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What I have learned- If I was starting over what would I do differently?

If I could start over, I would stick with starting setup for the most part and ease into the AD's with wisdom and patience...but I don't regret my lineup of Gillettes and Merkurs. Don't think I'll ever be able to use the myriad of creams and soaps, though, not to mention the AS lotions and splashes and colognes.

RAZOR: 1927 NEW STANDARD or 39c Slant
BLADE: Still Personnas
BRUSH: Vulfix 660 Medium Pure
CREAMS: TOBS and C&E Nomad and Sienna
SOAPS: MWF, C&E Nomad
AS: Old Spice Classic, Ice Blue AV
 
I'm not sure I have gobs to add, but I'll offer a few thoughts:

I completely agree with the "thrill of the chase/try it all" theme--that's what makes this hobby fun, and you'll truly find what works best for you.

I'd also re-emphasize Jim's initial point for this thread: listen to those with experience. What works for you might truly not be what works for lots of others. I'm getting the best shaves of my life, and have cut 2 passes off my routine to boot, with a basic Gillette Flair Tip, which doesn't top the "favorite razor" polls all that often. But, there are products that come up as most recommened a lot, and I'd also recommend them to anyone: Rooney brushes, especially the 3/1 in Super; a late 40s Superspeed; Derby and Israeli blades; TOBS, Proraso, Tabac; AV, witch hazel. Do these look like the usual suspects? They are. For a reason.

If I had to start over today, I'd start with pretty much that list:

Brush: Rooney 3/1 in Super

Razor: Late 40s Superspeed (I know, not the Flair Tip; this is my concession to bettering the odds for others)

Blade: Derby

Cream: TOBS (Avocado) or AoS (Sandalwood); Proraso if you want to buy off the shelf at a Bath & Bodyworks

Soap: Tabac, AoS (Sandalwood), maybe MWF (I love it, but others have lathering troubles, so it might not be the best to start with)

AS: AV, witch hazel, Old Spice

ASB: Homemade (CHL, witch hazel, any cheap balm), Nivea
 
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Stick to one basic middle of the road-setup while you're learning (that means no adjustable). And forget about BBS in the beginning -- concentrate on irriation-free, blood-free and comfortable.
 
Stick to one basic middle of the road-setup while you're learning (that means no adjustable). And forget about BBS in the beginning -- concentrate on irriation-free, blood-free and comfortable.
What I was thinking.

While somewhat new to B&B, I have been wetshaving for 30 years. A few things I have picked up.

Good pre-shave prep is essential. Shower, was your face, and apply a wet hot towel before applying shaving soap.

After pre-shave, the most important ingredient to a successful shave is a good lather. the second is a good blade. Type of razor, brush, and all that don't matter as much, yet on the B&B those topics seem to get the most play.

Don't go cheap on the soap or cream. Better to buy an inexpensive brush and use good product. Start with a puck of Harris and go from there. And it's not necessary to buy soap with tallow, as many fine soaps contain not a bit of the stuff.

My beginner shave setup would contain:

EJ best badger brush
Merkur HD
Personna Red IP's
DR Harris Marlborough
 
This is a great thread and deserves a bump! :a54:

Amen! I wont provide any advice, but agree with the bump. I've been true wetshaving now only a few months....old "wetshaving" if you can call it that for about 2 years and electric shaving for 12 years before that.

Great thread Jim!
 
Since I have just started, I would have to say the most important thing that I would have done is invested in a good start up kit from a respected name. I bought cheap products not knowing what was good at the time. I am paying for that little mistake now. I am having to piece together items that have obtained some of the best reviews and fall into my price range. It stinks because I have had to get things from all different places and pay the shipping costs over and over and the waiting drives me crazy!!!! :out:

Another thing, I would have taken the addiction word more seriously!
 
If I were doing to over, I probably would find a way to get my straight razor honed by an expert before I started using it. It would have saved some uncertainty. Problem was once I got it and started shaving with it, I did not want to part with it to have it honed, and it was a long time before I got additional razors. Turned out, miraculously, I did an okay job of honing it myself, but that was a lot of study and fooling around.

I am still pretty happy with my Tweezerman brush, BTW. I was very lucky to have excellent guidance all along the way. I suppose I was very lucky to get the idea of extensive shave prep from the very beginning.
 
I think that if I had to start over, I'd have slowed down a bit on the ADs.

okay, that's a flat-out lie.

Let's try again.

Starting out, I think I MOSTLY did it right - got the C&E BBB, a merkur long-handled HD, and some creams and balms. Settled pretty quickly on Proraso cream and aftershaves as the standard for a while.

I think that starting over, I would probably just go to a good superspeed or fat boy instead to start with, and just standardize on Derby blades. I also would have added witch hazel in a lot earlier - that stuff is AWESOME. :) I think also that my first shave soap should have been an Art of Shaving soap instead of the Classic Shaving round I got for free with an order. That CS soap is absolute garbage, imho.
 
- I would not have paid over $10 for a 10 pack of Merkur Blades on Amazon :out: As a matter of fact, I would have avoided Amazon altogether and shopped on B/S/T
 
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We may learn from our mistakes, but I wouldn't trade a second from that period of time, however misguided I may have been.
Most certainly - it is afterall fun! (Whoever thought that i would say that about shaving a couple of months ago!)

[*]I would watch razor markets at B&B and Ebay more carefully before buying a vintage razor. The first few razors I bought I overpaid for. If I was more educated about the market I could have saved money purchasing vintage.

:laugh: Big agreement here - a trap i seem to fall into without realising sometimes!
 
Learn to trust your face.

I've probably been at this too long to give useful advice to new shavers. A lot of the advice on the board seems wrong for me. The only place that I completely agree with the consensus is that you need at least 2-3 minutes of prep.

Learning to shave seems a lot like learning to drive a car. There's hundreds of things to say to a new driver, and too much for the driver to remember, let alone actually make use of. And it's pretty much impossible to drive while keeping all of it in mind. You need time to internalize it and learn how to act and react. Eventually you go more by instinct and feel than thought and concentration.

And we all know YMMV.

When I shave, I let my face tell me what to do, and adapt on the fly. The main two guides are eliminating irritation and reducing the hair effectively. Sometimes, that means adjusting my lather after a few swipes or even stopping to toss my lather and start over, replacing the blade with a new one, switching to a different razor, maybe for just one pass or one small area, or even going back to square one to do more prep. While I have a general idea of which directions to move the blade during different passes, I don't have a set routine. Instead, I adjust constantly, depending on how my face feels. In some places, particularly around the chin and on parts of my neck, starting out somewhat ATG feels less irritating and gives better results. I never think in terms of perfect 90 degree angles or straight lines because my face isn't a perfect rectangle and the grain's never perfectly aligned anyway. The pass across my chin and jaw typically goes up and forward at the same time in a sort of spiral arc, roughly the same way a roller coaster takes a bottoming curve. Depending on the length of stubble and the place on my face, a more aggressive razor might make it easier to mow down the stubble, and other times it might be too irritating to get through, so I might choose to use a gentler razor and attack it with a few strokes at some gentle angle.

The key to all of this is learning to get immediate feedback from your face to limit any irritation that may accumulate during your shave. You also want to balance this with what's effective, since there's no sense in having no irritation if you're not cutting the hair. But your face isn't a big blob, so you want to do what's best for each part of your face. One part might be handled better with a very few passes with an aggressive razor, while another part might be best done with more gentler swipes, buffing, or one of the other advanced techniques. I think of the different parts of my face as cheek, jawline, under the jawline, adam's apple, sides of the adam's apple, sides of the neck, under the chin, the small of the neck, bottom of the chin, front of the chin, sides of the chin, mustache, cheeks near the mouth, lips, and finally the top line close to the eyes. Each of these needs its own approach.

So that's probably all too complicated for someone new to wetshaving to pick up quickly. The main points are to
  • let your face tell you what's right,
  • map your face in terms of roller coaster-like curved sections that feel different or need different techniques, and
  • be willing to experiment, stop, and go back in a heartbeat.
Aside from the obvious zen or gestalt approach, where I depart most from the conventional wisdom is in mapping a face as a set of curved surfaces instead of flat sections. The familiar techniques all apply, and they're really quite similar, except the blade flows over curves instead of straight lines.

One small tip is to keep your face constantly wet from when you first start your prep through the end of the shave, unless you need to dry it quickly to apply a preshave product. That means relathering each small section as you shave it instead of leaving it dry through a full pass.

Finally, don't be afraid to make lather the way that works for you. This might be dryer or wetter, puffier or more paste-like than what satisfies some average person. It also might vary depending on the product you're using. It even varies during a shave, with a lot of people going to a wetter lather as the shave progresses.
 
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I've been DE shaving on and off for almost 40 years. One mistake I made was using a blade for far too long. I couldn't figure out why some shaves were fine and others caused a lot of nicks, cuts, and irritation. I finally started keeping track and found that the bad shaves were after 6 to 7 uses. No wonder the shaves after use 8 to 21 were bad.

I also found that the kind of blade made a difference. I used to pick up whatever was available in the store. It wasn't until after I started to really look into the finer points of DE shaving that I learned that there is a lot of difference in blades. My favorites now are Feathers, Blue Birds and Iridiums.

The razor itself makes some difference but I haven't found it to be as great as some claim. I have an Edwin Jagger Chatsworth razor that I am very happy with. However, I can't honestly say that it shaves twice as well as my Merkur HD Long Handle even though it cost twice as much.

I also learned that an aftershave with alcohol in it tended to irritate my skin. I now use a balm.

Just my $0.02
 
Nice opinions they've oriented me in some way but still I Have 2-3 simple questions. As everyone is speaking of good and bad choices :D and giving recommendations. I'm thinking of buying that set: http://www.traditionalshaving.co.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/traditionalshaving/_STA-CRE-NOR/268168/Starter-Kit---Cream. I was researching like 4-5 days almost 6-10 hours/day of reading and watching clips and stuff about DE Wet shaving and I've visited more than 10 websites for purchasing and I've made 1 million combos :lol::lol: but from all the set that I've linked is best for its price and it's good because the online shop is from UK,EU and you buy all at once from one website and the shipping of the whole package is 5.50 pounds which is the best that I could find other websites in the US are 18$+ in Europe are 7.50pounds/euro + so I think that’s the best that I could find. However, should I take the Long HD or only HD. I'm big guy like 6.3 or 190cm and I have relatively big hands but even dough, if I'm using the HD only is it gonna be easier to shave my neck and the difficult parts of my face than using the Long HD.

Also please tell me is my choice for brush good and is it worth to give 6 more pounds for Edwin Jagger Pure Badger Shaving Brush than getting the Edwin Jagger Black Badger Shaving (I prefer giving 6 more if it worth because I'm gonna use the brush longtime). I really wanna purchase my wet shaving kit and starting shaving like a real gentleman I just need a little bit more encouragement that this is the very good choice for around this price. Thanks again for the info and please answer to my questions and encourage if that's a good choice that I can stick for years and get classy shaving.
 
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Wisdom. As Ouch said, the journey is important. Over eight years ago I stumbled upon a little store in South Austin and then QED via phone. Before forums, a guy had to depend on the store owner to explain what the heck was what. I have tried tons.

IF I had to chose one new setup to purchase today, it would be one of the following:

Razor: 50's SuperSpeed

Blades: Personna Platinum Plus

Brush: Rooney Heritage or Rooney Finest. If I was on a budget I would still get a less pricey Rooney.

Creams: DR Harris or Penhaligons

Soaps: AOS, Speick, IK and Tabac.

Aftershave: Speick Splash. Hydrolast Balm/Tonic. Aqua di Parma.
 
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The one thing I would have done differently was to not going for a BBS shave.
WTG + XTG goes along way. It's better to look presentable wihtout any irritation, then getting red irritated skin + ingrowns and a BBS shave.

I should have started eariler with shaving every day, and only WTG + XTG.
 
One thing that I wish I could go back and change:

When I was putting together my first kit, I was determined that I could/would find great products on the cheap. I relied on my own research too much and should have listened more closely to the advice of seasoned vets.

My first kit was a Tweezerman brush, Alabu goatsmilk shave soap, a Merkur 1904 classic open-comb, and Merkur blades. I not sure that I could have picked a worse product from any of the categories. This combo was so terrible that I almost gave up after a couple of weeks. Upon my dear wife's insistence, I transitioned into a second kit made up of the items I should have purchased to begin with.

Bottom line - Spend the money to buy quality the first time. If it doesn't work out, you can sell quality, but if you buy junk, you're stuck with it.

THE BEST ADVICE I HAVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME.

Sorry for the shouting, but this should be emphasized over and over again. More money is wasted buying poor quality than was ever spent on good quality.
 
One razor for the first two months and a big blade sampler would have made my progress a lot faster...and I'd have AD'd more wisely.
 
Instead of spending a whole lot of time posting and reading fora, I'd find a local mentor if at all possible. There is no shortage of guys hyping sub-(my)standard gear, and the encouragement of the ADs that (admittedly, I contributed to) go along with these websites is not healthy (not laying that at the feet of the owners or moderators, but the we don't do each other any favors by feeding the beast).

A good example of a huge difference, I started online and from reading, buying, and experimenting, I became pretty proficient at taking care of my razors and pretty well experienced in lots of gear.... Lots of gear. I'm not even going to share with you how much money I spent, but it was absurd.

My brother on the other hand, spent one day with me learning to lather soaps, hone his razors, and strop... He got an opportunity to talk about gear with me, learn technique, and was off to a very cheap AD free start (and he's got some stuff that I'm jealous of). Part of it is that he's smarter than me, but I think having me walk him through some things was very helpful.

I'd have a lot more money, not nearly as much gear, and a whole lot better start. Another thing, I'd really encourage is to log off for several days or even weeks or months at a time. That's something I didn't do for a long time... It is good for the soul :001_smile
 
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