Quote Originally Posted by stonebraker View Post
Let your face rest. If you have irritation and you shave on top of that it can make for a very painful experience. If you are shaving with a dry lather......that could be your irritation problem. If you see flaky stuff all over the place, add more water. Dry shave cream is like shaving with sandpaper on your face. I think it grabs the blade better than the hair does.
I think canned foam is basically dry, at least it felt that way to me. It gave me absolutely no protection. (I wonder if the Gillette Foamy and comparable products were cheapened over the years.)

When I used canned gel like Edge it would gunk up between the blades of my multiblade razor and I couldn't rinse that area off. So I pressed harder and cut through the intended protection it was supposed to give.

I turned to DE and straight razors out of necessity. As time went on I paid more and more for irritation and mediocre results. Unlike some people, I never could achieve consistently good and reasonably comfortable results in 40 years of trying. I'm so glad I'm off that merry go round.