Thread: First Real Shave

Originally Posted by itsjreal

And while I'm at it, I have 2 questions. Does anyone follow their shave with an alum block, witch hazel, AND an aftershave balm?

Yes. The Witch hazel seems to help out more that just the alum. I don't think its overkill. I'm a str8 newbie, but have been doing this daily for years with my DEs. HTH.

EDITED: I'm going to give the Cetaphil a try - good idea.

Congrats on your second shave, sounds like your making great progress. Thats why I enjoy str8 shaving so much, every shave you can easily see your improvement. As your pressure and angles improves the stinging will subside. With stretching I think you will find that as you progress you will get a routine down to where you will be able find a spot that is clean and dry to place your stretching hand. I wondered the same thing when I started, it seemed everytime I went to stretch I needed to put my fingers somewhere that still had lather, I even went so far as to only lathering sections of my face at a time so I always had a clean place for my fingers to grab hold of. However that got to be a pain in the butt and made my shave take way too long so I went back to lathering the whole beard and started trying to find an order in which I could shave so that my stretching fingers were outside my lather lines or could be placed in a spot that had been cleaned up already from shaving. Make sure your fingers are dry too, or when you put them on your face where the lather was it will slicken up right away, if they are dry it kind of feels sticky and will help. Basically it will just take a little time, just like everything else in sr8 shaving. Good luck and keep enjoying your shaves.