Took the plunge and joined b&b tonight after months of lurking 
. I switched to de wet shaving 6 months ago after a particular brutal few weeks using a modern cartridge razor. Thank god I discovered de shaving. It's been so much fun.
I started off with a Merkur barber pole HD, proraso cream and some merkur blades. That worked for a month or so and it was so much better that the modern cartridge shaves. Then I read Michael Ham's book and that really opened my eyes.
After a month, I naively bought a merkur slant and some feathers to experiment and had a bad dose of razor burn - arggh! Luckily, I found some Derby Extras that worked wonderfully and for the past several months, I've been having great shaves with the slant and derby blades.
My standard prep is:
1. shower and use conditioner on my beard
2. Musgo glycerine soap
3. Valobra cream
3. Between every pass, I rub a spot of vegetable gylcerine oil on my beard
4. Use some shaving oil for the polish pass
5. rub my face with alum and then rinse
6. Thayers witch hazel
7. Coral skin food
Works great. In the past few weeks, I've splashed out and bought some vintage razors (aristocrat, new standard and new improved) to experiment with. My first try with the aristocrat and a derby blade wasn't good and was disappointing - lots of razor burn. Maybe the required angle for the aristocrat is different from the merkur slant? Anyway, I'll give it a try again tonight...
. I switched to de wet shaving 6 months ago after a particular brutal few weeks using a modern cartridge razor. Thank god I discovered de shaving. It's been so much fun.I started off with a Merkur barber pole HD, proraso cream and some merkur blades. That worked for a month or so and it was so much better that the modern cartridge shaves. Then I read Michael Ham's book and that really opened my eyes.
After a month, I naively bought a merkur slant and some feathers to experiment and had a bad dose of razor burn - arggh! Luckily, I found some Derby Extras that worked wonderfully and for the past several months, I've been having great shaves with the slant and derby blades.
My standard prep is:
1. shower and use conditioner on my beard
2. Musgo glycerine soap
3. Valobra cream
3. Between every pass, I rub a spot of vegetable gylcerine oil on my beard
4. Use some shaving oil for the polish pass
5. rub my face with alum and then rinse
6. Thayers witch hazel
7. Coral skin food
Works great. In the past few weeks, I've splashed out and bought some vintage razors (aristocrat, new standard and new improved) to experiment with. My first try with the aristocrat and a derby blade wasn't good and was disappointing - lots of razor burn. Maybe the required angle for the aristocrat is different from the merkur slant? Anyway, I'll give it a try again tonight...
