Thread: Hello from Calgary, Canada

I wanted to take a minute and update this thread, just in case someone comes across it in the future and is curious what worked for me to solve my initial irritation issues with the safety razor.

I found a combination of things worked great for me:

1) Pressure - ZERO pressure. Pretend that the face is a balloon, and all your doing taking the cream off

2) Cold Water - Subjective, but works better for me. Warm water tends to make any irritation worse for some reason

3) Wetter lather - the lather I was making was thick, but dried out quick. A little more water in the lather heloped a lot...

4) Feather Blade - After all of the above, I was still getting a bit of irritation, and the alum block still bit me when using it. Switching to the feather blade was easily the best thing that I've done to my safety razor. The difference between it and the Astra and Merkur blades was night and day, I almost wish I would have started with it in the first place. Smooth, comfortable, and it just glides down my face, leaving nothing behind. It's the closest thing to my straight that I've used so far. And not a peep from the alum block afterward. BBS, and no red, all in 2 passes. And this is comming from a back to back shave, 24 hours of grow, and both brand new blades. That feather blade, no wonder it's highly recommended.... It's the best in my mind.

I hope that one day this might help someone else.....remember, YMMV, but don't give up. Keep at it, and it will get better and better, and better.

-Jeff

Some more updates: Found out that some of my earlier issues were also caused by the lavender êshave stuff I was using....after I started using some other soaps and aftershaves, it was even better still.

Gonna go shave now. I got some new aftershaves for my birthday that I want to try out.....

If it's as good as I'm hoping it will be, I'll tell you guys all about it tomorrow.

A belated welcome to SRP, Jeff

Welcome to SRP Jeff, Raol is a great person to touch base with. He's helping me out and setting me straight

Thanks Optometrist and Armourer! I do have to hook up with Raol at some point yet, I keep meaning to set that up and then I get tied up with something else LOL...

So....a note on the Lavender I talked about.... I'm definitely sensitive to it. Tried some Castle Forbes lavender aftershave balm on the top of my hand at my local shave shop yesterday, and it burned and left red behind... Going to have to watch out for that I guess.



In better news...

Had a great shave the other night, as I had hoped it would be. Used Edwin Jagger aloe soap, 3 passes with my Dovo (WTG, ATG, and XTG with touch ups, BBS everywhere), and finished it off with my new bottle of Castle Forbes 1445 balm. Such a fantastic aftershave balm, could still smell it the next morning, and throughout the day!

If you've never smelled it, do yourself a favour and find a way to do so, it's amazing!

And just when I thought it couldn't get better, tonight's shave really hit the spot. Same 3 passer, BBS, easy peasy.The real treat (aside from the 1445, man I love that stuff!) was the new soap I tried, Alpine Frost from The Strop Shoppe. Wonderfully new and refreshing scent (I'm a smells guy, can you tell?), but the kicker was the lather. Pillowy clouds of lather that never dried out, with a glide that should really be categorized as NSFW... :P Amazing, simply amazing. I've only used Proraso and Edwin Jagger soaps prior to this, so either this one is the real deal, or the others aren't as good and I should be looking to try some more new soaps...

Needless to say between this new soap, and the 1445, I'm currently in Nirvana.

-Jeff