Thread: unusual growth pattern?

so I did my first straight razor shave yesterday, and it was amazing. I only cut myself once, but it was a good on... I used a Weck hair shaper, so I had a square corner, and I was shaving my jawline a/xtg and the corner caught in the bottom of my cheekbone...

but I digress. one thing I noticed was that to get a good shave, you want to go wtg, atg and xtg... I found myself repositioning the stupid razor about 30 times each side of the face just to get the grain lined up right... I only have one or 2 good pictures of my beard grown out, and pardon this, cuz its in a bar in Austria (I ran out of razor cartridges with 3 weeks left in the semester). I'm the one on the left (in case any of you needed clarifying).

does this look unusual? Can you even tell what the pattern is? I could try to do one of those face diagrams if someone can post up a blank one.

Hi welcome to the forum.you have growth pattern that looks a lot like woman on the left side of your face.
just kidding.it doesnt look too funky .what your refering to is a face map well worth doing look at th post toward the bottom of the main page you posted this on theres a thread by hoglahoo called interactive beard growth chart thats what need, that and practice.

Good luck

thats about as good as I can get it...

I looked at doing one of those but I'm becomming convinced that my hair changes direction every time, or at least runs in multiple directions at each location, so I just put up with it and get on with it. I pretty much don't care any more.

In your case, the variation of direction doesn't look too unusual. It just takes time to get used to it and train your arm to follow the variations without having to think about it. There's no rush, it'll still be growing back in a month's time.

I've found lately a 'scything' motion works well for my 'just above the jawline' area to get the XTG stroke going. I only do one pass, and find downward strokes on my cheeks and scything on the jawline area works well with a single pass.

I think you'd be surprised with what you can do, wtg, alone. Your beard growth direction looks normal to me.

Oh, how I envy those with straight up-down growth. Unfortunately, I think men have "swirly" growth patterns. Due to my whisker growth I can't even shave from my jaw down to my lower neck (N-S) on the first pass without causing some irritation (since that would be ATG in some spots), just like you see in all those nifty shaving videos.

After you've been doing this for awhile you stop thinking about growth patterns, how to attack those whiskers etc - you just shave.

Have fun.

From my DE exp I would go WTG or revert to the ol' cotton ball trick.