Thread: Skin Irritation

There is one thing I didn't bother to mention yesterday but will now that I'm thinking of it again. When shaving, with a SR or any other, there is a relationship between the number of passes you make, the keeness of your edge, and the level of irritation. If you decide to do a ten pass shave you're going to be smarting after that shave but good. Probably bloody to be exact. But the point Im making is that you have to be sure that your razor is up to the job so that each pass you make across your face is productive. If you're scraping away at your face and having to go over it again and again, you're going to have some irritation. In the world of DE shaving, I would possibly get some irritation from using a Feather blade or a Derby. The Derby was too dull for my beard forcing me to over compensate with pressure and more passes. The Feather was too harsh causing me to get all red faced with three passes. The right blade (somewhere between them) allowed me to do three passes, get all of the stubble, and do so without irritation. Maybe you find that with the right edge you can accomplish everything with two passes. However it works out for you, you'll probably find that you need to balance all of these elements in order to be productive and irritation free.

@OCDshaver: Well put!

Ok so what I did was tune-up my razor, I paid extra attention to the tune-up and was confident that the edge was keen (this was to rule out the edge). I then shaved, I did a two pass shave. One pass was WTG, the next pass was a hybrid between ATG and XTG. I concentrated on my my pressure and blade angle (I was pretty confident in my lather and my prep). The shave was wonderful, no need for anything but a quick splash at the end (and that was just cause I like to smell pretty ). Thank you all for your input.

It's funny because when I started I had a healthy fear of carving off a cheek/ear/nose, but as I became more comfortable, learned to shave with both hands etc I think I unconsiously started to push harder and close the angle down. The really good tune-up probably helped as well.

Why would too steep of an angle cause irritation? That seems counterintuitive to me (I assume too steep means between 0 and 30 degrees.)

Originally Posted by smpinkerman

Why would too steep of an angle cause irritation? That seems counterintuitive to me (I assume too steep means between 0 and 30 degrees.)

Too steep = too large an angle.


If you are scraping at your face at, say, 45 degrees it becomes more difficult for the edge to "catch" the whiskers and you will unconsciously apply more pressure. This is a Bad Thing.

rs,
Tack