Thread: A Journey of 100 Shaves

I forget how many shaves I did , using only my right hand . I think it had to be around 25 at least . I finally got the courage to try my left hand , and found out it was actually not all that difficult .

A year and a half and I'm still on my right hand....

Originally Posted by jeffegg2

A year and a half and I'm still on my right hand....

Well now I don't feel so bad about not feeling comfortable with my left. I've held the razor up to my face with my left hand a few times, but I'm just not sure I trust it to hold a constant angle and not jerk around.

14th Shave - 2/2/12

(wow, is it really february already? January just flew by....)

Once again another nice nighttime shave. The wife was in bed already, and the cat with her, so it was just me and the Razor .

Spent a little more time than usual stropping today. I didn't actually strop more perse, but instead went slower and paid more attention to my technique. After bouncing around the beginners forum a bit over the last few days I was reminded how important to the success of a shave that stropping can be. I think I have a good grasp of how stropping ought to be done, but I thought it might be valuable to slow down a bit and re-examine my technique. (there's just something therapeutic with the feeling of running a razor up and down that leather, isn't there?)

The shave itself went well- I actually found myself humming along at one point as I was shaving under my jawline. It made me chuckle a bit...barely over a month ago I was hesitant to even put the blade to my neck, and now here it is slowly becoming something I don't have to concentrate so much on.

As I mentioned earlier, I've been getting the itch more and more to buy another razor so I don't have to be without whenever I need to get this one honed. I'd also like to learn to hone myself in the future, but I'll hold off on that for now. SR shaving is a complex enough process without me biting off too much at once!

Originally Posted by armiller17

14th Shave - 2/2/12

(wow, is it really february already? January just flew by....)

.....

The shave itself went well- I actually found myself humming along at one point as I was shaving under my jawline. It made me chuckle a bit...barely over a month ago I was hesitant to even put the blade to my neck, and now here it is slowly becoming something I don't have to concentrate so much on.

As I mentioned earlier, I've been getting the itch more and more to buy another razor so I don't have to be without whenever I need to get this one honed. I'd also like to learn to hone myself in the future, but I'll hold off on that for now. SR shaving is a complex enough process without me biting off too much at once!

Don't let your guard down , when you're shaving . I remember my first , and second good cut was on or about my 16th shave . I thought I was getting pretty good 'til then . I'm not trying to scare you , I'm just letting you know that no matter how much experience you have , you always need to pay attention to what you're doing with the blade .

15th Shave - 2/4/11

For the first time I got my chin to the same level of smoothness as the rest of my face! I have been struggling with trying to find the best pass, angle, position of my chin, etc to achieve a closer shave, but before today all I could get was an ok-looking, but not completely smooth shaven chin. What worked for me finally was a series of XTG passes while i scrunch up my chin, then again while I open my mouth and stretch the skin down versus up (Hopefully this makes sense, its kind of hard to describe).

Assuming that I can continue this strategy to shave my chin much smoother, the only other problem area I now have is the front of my throat, from adam's apple down almost to my collar bone. The hair here grows left to right which is giving me some trouble. I'm not really sure how to shave "across" my throat versus up and down it. The result is this area ends up with two XTG passes and tends to remain a little rougher than the rest of my neck. Figuring out how to achieve a better shave on this part of my throat is my newest project.

Originally Posted by armiller17

I'm not really sure how to shave "across" my throat versus up and down it. The result is this area ends up with two XTG passes and tends to remain a little rougher than the rest of my neck. Figuring out how to achieve a better shave on this part of my throat is my newest project.

I have a similar situation with the hair on my neck. What helps me is angling the blade lengthwise so that the hair is being cut on and angle instead of keeping the edge perpendicular to the direction of the pass. Hope that makes sense... I can draw a pic if I need to.

16th Shave - 2/8/12

Had gotten a little lazy on shaving, but getting a haircut after work made me decide to stop looking like a bum. It was another nice evening shave, after my wife went to bed.

I had two projects for this shave- First, to keep a more constant pace while stropping, even if that meant slowing down more than I usually do. Secondly, I wanted to continue and tackle the area on my throat that I mentioned last shave.

The stropping went well. I really paid attention to what I was doing, and I found that just by slowing down a bit my technique improved visibly. I'll have to try and keep that up in the future. I know that stropping is incredibly important to a successful shave, but I think sometimes I (subconsciously) just want to get to the shave! I haven't really been neglecting stropping in the past, but I think that I wasn't putting as much effort into improving there as I was with the shave itself. Luckily, I realized this, and now I can keep improving with the strop too!

As for my second goal for the shave- I'm sitting here at work and I still feel incredibly satisfied with how shaving my throat went. I took myersn024's advice along with some other things I had read and tried as best I could. My goal was to try and use as few passes with the razor as I had to, as I've learned through my life that part of my throat is one of the most prone to razor burn. I cut up from the bottom of my throat at maybe a 45 degree angle. With the hair growing left to right this became something of a half WTG half XTG pass. It worked amazingly well. Only a few spots did I have to clean up, and this was easily accomplished with the usual XTG pass.

I must say I'm pleased with how the shave went, and another round of thanks to all those who read my thread and give me advice (on this and all my other troubles! )

This is really encouraging to read, I'm a complete newbie with the same razor.

I was told my razor was shave ready but I'm getting honed and re-scale in the coming weeks. I found my hands get in the way of my line of vision when shaving.

Hoping once it's honed and I know it's correct ill be able to give it a better more dedicated approach.

Thanks for the journal!

I love reading your shave journal...I am going to start one once my strop arrives