Welcome to the B&B forums, from a fellow IT engineer who also likes uses hand planes. It probably won't take long for you to start seeing significant progress in your shaving. The biggest "ah ha" moments for me was when I understood what a slick protective lather was and what no, or as little as possible, pressure means.
- Chris
Glad is working out for you now.I'm not certain it's a knock off, it may be an old iteration or something. Perhaps the Futur I compared with was also an older model, not sure, but it had the same fault with four different blades out of six we tried including Derby, Astra and Feather. Pre-production castings?
As for prep, here goes:
After a hot shower I use a small towel in 55 degree water to soak my bears for two minutes while I prepare lather. Following the soak I wash with QV wash and rinse, leaving face wet.
Lather is made using GFT coconut cream and water in a warmed souffle dish. First couple of lathers were too thick and made the razor hard to clean, so I've been adding a little more water until that stopped.
I don't use a pre shave oil or soap, just straight on with the lather, working it in from ears to chin on both sides.
Beard grain is quite straight, mostly down from the cheeks and hairline, then sweeping back from the chin and jaw line. Couple of wierd spots at the Adam's apple which need polishing.
First pass is very light WTG. Seconds pass, re-lather, also light from ear to nose and from jaw to chest. Third, re-lather, extremely light ATG. Today for the first time I was able to polish around the chin, jaw line and Adam's apple. No nicks.
Rinse and apply astringent, followed by moisturiser. Clean up.
Now that the razor is working reasonably well it's clear I can get a better result than a cartridge with practice.
I'll try without the hot towel and see, thanks.
Regarding lather, I think it performs a little differently in the hand than on the face. While it does seem slick between fingers I have noticed it drying on my face after 2 minutes following a pass. Normal? Simply wiping a wet hand over is enough to slick it again though, and this is how I polish. I'm taking a good 15 minutes to shave at the moment.
Unsure. I was erring on the side of less water, but I'm finding a little more is drying out less. On the other hand, as I build confidence I'm also getting faster which is obfuscating the result.
The main problem I had when I started this thread was a bung razor, all else was insignificant in comparison. Even after tweaking this razor I only just got the gap down to 1mm which is still far too aggressive for me, or any beginner I suspect.
EDIT: Looking at this thread now I think one of my posts is missing; I discovered that the Futur I was comparing to was also a clone, and after comparing to a genuine Futur I found several differences, notably a complete absence of the faults I had experienced. Evidently the Wahl Traditional Barbers Adjustable Razor *is* a poor knock-off of the original. I've been using a Feather AS-D2 for the last several days with much better results.