I'm an electric shaver who has recently been chafing under the annoying constraints and crap shaves conferred by that method. I put up some background and info on my blog (which is pretty new, and mostly targeted at my own family and friends)
but suffice to say I'm going to try to learn wet shaving with a kamisori, starting from nothing.
Thanks to generous forum members here, I've got a Lavender Mama Bear's soap, another partial puck of Mitchell's Wool Fat, and a horsehair brush. Through other members, I've gotten set up very reasonably with a kamisori and gotten it honed and shave ready. Nice!
The blade arrived yesterday to my work, and I took the chance to look at it under the metallurgical optical microscope we have here. Impressively sharp! I was thinking of putting it in the SEM, but the handle makes it too big to fit in the chamber with the blade still in the observation area. The attached images are taken with a 50x long working distance objective, bright field lighting, and at typical screen resolution will work out to an overall magnification of about 1500x. The newton ring/rainbowy stuff is oil on the surface.
I've got a strop (well, a strip of leather anyway) on the way, and a trip to the drug store yesterday evening got me a styptic pencil, witch hazel, and a tube of aloe gel.
So last night I tried my first tentative bit of shaving. Exciting!
Prep-
Hot water face wash
Practice lather, let sit for a few minutes
Hot water rinse
Lather-
For now I am attempting bowl lather with the Mama Bear soap. First I soaked the brush and put a bit of water on the soap to soak for a few minutes, then dumped the water off the soap into a cup, shook the brush off, then worked the brush on the soap. Next the brush went into the cup and started whisking. Quickly realized I didn't have enough room to maneuver in the tin cup I had, so transferred to a kids bath toy scoop which was sitting nearby, also not really big enough. I'll try a kitchen bowl next time. Had to work a surprisingly long time with the brush to get reasonable looking lather; my wrist was getting tired! Even then it seemed anemic. Have to try harder next time. Worked it in and mounded it on my face with the brush.
Shave-
Most of one with the grain pass in the sideburn, cheek, down to jaw areas. Wow, holding the blade is extremely awkward. I spent a lot of time doing contortions in front of the mirror, stretching the skin out, trying different hands and angles, etc. For now, I'm trying to keep omote side down, which of course adds a whole extra layer of awkwardness. But I figure eventually it will seem natural. I can see its going to take a while!
The blade really seemed to catch on my whiskers. Seemed like I needed more pressure to keep the blade down and cutting, but my main goal for now is not to cut myself so I tried to keep a feather touch. Tried to not go over one spot too much or get hung up about the fact that there were big spots where I was not really cutting the whiskers. Made some tentative strokes down closer to the chin and upper lip area, but the whiskers are thicker there and the blade needed much more oomph to push, so I sissied out and left that alone. Also made some mock strokes in the underjaw/neck area but realized its going to be difficult down there to go with the grain, which goes from chin towards ear area there.
Post-shave-
Hot water rinse
Cold water rinse
Witch hazel splash
A bit of aloe gel rubbed on
After that dried out, a bit of avalon organics unscented aloe lotion
So to recap, holding and working the blade was extraordinarily awkward and I spent a lot of time concentrating madly while holding my arms and face in funny, strained positions and peering intently at the mirror through all the limbs and equipment. All in all it took about 45 minutes, and I don't think I cut all that many hairs. But following the advice in the tutorials, I'm focussing in the first few attempts at not cutting up my face and starting to learn technique for all the operations. On the plus side, no bleeding, and in fact today my face feels great. Probably its getting more product and treatment than it is used to. My electric shave this morning seems a lot closer than normal, which is weird.
For next time, I'm pretty sure my beard was not sufficiently softened and my lather was not adequate. Hopefully my blade will be ok with not getting stropped the first few shaves; after all its not doing a whole lot of work. My current thinking is to keep up this sort of dipping my toe in type of shave for a while until I feel more confident about prep, lather, and cutting. A week maybe? We'll see. I'll update with progress.
but suffice to say I'm going to try to learn wet shaving with a kamisori, starting from nothing.
Thanks to generous forum members here, I've got a Lavender Mama Bear's soap, another partial puck of Mitchell's Wool Fat, and a horsehair brush. Through other members, I've gotten set up very reasonably with a kamisori and gotten it honed and shave ready. Nice!
The blade arrived yesterday to my work, and I took the chance to look at it under the metallurgical optical microscope we have here. Impressively sharp! I was thinking of putting it in the SEM, but the handle makes it too big to fit in the chamber with the blade still in the observation area. The attached images are taken with a 50x long working distance objective, bright field lighting, and at typical screen resolution will work out to an overall magnification of about 1500x. The newton ring/rainbowy stuff is oil on the surface.
I've got a strop (well, a strip of leather anyway) on the way, and a trip to the drug store yesterday evening got me a styptic pencil, witch hazel, and a tube of aloe gel.
So last night I tried my first tentative bit of shaving. Exciting!
Prep-
Hot water face wash
Practice lather, let sit for a few minutes
Hot water rinse
Lather-
For now I am attempting bowl lather with the Mama Bear soap. First I soaked the brush and put a bit of water on the soap to soak for a few minutes, then dumped the water off the soap into a cup, shook the brush off, then worked the brush on the soap. Next the brush went into the cup and started whisking. Quickly realized I didn't have enough room to maneuver in the tin cup I had, so transferred to a kids bath toy scoop which was sitting nearby, also not really big enough. I'll try a kitchen bowl next time. Had to work a surprisingly long time with the brush to get reasonable looking lather; my wrist was getting tired! Even then it seemed anemic. Have to try harder next time. Worked it in and mounded it on my face with the brush.
Shave-
Most of one with the grain pass in the sideburn, cheek, down to jaw areas. Wow, holding the blade is extremely awkward. I spent a lot of time doing contortions in front of the mirror, stretching the skin out, trying different hands and angles, etc. For now, I'm trying to keep omote side down, which of course adds a whole extra layer of awkwardness. But I figure eventually it will seem natural. I can see its going to take a while!
The blade really seemed to catch on my whiskers. Seemed like I needed more pressure to keep the blade down and cutting, but my main goal for now is not to cut myself so I tried to keep a feather touch. Tried to not go over one spot too much or get hung up about the fact that there were big spots where I was not really cutting the whiskers. Made some tentative strokes down closer to the chin and upper lip area, but the whiskers are thicker there and the blade needed much more oomph to push, so I sissied out and left that alone. Also made some mock strokes in the underjaw/neck area but realized its going to be difficult down there to go with the grain, which goes from chin towards ear area there.
Post-shave-
Hot water rinse
Cold water rinse
Witch hazel splash
A bit of aloe gel rubbed on
After that dried out, a bit of avalon organics unscented aloe lotion
So to recap, holding and working the blade was extraordinarily awkward and I spent a lot of time concentrating madly while holding my arms and face in funny, strained positions and peering intently at the mirror through all the limbs and equipment. All in all it took about 45 minutes, and I don't think I cut all that many hairs. But following the advice in the tutorials, I'm focussing in the first few attempts at not cutting up my face and starting to learn technique for all the operations. On the plus side, no bleeding, and in fact today my face feels great. Probably its getting more product and treatment than it is used to. My electric shave this morning seems a lot closer than normal, which is weird.
For next time, I'm pretty sure my beard was not sufficiently softened and my lather was not adequate. Hopefully my blade will be ok with not getting stropped the first few shaves; after all its not doing a whole lot of work. My current thinking is to keep up this sort of dipping my toe in type of shave for a while until I feel more confident about prep, lather, and cutting. A week maybe? We'll see. I'll update with progress.
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!!
) and have at the whiskers. The jaw line I have been stretching the skin up from my cheeks. I am surprised by how much area I can get at by doing that stretch!
