Thread: Going against the grain

Last night I shaved with my straight like usual. I've been having excellent shaves and had built up enough confidence to go against the grain. I did my first pass WTG then proceeded to g ATG on my second pass. All was well until I got to my mustache and chin area where my beard is the thickest. Yikes. It was brutal. Not a problem with a DE but with the straight, it was murder. Is this normal? Do most of you only go WTG? Can I ever get 'baby butt' smooth going WTG? Thanks!

Originally Posted by danxaz

Last night I shaved with my straight like usual. I've been having excellent shaves and had built up enough confidence to go against the grain. I did my first pass WTG then proceeded to g ATG on my second pass. All was well until I got to my mustache and chin area where my beard is the thickest. Yikes. It was brutal. Not a problem with a DE but with the straight, it was murder. Is this normal? Do most of you only go WTG? Can I ever get 'baby butt' smooth going WTG? Thanks!

I just read some threads in a different post a few minutes ago about shaving around the chin and under the nose. Lynn gave the poster some good advice, go here: http://straightrazorpalace.com/shavi...tml#post884032

Hopefully it'll help you.

Originally Posted by danxaz

Last night I shaved with my straight like usual. I've been having excellent shaves and had built up enough confidence to go against the grain. I did my first pass WTG then proceeded to g ATG on my second pass. All was well until I got to my mustache and chin area where my beard is the thickest. Yikes. It was brutal. Not a problem with a DE but with the straight, it was murder. Is this normal? Do most of you only go WTG? Can I ever get 'baby butt' smooth going WTG? Thanks!

Apart from technique issues, the razor has to be very sharp to do ATG under the nose without an effort.

Congratulations. I am new to straights like you. Today is the first day I did ATG pass. My first pass WTG, second pass XTG. Then I tried my last pass only on my cheeks and neck. This went well except for one weep. I haven't tried my mustache yet. My original thought is to just do ATG and XTG in my mustache area. I am kind of scared of going ATG in my mustache area.

I've had success with a variant of the ATG pass in the mustache area. I go ATG and make sure the blade is running just above the skin and parallel to it. The whiskers in this area will literally pull the blade down into the skin if you ride the blade on the skin. If you keep it suspended slightly above the skin, you can get surprisingly good results with no cuts. I use two hands for this maneuver to keep the blade steady.

Originally Posted by mainaman

Apart from technique issues, the razor has to be very sharp to do ATG under the nose without an effort.

+1 ... Razor MUST be optimally sharp & shaving angle near flat.

IMHO (In my admittedly limited experience ) it's about 3 things..

Angle
Angle
and
Angle

I had problems XTG and ATG until I forced myself to pay attention to angle, I found I was increasing the angle on the ATG pass without meaning to... also I had a tendency to apply too much pressure on those passes. Once I forced myself to slow down and take it easy it started to fall into place..