Salsa chips away at his beard

[MildSalsa]

I'll start off my shave log with some background. Here's part 1 of 2, in which I go from electric to DE via a handful of cartridges, to not shaving at all.

At some point in the mid 00s I picked up a Gillette Fusion, hoping for an improvement over my pricey Philips rotary shaver that would tug at my hair even from day one. It didn't take long until it occurred to me that the single blade on the back of the Fusion cart was better for me to shave with than the 5 blades on the front. And of course, that blade needed rinsing every other stroke.

Still in the mid 00s, I glanced at Badger and Blade, picked up some Personna Reds and a twist-to-open vintage Gillette. I did not do enough research and I didn't personally know anyone that was doing this elaborate song and dance. No careful beard mapping, no learning about lathering techniques beyond a skim of a video. I quickly gave up on the Tabac stick and Omega boar brush, and shaved with cream from a can (and eventually gel from a can) for a little over a decade. The results were so much better than the electric or cartridge; I just took it for granted I would get stochastic irritation and ingrown hairs now and then. I never aimed for very close, as those days would lead to more irritation. Just one pass with touch-ups, with a few days in between shaves.

At some point I realized that I'd been getting irritation a lot more frequently. In retrospect, that latest order of Personna blades from Amazon was a differently-packaged box of fakes. Is that when I decided to read more and gain some knowledge? Nope! I grew a beard out. I trimmed my neckline with clippers, which was not close but certainly close enough under a bushy lumberjack beard. To be continued.

 

[MildSalsa]

At some point I was abruptly out of love with the lumberjack beard. The transition from it involved a silly day with a big handlebar moustache and a suit—I knew it would get a laugh from my partner and she needed it at the time. The next and still present look: a short beard. I dusted off my Flare Tip Super Speed to clean up my neckline. My uncomfortable results had me wondering how to do this better. The reader will know that poor technique was primarily at fault, with dud blades an effective accomplice, but I didn't know that at the time and thought a different razor would be the answer. I looked at some B&B posts again, read a few words about efficiency and different gaps, and picked up a Gillette Slim on eBay. Even 9 razor settings aren't going to help without a beard map, and I was still using those fake Personna blades, so I gave up on wet shaving again feeling foolish to have wasted more money on more DE razors. Technology must have solved this, right?

I read a few electric shaver reviews and the idea was put in my mind that my hair growing flat against my skin was the likely problem with the rotary shaver of my youth, reviewers talked about some shavers which work better for that. Based on some glowing reviews I picked up a Panasonic foil, the Arc 3. I tried it dry. I tried it wet. No matter what it would miss a lot of hair, take a long time, and gave a hair pulling sensation.

Somehow over a decade later I was back to the exact same problems, a bad shave from an electric shaver. It's a theme I've since read about a few times on this site: people getting poor results from the best-marketed modern products, then landing here. Turns out I'm a fair bit dumber than most; I needed to do the same thing multiple times. In spring 2022 I finally decided to do more serious reading on B&B, most significantly learning about beard mapping. It turns out I have a whorl right right at my beard neckline. Near there I also have a 'part' with hair growing in different directions. No wonder my shaves had never been great: I'd been shaving days of growth ATG, on my first pass, for a sizable patch of skin.

Some more superfluous purchasing happened; in retrospect I could/should have stuck with the razors I already had. I ordered an aluminum Baby Smooth, an SLOC head (a cheap way to find out if an open comb was an improvement), and a try-a-blade assortment, along with a well-reviewed Razorock soap and a synthetic brush. This is when it finally dawned on me that the last batch of Amazon blades I had were fakes: sure enough I tried one from that now-old stash, and it was terrible even with my slightly improved technique.

With a beard map I was doing much better, and I was keeping a shave log in a text file to track results with different blades. I should have been posting my progress here, if so maybe my sillier ideas wouldn't have involved a credit card. Why did I order more razors when I had the Slim? Though my technique was improving, I was (and still am) impatient to get better results. Reading some posts here about clamping and learning that not all CNC razors are basically interchangeable within levels of aggression, I bought a mild Henson, which had raving reviews here and on reddit. It truly is impressive! Maybe not as great of a fit for me as it is for the most excited reviewers I came across, but it's undeniably good. I never get irritation with it on a 2 pass shave, which I couldn't say for the Baby Smooth… though that's almost certainly a function of practice. An ATG pass with either is too close and my flat-lying stubble ends up ingrown. There are some spots on my neck where I don't get a close shave at all with the Henson, and more buffing does more to irritate than to trim.

I've been hoping to get better performance: a little closer with WTG+XTG so I don't have to shave as often, without irritation and in as mindless of a way as I can get away with. As you've noticed based on this story, there isn't that great of a mind present for me to rely on So that's where this journal is starting.

 

[thombrogan]

Thank you for sharing your journal and history with us, @MildSalsa !

You’ll find tons of us willing to share in the highs and lows of your learning curve and offering suggestions and recommendations (solicited or otherwise) and a fair dose of thread hijacking (it’s what we do ), but please do be very careful with this:

I should have been posting my progress here, if so maybe my sillier ideas wouldn't have involved a credit card.

You’ve entered a viper’s den of enablers. Hide your charge cards. When we’re not intentionally being terrible, we’re even worse.

That said, I’m looking forward to your escape from Scraped Face City and bet many more are wishing you success as well. Just, we’re a bunch of degenerate gear junkies, so know we’d put you with us on an episode of Hoarders with the best intentions.

 

[MildSalsa]

You’ve entered a viper’s den of enablers. Hide your charge cards. When we’re not intentionally being terrible, we’re even worse.

Ha! Alright I'll keep that firmly in mind Thanks for the kind welcome!

 

[MildSalsa]

Armed with a handful of razors—including an adjustable—you'd think I would have been set for experimenting with more efficiency than my Henson. But in keeping with my theme: before experimenting with the SLOC and some shims, or the Slim in my cabinet, I got a few GEM coated blades and a Micromatic Clog Pruf from eBay a few weeks ago. Fortunately this complete failure (for my face) of this test wasn't super expensive. Palm strop, leather strop, no pressure and using the 'fool proof' angle, I still managed to get terrible tugging and irritation with many missed hairs. I didn't realize so much irritation was possible for so little actual shaving. The first blade I tried, I popped out and out of curiosity with all of the tugging, I checked and it couldn't slice paper. Meanwhile my used DE blades are still sharp enough to slice paper without issue. Bad blades? Not enough stropping? Maybe one day in the future I'll be brave enough to experiment more.

Today was hopefully my last recovery shave—I still have two slightly irritated spots from my last attempt with the MMCP. I came across a note somewhere on this site about the Gillette Slim, suggesting it can give a smooth shave when opened up all the way to 9 and shaving steep. It's counter-intuitive because my best experience so far has been on setting 4. But! With a fresh Nacet blade and a WTG pass, followed by a partial XTG pass in non-irritated areas, I had a very smooth shave. I can't recall how the end result compares with my Henson shaves but for now the Slim experiment is far more promising than the GEM. Only a little alum feedback this evening.

I've been playing with some shaving soap samples, and I used A&E Kaizen K2E for this shave. I've noticed it stings a bit at irritated spots on my skin, but the slickness certainly beats the other soaps I've tried so far. I'm curious how it'll perform when my skin is all fully healed. I haven't seen unscented samples of their K2E base, but will keep an eye out.

 

[MildSalsa]

I've been taking it easy on my last couple of shaves, leaving lots of days between and just doing a single pass so my irritated spots would have a good chance to heal. Today was the first full shave in a while, and it was great.

This was the second use on a Nacet blade in my Slim, still set at 9 and riding the bar.

Rather than one of my shaving soap samples, I tried a brushless cream based on ideas from @Barbarian80 and @NorthernSoul in a thread about making smaller amounts of lather. I picked up a small tube of Jack Black Beard Lube on eBay, as it looks like they've stopped sending out free samples online. I would have happily paid for a sample, but of course some of those samples people grabbed for free are on eBay for around what I paid for this 1.5oz tube.

The brushless cream was interesting to use because it's completely transparent. It looked as if the hairs were being wiped away by the razor. I was touching up as I went with how obvious it was where the shave wasn't as close. Slickness was great, certainly on par with the better soaps I've tried and it was far quicker to get shaving.

My only concern is that it the shave might be too close at some spots, even at 2 passes (WTG, XTG)... I may need to think about exfoliating a bit to avoid ingrown hairs. Any other tips aside from exfoliating?

 

[thombrogan]

I think you may need to figure out what’s causing your ingrown whiskers and stop doing that. The blade on your razor is probably the pogchamp of exfoliating.