Dude, it's been a while

[jdeville]

Hi, it's been a crazy few weeks, and I haven't been on here, in more than a drop by fashion in about 3 weeks! Finally, things are winding down at work on our release, and I have time to rejoin the rest of the world, including ya'll

So Lately, I've been shaving about every other day, with Derby blades and TOBS avacado creme. I've been absolutely loving my Rudy Vey custom brush , and shaving has been such an improvement from the previous years. I've managed to avoid any *AD, largely due to budget and time reasons , although I have spent time at the local antique store admiring some beauties . I'll have to post the pictures I took (but I did not buy )

So my shaves, as I said, have been better than ever, but i'm still having issues I was wondering if I could get some pointers/links for info for the neck, and for getting towards a BBS without major irritation. On my neck, I'm having issues getting right at the bottom of my neck (pretty much the all of the bottom of Q4)[1], and the sharp angle at the bottom of the cheeks and chin (between Q2R and Q3, Q1 and Q3, and Q2L and Q3)[1] I know that those are areas where many men have issues, and I know that time, pressure, angle, and technique are going to be the keys, but I'd like to read up.

My normal shave process:

1. Shower and soak brush
2. Poraso pre-shave while I build ladder
3. Lather up
4. Wait for a minute or two
5. 1st pass: wtg
6. re-lather
7. 2nd pass: xtg
8. [optional]re-lather
9. [optional]3rd pass: wtg
10. rinse

I tried going atg once, only on the cheeks, and the shave was amazing, but I got irritation. I'm not sure what I need to do to prevent that. My goals long term are to be able to shave daily, and to be able to shave enough to get close to BBS but I know I need to be patient for that one.


[1] http://www.enchanteonline.com/pages/faqs/cuttingforms.pdf
(btw, anyone know a place where I can get a picture like that without all of the method shaving quadrants? I saw a chart similar that was for charting your grain direction, but I can't find it)

 

[jdeville]

bumping to see if anyone has pointers

 

[SpyvSpy]

seems good to me.

 

[DFrancis]

For an attempt at BBS you may want to work your way up to ATG. Once I had my technique down I found that it was no problem on my cheeks. My neck still gives me some issues as I'm working on figuring out all the wild hair growth.

 

[kingfisher]

Third pass could be an XTG in the opposite direction from your second pass; this will lead to DFS bordering on BBS with less irritation than trying ATG.

For the neck I would suggest the following.

1) Make darn good and sure that you have your grain mapped out correctly. I had mine messed for over 6 months before I figured it out. Shave quality improved dramatically when I finally straightened it out.

2) For the jaw angle areas, I find that using facial contortions combined with mild stretching has done wonders. Sometimes that real tricky area just under the jaw can become a nice flat area just ABOVE the jaw with some simple manipulation.