Thread: First Cold Shave - Converted!

Just finished my first, "cold shave", I have a fairly tough beard, two days worth of growth to give it a test.

Wow - felt great, seems a closer shave than with hot water, face seems cleaner as well.

No cuts, no burn - did my normal shave, which is one full WTG, then XTG on the cheeks and an ATG on the neck (my favourite part) and done!

Used my normal routine, only instead of hot shower, good solid face rinse with cold water, applied the usual Prorasso pre-shave, the used the badger brush with Prorasso lather, finished up as usual with the alum block (sooo soothing), bit more Prorasso pre / after lotion, then the usual aftershave.

Fantastic - AFAIK, if I don't need to shower, this will be the way, face seems cleaner than with warm / hot shave. Must admit, I was skeptical...

My two cents Cdn...

Welcome to the cold water shave clan and there are a few of us that practice it on a regular basis. Glad you had a good result.

Bob

I do like luke warm to cool shaving. Hot and steamy just irritates my skin and turns it red before shaving. The only advantage to the cold I can see is that it helps to ward off irritation (b/c it's cold reducing inflammation to the epidermis), and helping to cause the pores to shrink and helping the hairs stand up more than relax and go soft. Now, the experiment would be to see if it effects blade longevity, i.e. can you get more shaves from a warm to hot shave than cold...could be interesting to see.

This is going to be my weekend experiment. Thanks for sharing your experience!

Yeah, I think there was something in me that couldn't believe that cold water would work but it works just as good or better. Best part about it is that it saves me time. This is important because the shave is unhurried, yet it doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time in the morning if you have to be somewhere early.

I guess the confirmation came from the Shaving Made Easy book Shaving made easy; what the man who shaves ought to know .. : 20th century correspondence school, New York. [from old catalog] : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive. It was the documentation I needed to take the plunge, and actually said that the irritation many experience is due to the hot water (read pages 50-52).

First time for everything - I'll give it a shot this week.

Hearty welcome to all cold water shavers! Believe it or not it works splendidly.

Definitely a wake up in the morning.

I'd read a few threads on, "cold shaving", and the more I actually thought about it, the more sense it made.

As a history buff, and the idea of SRS, ofcourse hot water's been around for millenia; having said that, just as long, the availability of hot water, the resources / fuel necessary to generate it for many, if not the majority, would not be so available - in fact, for many if not most, it would be a luxury.

So it made sense that this method was widely used, and still is today.

Either way, I shouldn't have been shocked that the shave was so successful. In fact the shave was cleaner, face came out much cleaner and smoother, and overall it was much more refreshing that the humid, hot shave.

Just make sure that after your rinse your face with cold water, you use that brush to really work the cold water into your face, and then lather!

Good luck! I have seen the light!

Wouldn't that not soften up your beard though??? I've taken to rinsing after a hot shower with cold water, but JUST using cold water?? I'm confused...