30 Degrees From Horizontal or Perpendicular ?

OK, I'm a left-handed dyslexic doomed to turning left when I meant to turn right and twisting lids on when I want them off. So I'm having problems with the instruction to shave WTG with the blade a 30 degrees -- from what?

Have I go this right? I lay the blade flat on my cheek and raise the spine from my cheek to 30 degrees. If I continue to raise the spine I would pass through 45 degrees to 90 degrees or perpendicular to my cheek.

This is the proverbial stupid question. I have an excuse. My brain is wired wrong. :gaah:

Place the spine flat on you face, lean the spine about 1-2 widths away from your cheek with the edge touching your face while shaving , that is about right... :)

As you shave you will adjust that to feel... I don't know quite when the 30 degree thing started in fact if you go back only 2 years on here you will find 20 instead... I always found it easier to think in spine widths myself :D

Your understanding is correct. While you probably intended your description to be just an illustration, I should point out that you should not hold your blade stationary against your skin.

Another way to look at this, and one that does not require that you keep track of relative angles, is to use spine widths as a rough guideline. For example, if you try to keep the spine of the razor elevated about two spine widths or so (off of your face) you will be pretty close to a workable angle.

Edit: OK, so Glen beat me to it....but his answer is shorter than mine....plus I'm a slow typist (or keyboarder, as they're called now) ;-p

Thanks for clearing this up for me - now if you could just help with that left/right turn thing.

The "ah ha" moment for me was when I thougt about the angle of the blades in the gilette Mach 5 blades I was using when I used the Mach 5 system.