Thread: Still doing something wrong, but I'm buggered if I know want...

Rub your hand on your face before you take your shower.....probably like 80 grit sandpaper.

Rub your hand on your face after a hot shower and some conditioner.....probably like 220 grit sandpaper. Time, moisture and heat will soften your whiskers, and your skin. When the elasticity of your skin increases, it allows you to pull in various ways and get the whiskers just where you want them before you mow them down.

I also agree with Lynn and Blix. Short meaningful strokes....about 1/2 an inch or so long. Hold the razor tight in your fingers....but keep the pressure light. That will allow a bit of flex...

....I miss JimmHAD's signature....it was good advice.

I better report back, it's been about 24 hours since the shave (I've managed to get a cold in the mean time and thus spent a fair bit of time being lazy).

It went a little better, for one I didn't clean up with a cartridge razor.

So I took a hot shower after I did 15 mins of hair conditioner on the whiskers. I did forgo the steamed towels which may have been helpful in hind sight. I think it's also important to mention that this whole processes took over an hour (talk about efficiency). Things I noticed, whisker length before shaving was around 2mm I managed to get that down to 1mm at worst in some places. I did the beard reduction with the blade flat against my face and that actually took a LOT off. At this point I thought things were going well so I did another beard reduction pass and all was well. Things started to go a little wrong after the WTG pass, I figured since I didn't feel any discomfort I'd do another WTG pass to see if I can actually get a close shave. I suspect I may have gotten a little impatient and applied too much pressure as I started to feel the burn (I'm pretty sure this is bad). I also attempted to do a XTG pass in some areas and that was quite a bit more uncomfortable.

I did manage to get the sides of my face pretty clean and fairly close (no BBS though) which was great actually, I think this was a better result than what I would have gotten with the cartridge razor. My skin was quite sensitive for a couple of hours after but I think since I didn't clean up with the cartridge razor I got off a lot better than I did in the past.

I think I have trouble stretching the skin properly, which will probably make a lot of difference. I'll keep working on that and see how I go in a weeks time.