Thread: Could you shave with your eyes closed?

No, this isn't a challenge and I don't suggest anyone try it, although I'm sure most experienced straight shavers could mange. What I'm wondering as a beginner is how much the feel of the blade on your face plays in shaving for you? Right now it's all with my eyes, when I try to focus my mind on the blade position by the feel of it on my face it's only a vague notion. I can feel the cut being made to the whiskers through my face but that competes with the greater sensitivity of my fingers feeling it through the blade. Still, all positioning is done with the eyes first then fingers then facial sensation.

I have thought this would be very possible but have not yet tried it.

Seriously I could shave my face without looking at my reflection if I didn't have a nose, mouth and ears.

Use to with DE/SE in the shower. Haven't really had any desire to use a str8 in there.

This is just bizarre. I swear just this morning on my drive to work (which is about an hour) I was wondering if I could shave without the ability to see. Yeah, don't ask, I think about alot of weird s(*& when I commute.
Could I? I bet I could eventually. I once met a blind man who was a chef, ran his own restaurant.

Well, I am quite nearsighted. I can see well enough in the mirror to know more or less where my hand is in relation to my nose and eyes and ears, but it's not really clear. Things would be _much_ sharper with my glasses on, and I even tried to straight-razor shave with my glasses on a few times when starting out. But, they get in the way, fog up, attract lather specks, and just generally create problems of their own.

I think it works out to a bit of an advantage: I've had to be conscious of relying on feel, because I can't trust my eyes as much as I would like.

To me straight razor shaving is a combination of many factors. I am nearsighted, use a pair of computer only glasses for shaving so I don't have to look down through
bifocals. Start out without them to do my sideburns and then back on for the rest of the shave. But on non-dominant side it is done by feel and mental imaging and I do close my eyes. I have noticed that I am mentally imaging where the edge is as I shave and fell that I could shave blind if I had to, but with round toes only.

Short answere,No

I probably could do certain parts of my face but since I have a goatee I wouldn't want to try it. The other downfall is that it would take away the visual joy of looking at the razors I've spent a lot of money on

Even though I have a great adjustable shaving mirror, there are some strokes where I can't real see the blade and skin at the same time. I can pretty much 'feel" it along and shift so that I can see the beginning of the stroke, but not the whole section of face. It's one of the issues I have with stretching....how to do it without blocking my view.