Thread: Castle Forbes Pre-shave

Originally Posted by EdHutton

I can tell you how to find razor burn, but you might not like the process. A big alum block wet and spread across a wet face will absolutely fire up the razor burn areas. I was having razor burn issues on my neck originally.

I found these items to be best at decreasing razor burn:

1- pre-shave
2- well understood beard map
3- A very sharp blade used at the right angle (lowest for ATG)
4- proper skin stretching
5- good lather well applied
6- cold water rinse and followed by moisturizer

On the pre-shave, I have tried all of the products mentioned here, and they all work to different degrees. I have finally settled on either a hot shower, or a hot lather and then apply a hot towel on top for a couple of minutes. Soft whiskers are much easier to shave.

Your beard map helps to do your beard reduction in a WTG, XTG, ATG order. At least on my face I can go WTG for two or three passes with no irritation. Which direction WTG actually is changes across my face based on the beard map. By the time I get to ATG, there is very little beard left.

A very sharp blade does not pull or tug, so you can apply extremely light to no pressure; and particularly ATG you can use a very low blade angle (spine touching the skin) and no pressure.

Skin stretching or skin traction lets you get the whiskers to stand up more. The direction you stretch in takes you right back to you beard map. You can stretch to stand up the whiskers and you can stretch skin to more flat places on your face. Combined with funny faces and different head positions, you can make shaving you neck much more like shaving your cheek. Not exactly like shaving your cheek but a lot closer to it.

When going ATG I use a thinner more watery lather, not running off my face, but not a pile of whipped cream either. The whiskers are so short after WTG, and XTG they don't even rise above the thickness of the blade. At least for me a thinner lather works a little better on the ATG and clean up spots.

A cold water rinse stops weepers and closes the pores, a good sensitive skin moisturizer calms everything down. If I want to check results, I can man up and run an alum block across my face.

Before I put everything here together into one shave, the Alum block was nicknamed 'napalm' -- I mean my face would be on fire. Same too with a alcohol based after shave, for a long time I just went with cold water and moisturizer so my face wasn't more tender.

Today I can get a BBS shave on my neck, and hit it with alcohol based after shave and not feel more than a tingle. Which means I didn't tear the skin up, it probably took around 50 shaves and a lot of experimenting to get there.

Good luck!

Best,

Ed

Great post. Lots of great advice it looks like. Especially the "learn or burn" theory using an alumn block.

Is this right?
WTG= With The Grain (direction the whiskers would normally lay down?)
XTG= Across The Grain (90 degrees of the way they would lay?)
ATG= Against The Grain (180 degrees, directly opposite direction of the way they would lay?)

How do you determine your beard map? Someone else said let it grow a few days to see how it grows. I think he meant which direction different areas lay.

I'm beginning to think learning to shave with a straight razor might take me the better part of a couple weeks.