Pulling your Skin Taught
- Thread starter TraderJoe
- Start date
Joe,
A quick tip is to use a damp washcloth to pull the skin with.
Randy
A quick tip is to use a damp washcloth to pull the skin with.
Randy
My secret? Bungee cords, clamps and an electric winch.TraderJoe said:
rtaylor61 said:
This is the technique I use, it is very effective.
- Thread starter
- #5
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- #6
Try pulling at the siderburns
You do not need to stretch your skin with your fingers, this is a sure way to get wrinkles and look old (or so women say). Instead, try tilting your head to the left or right and open your mouth and do other contortions with your face to get your skin to stretch a little.
There is an an excellent tutorial on how to stretch your face - just rent any Jim Carey movie.
There is an an excellent tutorial on how to stretch your face - just rent any Jim Carey movie.
TraderJoe said:
This will probably vary from person to person. I pull up from my side burns when shaving my cheeks, down on my neck and just anywhere I find I can pull the skin tight.
You might also want to check out this video of Lynn Abrams shaving with a straight and see where he pulls his skin taught. I figure the skin pulling will be the same no matter what you are shaving with.
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1380
I do the Jim Carey funny face thing Mostly, or puffing my cheeks out.
crackstar said:
I seem to remember you saying that before, that's extrodinary. Can you puff your cheeks out?
Hey Inkling !!!
Is that "winch" or "Wench" ??
Is that "winch" or "Wench" ??
I puff my cheeks on the third pass to get anything that's left.
Also on the third pass, I'll slightly pull the skin on my jawline taut by pulling up and back just under the ear lobe.
For the neck, I pull down on the skin that isn't soaped and tilt my head back.
Also on the third pass, I'll slightly pull the skin on my jawline taut by pulling up and back just under the ear lobe.
For the neck, I pull down on the skin that isn't soaped and tilt my head back.
Jeff, if only you would not use the Humphrey's Preparation H as a preshave!
On a more serious note, skin stretching for those not suffering from some sort of connective tissue issue can be done in multiple ways. But to discuss skin stretching presumes you are on the same sheet of music for the direction of your razor stroke as the person telling you how to stretch your skin.
You must really examine why you want to stretch your skin in the first place. Basically there are two reasons to stretch the skin. The first is to better expose the whiskers to be shorn, a proactive reason. The second is to protect loose skin from the sharp edge of the razor, a reactive reason(Keeps you from shouting expletives).
In general to satisfy the reactive reason it is best to stretch the skin from behind the razor, i.e. behind the direction of the razors travel. This provides a wrinkle-, fold-, and flap-free area for your masterful razor stokes to glide over. There are numerous techniques for attaining this stretched state aside from honking on your skin. Here are some:
Displacement, on the other hand, is all about moving the area to be shaved to a new location. Displacement is the most common approach for one of the areas that is always a challenge, i.e. along the jawbone. Many gents complain about being unable to get a clean or smooth shave along the jawline and the area immediately under the jaw. The prime reason for this is the area(s) are difficult to reach while maintaining good razor control and you do not have the nice resistance of naturally taught flesh (believe me, it gets worse with age).
Enter displacement, stage left and right. Relating back to my statement about being on the same sheet of music for the direction of razor stroke, here it comes. To shave the jaw line, I am telling you that our stroke goes from the ear to the center of the chin (or the reverse). What we wish to do is displace (move, lift) the skin on the jaw by pushing up against the cheek so that the skin that normally drapes over the jawbone is now up where the lower cheek was. After displacing the area to be shaved into the new (desired) location we carefully stroke away. This works in both directions and when carefully applied moves that skin below the jaw to an advantageous position for the proactive removal of whiskers.
As you must have already shorn the cheeks before the jawbone displacement is required (remember that sheet of music?), there is little to no issue of shave cream creating a slippery area on your cheek and interfering with your displacement stretch.
Hope that helps..
On a more serious note, skin stretching for those not suffering from some sort of connective tissue issue can be done in multiple ways. But to discuss skin stretching presumes you are on the same sheet of music for the direction of your razor stroke as the person telling you how to stretch your skin.
You must really examine why you want to stretch your skin in the first place. Basically there are two reasons to stretch the skin. The first is to better expose the whiskers to be shorn, a proactive reason. The second is to protect loose skin from the sharp edge of the razor, a reactive reason(Keeps you from shouting expletives).
In general to satisfy the reactive reason it is best to stretch the skin from behind the razor, i.e. behind the direction of the razors travel. This provides a wrinkle-, fold-, and flap-free area for your masterful razor stokes to glide over. There are numerous techniques for attaining this stretched state aside from honking on your skin. Here are some:
- Twisting your head from side to side and tilting it up and down
- Contorting the face via jawbone calistentics
- Puffing air into the cheeks (My Buddy the Cat likes this one)
- Displacement
Displacement, on the other hand, is all about moving the area to be shaved to a new location. Displacement is the most common approach for one of the areas that is always a challenge, i.e. along the jawbone. Many gents complain about being unable to get a clean or smooth shave along the jawline and the area immediately under the jaw. The prime reason for this is the area(s) are difficult to reach while maintaining good razor control and you do not have the nice resistance of naturally taught flesh (believe me, it gets worse with age).
Enter displacement, stage left and right. Relating back to my statement about being on the same sheet of music for the direction of razor stroke, here it comes. To shave the jaw line, I am telling you that our stroke goes from the ear to the center of the chin (or the reverse). What we wish to do is displace (move, lift) the skin on the jaw by pushing up against the cheek so that the skin that normally drapes over the jawbone is now up where the lower cheek was. After displacing the area to be shaved into the new (desired) location we carefully stroke away. This works in both directions and when carefully applied moves that skin below the jaw to an advantageous position for the proactive removal of whiskers.
As you must have already shorn the cheeks before the jawbone displacement is required (remember that sheet of music?), there is little to no issue of shave cream creating a slippery area on your cheek and interfering with your displacement stretch.
Hope that helps..
- Thread starter
- #17
guenron said:Jeff, if only you would not use the Humphrey's Preparation H as a preshave!
On a more serious note, skin stretching for those not suffering from some sort of connective tissue issue can be done in multiple ways. But to discuss skin stretching presumes you are on the same sheet of music for the direction of your razor stroke as the person telling you how to stretch your skin.
You must really examine why you want to stretch your skin in the first place. Basically there are two reasons to stretch the skin. The first is to better expose the whiskers to be shorn, a proactive reason. The second is to protect loose skin from the sharp edge of the razor, a reactive reason(Keeps you from shouting expletives).
In general to satisfy the reactive reason it is best to stretch the skin from behind the razor, i.e. behind the direction of the razors travel. This provides a wrinkle-, fold-, and flap-free area for your masterful razor stokes to glide over. There are numerous techniques for attaining this stretched state aside from honking on your skin. Here are some:
With the exception of displacement, these techniques should be intuitive if you keep in mind that which you wish to accomplish.
- Twisting your head from side to side and tilting it up and down
- Contorting the face via jawbone calistentics
- Puffing air into the cheeks (My Buddy the Cat likes this one)
- Displacement
Displacement, on the other hand, is all about moving the area to be shaved to a new location. Displacement is the most common approach for one of the areas that is always a challenge, i.e. along the jawbone. Many gents complain about being unable to get a clean or smooth shave along the jawline and the area immediately under the jaw. The prime reason for this is the area(s) are difficult to reach while maintaining good razor control and you do not have the nice resistance of naturally taught flesh (believe me, it gets worse with age).
Enter displacement, stage left and right. Relating back to my statement about being on the same sheet of music for the direction of razor stroke, here it comes. To shave the jaw line, I am telling you that our stroke goes from the ear to the center of the chin (or the reverse). What we wish to do is displace (move, lift) the skin on the jaw by pushing up against the cheek so that the skin that normally drapes over the jawbone is now up where the lower cheek was. After displacing the area to be shaved into the new (desired) location we carefully stroke away. This works in both directions and when carefully applied moves that skin below the jaw to an advantageous position for the proactive removal of whiskers.
As you must have already shorn the cheeks before the jawbone displacement is required (remember that sheet of music?), there is little to no issue of shave cream creating a slippery area on your cheek and interfering with your displacement stretch.
Hope that helps..
Ron, that certainly does help. I just got finished studying your four-pass shave, and now that I've read this post its all coming together now. I have a feeling my shaving will be taken to the next level very soon
This skin pulling post + Randy's suggestion of a damp washcloth + ron's four pass shave + Kyle's post + various lathering posts/pics by Joel and Scotto = Shaving success
Thanks Guys! (and Jim, Aaron, et al. for helpful pointers too)
Well said, Ron.
rikrdo said:
My wife made me get rid of the electric wench once we got married. No sense of adventure!
And as a minor consideration/food for thought...
The skin isn't uniform, so direction of pull really matters, because your skin doesn't move as one solid unit. Consider the uber ascii art below:
Regular Skin, with a hair poking up:
Now suppose we are shaving from "left" to "right" in the above picture. if we want the razor to have a firm anchor and no loose skin as per Ron's post, we stretch the top layer to the left:
Hooray! By stretching the skin against the grain, we provide a smooth, tight surface for shaving with the grain, with the added bonus that it makes the hair stand up--all the better to shave it.
However, it gets tricky when we want to shave against the grain. If we do as above and hold the skin where we start shaving and pull that way, we get this:
That means we've made the hair actually lie more flat, making it more difficult to shave.
So I say, stretching the skin against the grain in order to shave with the grain is good, but when shaving against the grain, "anchoring" a piece of skin rather than stretching it with the grain seems to work best.
If you were particularly dextrous, stretching a section of skin "apart" (ie stretching against the grain to make the hair stand up, but anchoring the piece of skin at the beginning of the against-the-grain stroke) might work pretty well, but it's an awful lot of trouble and probably not worth it.
The skin isn't uniform, so direction of pull really matters, because your skin doesn't move as one solid unit. Consider the uber ascii art below:
Regular Skin, with a hair poking up:
Code:
/
----/-
/
/
=/====Now suppose we are shaving from "left" to "right" in the above picture. if we want the razor to have a firm anchor and no loose skin as per Ron's post, we stretch the top layer to the left:
Code:
<--pull
shave-->
|
----|-
|
|
=|====Hooray! By stretching the skin against the grain, we provide a smooth, tight surface for shaving with the grain, with the added bonus that it makes the hair stand up--all the better to shave it.
However, it gets tricky when we want to shave against the grain. If we do as above and hold the skin where we start shaving and pull that way, we get this:
Code:
pull-->
<--shave
----/-
/
/
=/====That means we've made the hair actually lie more flat, making it more difficult to shave.
So I say, stretching the skin against the grain in order to shave with the grain is good, but when shaving against the grain, "anchoring" a piece of skin rather than stretching it with the grain seems to work best.
If you were particularly dextrous, stretching a section of skin "apart" (ie stretching against the grain to make the hair stand up, but anchoring the piece of skin at the beginning of the against-the-grain stroke) might work pretty well, but it's an awful lot of trouble and probably not worth it.
