Face map. Thoughts?

[BBaker11]

I'm a newbie. I just finished my fourth DE shave ever (NDC Gillette Tech w/Astra SP blades, badger brush and TOBS shave cream). But yesterday I read an article about face mapping and thought I'd give it a try. I printed out a face map and spent some time mapping my whisker - which seem to grow in every conceivable direction.

Unfortunately, the result of my face mapping lead to a pretty bad shave. I think the face map took my focus off the shave itself, and had me thinking about a variety of shave angles instead of simple up and down strokes. I'm probably too new at this to focus on anything other than technique...and not lopping part of my face off.

Just wanted to get your thoughts, and see what your experiences have been with face mapping.

 

[California Cajun]

Some of those diagrams are for barbers shaving customers. It's different when you are shaving yourself. What I don't like about "textbook" instructions is that they discourage things like at the grain strokes that you need to get a great shave.

What is better is finding a YouTube video and studying it.

 

[dpm802]

I think the face map is a fine teaching tool, if you're a newbie in barber school and learning how to shave other people's faces. It has limited use for the home shave den, and as you found out, it requires too much concentration that distracts from the actual shave.

I never bothered with the paper mapping, I just learned to feel around on my beard and found out the right angles that worked for me.

 

[joeunc]

face mapping has really helped me. I just drew a simple face and neck. I let the growth go about 3 days and then had the wife inspect it and draw arrows on the paper. Just think about your form and the mapping should be subconscious as you shave more and more

 

[djs134]

Never having picked up a DE razor in the 42 years that I've been shaving, I never really thought about the grain of my beard. Always just knew that I wasn't supposed to shave against it, and for the most part succeeded. However, my brother recently convinced me to try wet shaving with a DE razor and I found that I liked it. Of course, there's a learning curve, but for the most part I did pretty well in the 2 weeks that I've been using the method. But since I'm trying to get a pretty smooth shave everyday, irritation was a problem. Nothing major, just....irritating...

I always thought that I pretty much knew my beard grain... until I started looking closer at the areas that were consistently giving me trouble. Decided to map the grain and plan the passes accordingly. Even took a few minutes and printed out a map for each of 3 passes (WTG, XTG, XTG (opposite direction) but none ATG). Looked them over and got a good mental picture of the process.

This morning, after not shaving since Friday morning and a new Derby blade, I used the paths I'd planned out..... and was amazed at how smooth the passes were. 3 passes, very comfortable and hardly any burn when I applied the AS! DFS! And all this with a very thin and poorly developed lather (tried to use about 1/3 of the usual amount of Proraso cream).

I would suggest that the exercise of mapping your beard grain would benefit everyone, especially newbies. I'm thinking that a lot of the issues a lot of us new to this style of shaving are having is a result of catching some of our beard ATG long before we're ready.

Just my 2¢....

Dan

 

[ByMyBeard]

I had a similar issue. The whiskers on my neck grow at an angle in some places. I always just used N-S or S-N strokes, whichever was closest. The one time I tried to shave on the angle, I got really bad burn. I think I used too much pressure and had a dull blade...because I was focusing so much on the stroke direction.

 

[xxvaleria]

Knowing your Face map is very useful for ATG passes and for touch-ups or problem areas. If you shave N-S, E-W, and W-E, you should be covering most of your beard directions.

 

[Cagliostro]

Meh...I never sat around and made some corny drawing of a face map of my own face, while it might be useful to many I found the idea silly for myself to do. What I did was go by feel and memorize patterns, over time I made a mental map of my face and neck and it is what I go on. That's just me I have my own way's and methods of doing things, but regardless how you do it it is important to know and use face mapping if your wanting to get that baby smooth perfect shave. Other things to learn to ease the way would be Blade Buffing, J Hooking and the like, all are great essential steps to perfecting your wet shave technique.

 

[rbk7]

Like you I tried mapping my beard at the beginning only to find out my hair grew in every direction. I got bad results with lots of irritation and went back to shaving N-S.Things have been great since. I say forget about the face mapping and focus on your technique. Maybe revisit it later?

 

[N1CK]

I've never printed anything out and actually started drawing stuff. The important thing for me with face mapping was just feeling around figuring out how the hair grows, and most importantly which way was ATG.

Sometimes, depending on how your hair grows, trying to always go WTG results in weird angles and a contorted/odd feeling grip. So you end up with irritation despite the fact you went WTG. The real helpful part about knowing the way your facial hair grows is when you do have an aha moment you'll have the info to analyze what you did, and why it worked.

 

[ryno2292]

I never bothered shaving according to face mapping. Above my jawline my beard grain is almost completely north to south, on my neck it's a whole different story. The hair on my neck grows is so many different directions that's it's nearly impossible for me to go with the grain on every stroke. What I do is a north to south pass and a south to north pass, which results in WTG and ATG on my face and mostly XTG on my neck. Then I relather my neck and do some touch ups to get pretty smooth all over. It always results in a DFS for me, I never really strive for total BBS shaves, it's just going to grow back and need shaved again tomorrow.

 

[Mandina]

+1 on not paying attention to that map, but rather to the grain of your own beard, including its non-textbook patterns.