place our skin under some amount of
trauma or strain. There was a time when I really enjoyed hyper efficient yet smooth razors. But I could never
shake the belief that these razors introduce my skin to a fair bit of wear and tear.
So I prefer mid range settings of efficiency...a 2-3 on Rocnel Sailor and Taiga suits me just fine...delivers
stellar BBS shaves that allow me to shave only every 2 or 3 days.
Questions similar to the one that started this thread have been on my mind lately. I think my response would have been varied over the years I have been wetshaving (and may change again).
I've mostly stuck with aggressive/efficient razors. Initially, that may have been the relative ease of finding the right angle with a more aggressive razor, and it did improve my technique quite a bit. But an important related benefit for me was that fewer passes and a lighter touch just seemed to leave my skin feeling better and less irritated.
I recently had a string of days where I was dealing with ingrown hairs and irritation (and a few nicks) all clumped together and that was leading me down the path of thinking maybe a less aggressive razor might be something I should consider, however in that span I had been or just recently used less aggressive razors (relatively speaking). "For science," I also had to explore the roots of my interest in aggressive razors. I started my wetshaving journey with straight razors and more so with feather artist club razors. They worked for me, but there was a lot of blood as a newbie with those tools. Then I moved in to DE razors more regularly. I am back to thinking that a really aggressive razor with a light touch and fewer passes gives me a good combination of exfoliation, a close shave, and less irritation. I definitely need to pay attention more, but a blade-forward setup makes it easier for me to feel/see where I am shaving when I do pay attention. It's still a journey, and a bit circular at times for me, but my working theory continues to be that *for me*, aggressive razors are just the way to go in most circumstances. If I need to shave more than once a day for events or something, my personal "rules" get a little fuzzy, but that's less common and I can address that when it comes up. I think for me, it is several days after the actual shave that things like ingrown hairs become an issue and it makes it difficult to assign causation as I tend to think the setup I used most recently is to blame, when in fact it might be my shaving choice from several days back. As always, YMMV. I've been wetshaving for about 18? years now and still figuring my own things out...
I've mostly stuck with aggressive/efficient razors. Initially, that may have been the relative ease of finding the right angle with a more aggressive razor, and it did improve my technique quite a bit. But an important related benefit for me was that fewer passes and a lighter touch just seemed to leave my skin feeling better and less irritated.
I recently had a string of days where I was dealing with ingrown hairs and irritation (and a few nicks) all clumped together and that was leading me down the path of thinking maybe a less aggressive razor might be something I should consider, however in that span I had been or just recently used less aggressive razors (relatively speaking). "For science," I also had to explore the roots of my interest in aggressive razors. I started my wetshaving journey with straight razors and more so with feather artist club razors. They worked for me, but there was a lot of blood as a newbie with those tools. Then I moved in to DE razors more regularly. I am back to thinking that a really aggressive razor with a light touch and fewer passes gives me a good combination of exfoliation, a close shave, and less irritation. I definitely need to pay attention more, but a blade-forward setup makes it easier for me to feel/see where I am shaving when I do pay attention. It's still a journey, and a bit circular at times for me, but my working theory continues to be that *for me*, aggressive razors are just the way to go in most circumstances. If I need to shave more than once a day for events or something, my personal "rules" get a little fuzzy, but that's less common and I can address that when it comes up. I think for me, it is several days after the actual shave that things like ingrown hairs become an issue and it makes it difficult to assign causation as I tend to think the setup I used most recently is to blame, when in fact it might be my shaving choice from several days back. As always, YMMV. I've been wetshaving for about 18? years now and still figuring my own things out...
If you’re going for a close shave; one with coveted abbreviations like BBS, DFS, and the like; raising whiskers out of their pores someway or another is required. Depending on the retracted depth and the friskiness of any particular follicle, it could be ingrown for days before it’s noticed.
Then, it can be a question of were they cut wrong because they weren’t fully cut and curled back like a ribbon on a fancy-schmancy present or was cutting so low at all the problem? The answer is to be self-deluded about the too low part and focus all one’s lucidity on the cleanly cutting part unless it points back to the too low part.
- Thread starter
- #87
I posted this thread over a year ago and have since added a WR2 1.65DC. That is an aggressive razor, but still useable daily.
I will use my milder razors the odd time (24hr or less growth), but have stuck to my WMs, Karve F, Razorock Jaws and a Gillette Slim (always setting 7) for the last couple of years. I just prefer more aggressive razors.
