Thread: Hair growth

I'm just wondering how the orientation of hair growth affects shaving.
Obviously we all consider which direction the hair grows in when shaving, but how does the angle of the hair change how you shave.
I have areas on my face where the hair grows almost outwards, with just a slight tendency towards a particular 'grain' and these areas I have no problems at all getting BBS. However on my neck the hair grows very flat to my skin in a very strong grain, which make going against the grain very very difficult as they catch the razor edge and cause irritation. I can never get these areas smooth with a straight, I can with a DE or disposable blade straight but not without discomfort.
Is it possible that if the hair grows very flat then it is almost impossible to shave to perfection no matter how sharp the razor is?
Could this be a factor in different peoples perception on how sharp they like their razors to be? some people may manage a great shave with a razor that others simply cannot get to cut well.
Any thoughts?
Nick

I know for me this is a real factor in how I shave.

My beard tends to sweep to the right so the left side of my face tend to grow down ward while the right side is growing to the right. Add to that a lot of irrregularities in the whiskers with some growing straight out and some growing flat to my face, and both of those right beside each other and mixed up all over my face, makes it a bit of a challenge. Luckily I have a light beard so that is one thing in my favour.

I usually shave with/across, then against the grain, but this means some creative stretching and blade directions at the end of the shave. For those pesky flat lying hairs I drop the shave angle down to about 5º or 10º to get underneath them on the ATG pass. My upper lip is full of flat growing hairs and why I fealt a need to develop a save ATG pass for my upper lip.

X

My hair grows flat to my skin all over my face, running downwards on the cheeks, and diagonally upwards from bottom left to top right across my neck, with an interesting swirl around the adams apple. There is a strange area where the downwards growth of my cheeks hits the diagonally upwards growth of my neck, which is always BBS because it gets an ATG no matter what I do.

I only do one WTG pass downwards on my cheeks, and that is good enough for me - its not BBS when you rub up ATG, but its so much closer then the mach 3 ever got that I am well pleased. An XTG (which I only do at weekends and special occasions) moving across the cheeks usually clears that to BBS though.

Until coming to these forums, I just assumed that everyone had the same basic grain pattern, but reading what people are writing here, I guess not.

Si

This is what I thought until coming here and then subsequently studying my hair pattern. I am slowly coming to believe that I have an unusual hair pattern.
Unfortunately I have quite tough hairs, which when they lie flat cause many problems. When I run my hanbd over my stubble with the grain it feels so very perfect, but if I run it against, It feels like the worst shave ever.
It doesn't seem to matter too much what angle I use when attacking these problem areas, none is more comfortable or close than the other, and I am stretching the skin as far as is humanely possible.
I hope that with practice I will find a good solution but even though I have made so much progress with the rest of my face, the one thing that I work hardest on doesn't seem to want to cooperate!
Oh well.
Nick

I am sure it will get better Nick - stick with it and you will find your own way. I am sure I saw someone say "there are as many ways to shave as there are beards to shave".

Si