Part Four
Q: Why am I getting irritation?
There are five main reasons why your face is unhappy after (or during) a shave:
1) Bad prep.
You didn’t hydrate the beard enough, which means the bristles aren’t softened properly. Dry hair puts up more of a fight against the blade, and this can tug on the hair and the blade, and annoy your face.
2) Poor lather.
You might have got a bad mix, or you just might not have got it where it needs to be. Remember what I said about the importance of lubricating the skin? Take a look at this pic.
If your lather isn’t fully applied at skin level, you might end up with the lather sat up on your beard, and air gaps (the green areas) around the base of the hairs. This is leaving unprotected skin, and you could very well be causing abrasions because the razor isn’t sliding freely on the lather like it should, and just sliding on bare dry skin. This is why I said that thick lather whipped to standing peaks might be problematic. It needs to get past the beard so you get a full coverage at skin level. In time you will be able to fine tune the lather for best results, but aim somewhere between cream and yoghurt consistency to start with.
3) Abrasion.
If you’re being heavy handed and using any pressure at all, or you haven’t got the angle right for your unique blend of beard, razor and blade, you might be scraping all that protective lather right off and scraping the skin itself underneath. Ease off the pressure, you should barely feel the razor at all, and try adjusting your angle till you find what works best for you. If you don’t have naturally taut skin, try stretching the skin taut with your free hand, to stop it bunching up between the guard and the blade. Moving your head around in various angles, pulling faces, or even pushing with your tongue from inside can all help to keep your skin nice and taut
4) Tugging.
If your angle is wrong, too shallow or too steep, the blade will be lifting off your face. It might be extremely tempting to do that at first if you’re new to all this and a little wary, but if you shave down at skin level where the hair is fully supported, the hair will shear off cleanly.
If your blade starts lifting off your face, it will be bending the hair, digging in too high up the shaft of the hair, and pulling at the bulb down in the root of the hair.
This can cause a lot of the problems with irritation and inflammation. So if you are feeling cautious, don’t tilt the razor away, just focus on maintaining that perfect angle and getting lighter and lighter with your touch, so there is absolutely no pressure whatsoever between blade and skin. Don’t make it happen, just let it happen. When you take all these obstacles away, that great shave that you were seeking will just happen on it’s own.
5) Chemical irritation.
Sometimes people can have an intolerance or reaction to ingredients in the soap or cream or pre-shave. Some people can also have irritation to blade coatings too. If you’re getting any kind of tingling sensations after applying pre-shave or soap, and before you bring a razor anywhere near your face, you might need to look into different products. If you are convinced that you have eliminated all the other problems and you’re still getting irritation, then it might be the blade that you need to change for one that has different coatings.
Q: OK, done! Now what?
Congratulations, you’ve done great – but you’re not quite finished yet.
Splash some cold water on your face to rinse off the residual lather, and help soothe any mild irritation you might have picked up on your learning curve, and gently pat your face dry – don’t rub! If you happen to have sprung a leak somewhere, now is the time to be applying the styptic pencil to halt that weeper, and you can start thinking about your post shave treatments.
There’s lots of options here, and you probably want to start thinking about these quite early in your journey too. Alum blocks, wet and lightly drawn over the skin, can help to close the pores, and calm the skin down. There is a difference of opinion on whether you should rinse this off afterwards, or leave it on. If your skin feels a little dry and parched afterwards, then rinse it off in future, but you might like that feeling of tightness and freshness before you apply other products. I will leave this to your own exploration.
Aftershave balms can also help to calm any residual irritation. When you see people do this, they usually apply it with the grain, but I tend to apply this against the grain - particularly if I have taken an ATG shaving pass. Be warned that this might feel disappointing at first, as you will feel every little bit of stubble that's left behind. Leave the razor alone! You don't need that anymore today! Don't worry about feeling left over stubble, your face will feel different in an hour or so, and going ATG with the balm helps it get to all the little micro abrasions that you caused, that the stubble is not covering over. In about an hour, the beard with have dried out and normalised, and and the skin will be more hydrated - so the skin plumps up, the hair shrinks back, and your face will feel even smoother than it does right now.
Of course you can apply a little aftershave lotion instead if you wish. I would recommend balms to newcomers, and I have stuck with balms right up until now. But you can explore your own preferences.
NOTE: Depending on how good your shave was, some of these post shave treatments might … tingle a bit. The less tingling that you get from your post shave treatment, the less abrasions and irritation you have caused on your face. It will take time and practice to get a close shave you are happy with, with no irritation to the skin. It is a skill that must be developed, irrespective of your choice of razor or blade. Once you get competent with the razor, and are reliably giving yourself close comfortable shaves, then feel free to explore other razors, blades, soaps etc, and indeed other shaving techniques that you might hear of, to see if you can improve your shaving experience even more - but not until you've mastered the basics, otherwise it will just become harder to get yourself to a level of competence and confidence.
That’s it – you’re finished. Well done! Give yourself a proud nod in the mirror, and be ready for doing an even better job next time.
Man. This correction function on my mobile kills me!Thank you both
Gotta love AUTOCORRUPT.Man. This correction function on my mobile kills me!
I see. But who is in charge then?Great question to ask a Mod. I’m retired.
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