Shaving Routine Improvement

I was pretty comfortable with the routine I had landed on regarding skin stretching and razor strokes. The progression was WTG w/ some pulling the skin up, XTG pulling the skin back from the ear toward the back of the head, and finally ATG stretching down starting at the base of the neck working up. I found that there was always touch up required along the jawline requiring stretching up.

I decided to change the ATG pass to attempt eliminating the touch up. I began at the side burn, short strokes up while stretching up. This allows me to better stretch the skin as I can move my hand down and pull from the area just shaved. I have used this modified routine which is working much better for me and eliminated the need for touch ups.

I hope this makes sense and is helpful.

Continue the journey and evolve!!

Nice! That IS helpful. I remember back in the day, everyone said go with the grain, go across the grain, then go against the grain. That meant, to me, down, sideways, up.

And then I mapped my face. Now I know that I should be going down, sideways, up above the jawline, and down, up, and sideways below the jawline. My beard grows sideways south of the jawline.

For me making sure to go against the grain last made a huge difference, and made for less touch ups.

For the best shave, you need to know the actual grain direction of your beard at various points on your face. The process of determining the grain direction is often called mapping. For my face, the grain goes top to bottom on my cheeks, but changes to go from chin to ear on my jaw line. In order to get the best shaves, I have to take that change in grain direction into account. Some people have even more extreme changes in grain direction.

When i mapped mine i found it all over the place. So i combined areas of direction to get close to wgt and that is more xtg in reality. In the end ive settled on not as many directions, xtg in two directions and atg for an ending pass.
Stretching helps but i also found it can lay other areas down. To stretch properly id have to do it in so many directions and shave in so many directions it would take forever to shave. So ive combined areas, stretch in some area and not in others, do 3 passes and come out with a near bbs but the main thing is a close, comfortable shave.

Somewhere here yesterday I read about and watched a video on strokes that BobH posted. It included what I have done since comprehending beard direction, which is incorporate variations on strokes that get at those odd angles at which my beard grows. It is the flexibility to try different things and the learning from reading and watching that has made my shaves better, almost no matter what razor I use.

Here it is, with credit to BobH: https://youtu.be/TQco5PWc2JU

Even after years of straight shaving, I have sometimes an idea how to improve my shave.
There are no longer the big revelations of the early years, but some tweak here and there still has the potential to improve my shave.

I consider the WTG, XTG, and ATG a theoretical concept to illustrate how an ideal shave should progress and nothing more, because sometimes the hair growth does not cooperate growing in several directions in a small area and some areas of the face are just not suitable for the ideal WTG, XTG, or ATG stroke and the stroke has to be adapted.

Over the years I have reduced my passes to two, plus a touch-up on the yaw-line, without sacrificing the quality of the shave.
I had recently modified the last pass in this area ever so slighty to see whether I could get away without the touch-up, but that was not the case.

Another lesson after years of shaving: There comes a time when most new ideas don’t make a difference anymore.

But it’s still the journey that matters - let’s keep exploring.


B.

I never mapped my facial hair growth on paper. It was just a trial and error of what worked. Given this realization, my shave did not really improve in the end but I have been able to eliminate all touch ups.

Sometimes it's the simple things which make a big difference.

Your routine is similar to mine. It takes time but it's worth it when the bugs are worked out. ;)