Thread: New to shaving, looking for a mentor.

I do not have the same issues as you, however I mostly lather in small areas as opposed to lathering my whole face all at once. I lather and shave one side then the other and then the middle, more or less. I do not fuss with a lot of prep. Proraso pre shave lather and go is the routine. I wouldn't say I use a hot lather but not really cold either. Not that I'm opposed to either. Do you always sweat that much? I'm sure someone with acne in the past will chime in here soon enough. I have heard guys on this forum talk about their acne going away after the started wet shaving. While wet shaving we are performing I little exfoliation every time we shave, so it sounds logical. PM me if you have some specific questions, or any of the mentors really. Welcome to the forum.

I get my sweat on easily, so i try to keep the bathroom aired while I shower so I don't step out into a steam room, but i have found sweat to lubricate reasonably well too, not that I advocate using sweat instead of lather mind you .

Quote welcome I'm fairly new also and have found some of the best advise on this forum. the people here are always willing to help.

You may also try a witch hazel wash BEFORE you shave as it is also a mild astringent. Just a thought.

Hey Quote, welcome to the forum. On the skin thing, maybe we are twins...I have oily skin and am sweating a bit after a nice hot shower. When showering, my face gets washed a bit. I have to shampoo twice as well as wash my body twice. My face gets the shampoo twice as well as washed twice with body soap, I personally use either Lever or Dial of various scents, so it's quite clean and oil free before the shave. As far as the sweat, re-lathering is a common thing as I normally have to relather the other half of my face when I switch hands & sides. I wipe the sweat on my bath towel that I keep handy for those times you may get lather on your hands...not good to have slippery lather on your fingers when shaving.

I know I am not in your area to do a face to face mentorship, but feel free to contact me any time by PM and I will do what I can to assist you...we will get you through this, no worries

Hey, Quote. 'Not techy enough to build my own distro, but bailed on Ubuntu when they started selling search results to Amazon. I understand they repented, but that's a pretty big offense.

In person vs forum. There's no comparison. If you can get w/ an experienced guy, it'll take months off your learning curve. Should you make it up near Portland, gimme a hollar.

'Didn't deal w/ acne as much as odd shaving bumps. I also have very oily skin & broke out quite a bit the few times I took off the full beard. The shave bumps were just daily blood-letting w/ a cartridge. I couldn't control/articulate the edge(s), so it was just mow off the tops & clean up the blood. Stypic was my constant companion. The str8 enabled me to cover the bumps w/ a very light touch and still get pretty smooth. Being new, I still bled some, but a small fraction of the prior method. When I started honing, I started doing a single pass shave so I could have some stubble on which to test edges in the evening. Two things happened - 1) my single passes got so good I still had nothing to test with. 2) the shave bumps disappeared and haven't been back.

It'll be good to hear from you again to hear how its going. I suspect you're gonna like this alot.

Wow, so much great advice overnight. I'll try to answer as much of this as possible for others with similar issues can refer to it later.

@Razorfeld I've always had acne, but I'm starting to learn that it's just from touching my face too much. Especially after I just had a big beard that I would stroke to help me think, I've developed some bad habits that I'm trying hard to break. I find that just using an alcohol aftershave (I use Old Spice) and not touching my face does the trick. I also had started getting acne on the left side of my neck once I started shaving, but I eventually found this to be the result of my bad habit of sleeping on my stomach. The pillow would pull back the grain for most of the time I was asleep. So the issue seems to be under control, I was just wondering if there were any tips I hadn't yet found, such as what you said about making sure to stretch my skin, which I don't do 100% of the time, but I'll start, thanks.

@RezDog I had thought about lathering in parts, so thanks for the confirmation that it works. I'll try that.

@Steel Witch Hazel wash, is that for the shower or after? Sounds interesting, I'll look into it.

@shooter74743 I've tried scrubbing my face that hard before, this was just to get rid of acne before I shaved, and I actually found it did a lot more harm than good. I don't mean to speak out of place, so I'll admit that I don't know how necessary it is to completely remove oil from your face before you shave. However, the human body has evolved to be oily, and what I have found is that when I scrub that hard, it just makes my oil production react to make twice as much. So I'm a little reluctant to try that, and you may want to give my approach a try, maybe just for a week or two to see how things change. Let me know your thoughts on this, I'm sure us oily guys would benefit from a few PMs.

@pinklather Man, Ubuntu hasn't been the same since they ditched GNOME, no distro has. And that was right around the time they did the Amazon bullshit. If you liked Ubuntu before then, check out distro with a MATE spin option. You see, GNOME sucks now because when Ubuntu replaced them with Unity, they took it as you're not good enough so get more like Unity, so they did for GNOME3. But the majority of GNOME users hated it, so they forked GNOME2 and called it MATE. It's super great. It's kinda like GNOME2 is a vintage razor, GNOME3 is Gillete Pro Fusion Mach 3, and MATE is a Dovo or something. Anyway, sorry for the long Linux rant. I can certainly feel a lot of irritation on my second pass, so I'll try just one pass for most days and try to get that down.

Jeez, that was a lot to reply to. Well thanks to everyone for all the great overnight help. All this warmth and encouragement, completely unexpected as you find just the opposite on most of the dev forums I've used, makes me happy to know that maybe not all of the internet is such a terrible place.

Quote, yes, you have found that this most likely is the only friendly forum where we can interchange information and help each other with out hidden agendas and the like. In some ways we are like brothers - and sisters also since they have a section devoted to them. I have made friends I most likely will never meet face to face on three continents and have a good email exchange going with them off the forum. Read the wikis, view the videos and ask questions.

I too suffer from mild acne. I have found that since I have been using a straight razor, well more likely the prep, it has mostly gone away. It did take a bit of time to get used to using a straight but as I progressed with my skill the amount of ingrown hairs and acne has diminished. There is hope and a heap of help here. Good luck!

Many people, not just SR shavers, have claimed that regular use of witch hazel greatly aids in clearing up acne. Do a little Google search on it and you'll probably find something about it. If acne is an issue, regularly splashing some on after a shower or after you wash your face (once, twice, or three times a day?) might be helpful regardless of whether you use a SR or not. Since using good products for my shaves, my skin is in better shape than any point in time. Witch hazel is cheap and readily available so its worth a shot. As for questions and mentoring, I always give the same advice. Seek out one or two people who you seem to trust and take their advice. Everyone here has something to contribute but too many responses and too many opinions sometimes makes learning harder since the opinions can be so varied. But you will likely get a response to any question you throw out there. Good luck!