Thread: Did I Dull My Razor Already (4th Shave)?

It is very cold and very dry where I am at. Would that affect the hair test? Perhaps I am just doing that test wrong.

I will give my face and the blade another day to rest, strop, and shave again to see what happens.

Originally Posted by Swan

It is very cold and very dry where I am at. Would that affect the hair test? Perhaps I am just doing that test wrong.

I will give my face and the blade another day to rest, strop, and shave again to see what happens.

HHT is a misnomer...it is not a TEST it is a GAUGE, and gauges must be calibrated. I will not hash this discussion out any further than to say HECK YES!!! when it is cold and dry, so will be the hair exposed to those conditions...thus the reason we prep our beards before shaving (to make the hairs EASIER to cut).

Not only will a razor that "passes" the HHT on a moist hair potentially "fail" it with a dry one....but your FACE may also be dry and more sensitive resulting in elevated potential for irritation. In the winter, if I work outside for a day, I reach for the Nivea Sensitive aftershave balm....if I work inside where the humidifier is doing its job, I can enjoy my Clubman AS.

Do not sweat it...at 4 shaves in, you have plenty of learning to do probably...and a little AS irritation is NOTHING...heck, it could be that your face is just finally getting around to protesting the new stresses it is encountering with straight shaving.

Take a day or two off, and hit it again. This ain't a race, it is a double marathon If you are not bleeding like a stuck pig, you are doing fine!

I did not shave for three days and I had some pretty thick stubble.

My face dose not feels a lot better than it did last time, hardly any burn 20 minutes after putting on AS (before my face was burning for over an hour). However there is a lot of hair left on my face, like it got skipped over by the blade.

On my cheeks it looks like the whiskers got passed over, my neck not so much, is relativity smooth. I guess I can chock that up to blade angle. I tried my best to keep the spine as close to my face as possible, maybe when I was doing my cheeks I had it too close.

The blade defiantly grabbed a lot around my chin (both on the curve and the flat part right after the curve on the jaw).

My hair in that area is all over the place in terms of grain, I had to keep moving the blade around (top down, down top) to avoid the grabbing. At one point, I gently tugged the blade against the hair and could defiantly get a solid tug in. I do not know if this is because I was going ATG, because my stubble was thich, and/or if it is because the blade is dull. I stretched my skin a fair amount, perhaps not enough.

No cuts but I have about 4 or 5 nicks around my mouth (no tugging when I was shaving there).

Any input would be appreciated. I am still trying to figure out if it is me, the blade, or both.