I began wet shaving in June, and have thus far had middling to decent results. The most drastic improvement in results has occurred within the past month or so. I finished reading Leisureguy's book which caused me to change my prep and also slightly changed the directions that I shave. The goal of this thread is to document my progression in shaving. I encourage discussion here as much as anyone cares to!
This first post I will outline the different aspects of my shaving routine and other general information that I will build upon as I go forward with this journal. My skin is apparently somewhat sensitive, and seems to irritate fairly easily. I am not able to use many soaps as my skin gets red, hot and itchy, likely an allergic reaction. My current two that work well are Haslinger Schafmilch Rasierseife and Cella. I use either my Omega 11137 Boar brush or Stirling Synthetic Pro brush daily. My hair, beard and otherwise, is dry, coarse, dense and curly. Perfect setup for ingrown hairs, which I used to get with regularity when shaving with cartridges or electric razors. I get them with DE shaving too, but primarily if I go ATG. So far, my jawline and chin seem impervious to ingrowns and irritation, so I go ATG here where I otherwise seem unable to remove the hair to even a SAS level. My beard map is attached to this first post, along with a second map outlining my normal 3 pass shave. Yellow is WTG, Blue is 1st XTG, Red is 2nd XTG about 180 degrees opposite pass 2 plus some ATG on my chin and under my jawline. My neck grain does a weird chevron towards my ears which I have struggled to shave typically. This has improved over the past month too.
My current prep is as follows: Shower using Desert Essence Tea Tree Oil Face Wash, Load Cella or Haslinger and use excess suds as pre-shave or use Whole Foods 365 Glycerin Soap as pre-shave, face lather, hot and damp towel for 2.5 minutes, re-lather, then shave. I let the towel sit on the cold counter as I shave. Post-shave I rinse with warm water, then cold, then apply the now cool towel, rewet with cold water, then apply Geo F. Trumper's Skin Food - West Indian Limes. The Skin Food is fantastic stuff, worth trying if you have the cash for it.
I have liked razors that hold the blade more rigidly, such as the RazoRock OLD type and RazoRock Hawk V2. I shimmed a Parker Variant this morning and got a wonderful shave out of it. I will try out new razors and blade combinations and try to post up my thoughts following the shaves. Will also try to post pictures of my neck and face currently, then periodically as time moves along to track progress. I got horrible shaves with carts and electrics, so I'm already doing better than I was before I found wet shaving. My goal is the title of this thread: a DFS shave, with 0 irritation and 0 ingrown hairs. That is my shave nirvana. BBS would be ridiculously nice, but I'm not going to pursue it.
First question for anyone who stumbles on this thread: Do my passes seem to be reasonably accurate for what I'm trying to accomplish? Especially the XTG passes, do they seem mostly XTG or is there a slightly different attack angle I could take?
This first post I will outline the different aspects of my shaving routine and other general information that I will build upon as I go forward with this journal. My skin is apparently somewhat sensitive, and seems to irritate fairly easily. I am not able to use many soaps as my skin gets red, hot and itchy, likely an allergic reaction. My current two that work well are Haslinger Schafmilch Rasierseife and Cella. I use either my Omega 11137 Boar brush or Stirling Synthetic Pro brush daily. My hair, beard and otherwise, is dry, coarse, dense and curly. Perfect setup for ingrown hairs, which I used to get with regularity when shaving with cartridges or electric razors. I get them with DE shaving too, but primarily if I go ATG. So far, my jawline and chin seem impervious to ingrowns and irritation, so I go ATG here where I otherwise seem unable to remove the hair to even a SAS level. My beard map is attached to this first post, along with a second map outlining my normal 3 pass shave. Yellow is WTG, Blue is 1st XTG, Red is 2nd XTG about 180 degrees opposite pass 2 plus some ATG on my chin and under my jawline. My neck grain does a weird chevron towards my ears which I have struggled to shave typically. This has improved over the past month too.
My current prep is as follows: Shower using Desert Essence Tea Tree Oil Face Wash, Load Cella or Haslinger and use excess suds as pre-shave or use Whole Foods 365 Glycerin Soap as pre-shave, face lather, hot and damp towel for 2.5 minutes, re-lather, then shave. I let the towel sit on the cold counter as I shave. Post-shave I rinse with warm water, then cold, then apply the now cool towel, rewet with cold water, then apply Geo F. Trumper's Skin Food - West Indian Limes. The Skin Food is fantastic stuff, worth trying if you have the cash for it.
I have liked razors that hold the blade more rigidly, such as the RazoRock OLD type and RazoRock Hawk V2. I shimmed a Parker Variant this morning and got a wonderful shave out of it. I will try out new razors and blade combinations and try to post up my thoughts following the shaves. Will also try to post pictures of my neck and face currently, then periodically as time moves along to track progress. I got horrible shaves with carts and electrics, so I'm already doing better than I was before I found wet shaving. My goal is the title of this thread: a DFS shave, with 0 irritation and 0 ingrown hairs. That is my shave nirvana. BBS would be ridiculously nice, but I'm not going to pursue it.
First question for anyone who stumbles on this thread: Do my passes seem to be reasonably accurate for what I'm trying to accomplish? Especially the XTG passes, do they seem mostly XTG or is there a slightly different attack angle I could take?