Thread: New to soaps/cremes...need advice because my neck is hating it.

Remember those gels are made to go with the cartridge systems so yes it's possible the medium you are using is making your shave more forgiving.

Turns out tecnique was it. I guess I wasn't exactly accurate in my description of how I shave. On my neck I go south to north. When I used the soap I went north to south to go WTG to alleviate any irritation. Well, I was feeling my beard yesterday and realized that the grain on my neck goes south to north while the grain under my jaw goes north to south. So when I did the north to south pass two days in a row it tore my neck up pretty good. This morning I did a south to north pass only and everything is good...well, the other part of my face is complaining just a tad but it's no big deal.

Thanks for the comments everybody.

Sounds like you've got the right idea now. It's all about learning your beard. And having good pre-shave preparation. I can't overstate how important that is. What is your prep routine?

I too used to use Aveeno shave gel (which was awesome by the way) and noticed lots of irritation instantly from the MWF (and some of the other popular wet shaving tallow soaps). No change of technique or tools, just a different soap for me and I found that most big brand canned gels are formulated without anything that might irritate anyone in them. They are scientifically irritation free for the most part because that's what grabs the biggest market. Traditional shave soaps and cream use more essential oils and ingredients that can cause many people allergic reactions. The sad truth is until we compile and post up a spreadsheet showing brands of soap on the X and ingredients on the Y so that people may use it to identify their allergies and their perfect soap it is a crap shoot. I have some 30 different soaps and creams now and I would say about half cause me irritation.

I would like to propose to the group here that we together compile a spreadsheet of all products vs ingredients here... (and make it a sticky)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...GticzAwN2pKWVE

I started the spreadsheet with a few I have but feel free to update this with more products. The first sheet is soaps, the second is creams. We may also add a third sheet for pre-shaves, and a forth for postshave balms, fifth for aftershaves...