Thread: Mirror, mirror on the wall

I'm with you Showme. In our bathroom the countertop is a little higher than normal, hitting me right at the beltline. When we built this house I thought that would be better thinking my wife and I wouldn't have to stoop so far to spin toothpaste, wash the face, etc. Well it doesn't work too well for up close shaving. Add to that the mirror covers the wall flush mounted rather than a medicine cabinet, so there's a few more inches I have to lean. We were in Target yesterday and I looked for one of these mirrors you speak of, but no luck. Maybe we'll hit Bed Bath & Beyond next weekend. She loves that place anyway, so it'd be easy to talk her into. In our walk in shower I have a 8" or so mirror suction cupped directly to the wall face height and I can stand right up to that one. Maybe I'll try using the str8 in the shower and see how that works out.

Umm, be careful using straight in the shower. I would use a razor that had jimps on both sides of the blade and tie a string to your wrist because if you drop a straight razor in the shower, well, I am thinking that it would be a little different than just dropping it in the sink. And I am not refering to the differing distance of the fall, I am thinking of the appendages between your shaving hand and the shower floor!

We have a Bed Bath and Beyond right by the house here and my wife is not allowed to go inside anymore. Let me know if you have any luck with a mirror there. If you do I will do a covert mission and get my mirror, dispose of anything that says BBBeyond on it, and install the mirror late at night so she never knows what happened. HA! My wife would be able to smell BBBeyond on my clothing! and would demand I take here there. Hmmmm, maybe I will wait until I get an SRP razor and am feeling guilty about spending money; then I will let her go in there.

Good luck, and I hope your shaving is better than your putting.

showme

5x hanging mirror. Works great.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...&n=3736411

Oh man good point showme. Didn't think about that. Too bad too because I wouldn't have to worry about my face drying out. The steam would be great for the shave I think. Oh well, not worth dropping a razor on my toe, or worse yet on something else a little higher up. Thanks for that link Jim. That looks like a nice one.

Good advice: never shave in the shower with a straight! The shower is for the safety razor. Along with a cheap boar bristle brush, stick-on magnifying mirror, and a cake of Dove soap when those "no time for a straight razor shave" times occur. For a real straight razor shave the shower is where (after the washing part) you shampoo your whiskers and then lather up with the Dove bar. Use a hand towel as a wrap after it was previously wraped around the shower head (hang it down like a tube from the shower head and twist it at the bottom) while the water temp. is on hot as you can stand it. Once for the shampoo and then the Dove lather second. This really gets whiskers soft. Then I use a swing out mirror at the sink, but a folding magnifying mirror (which you can use for travel; I do) on a makeshift stand will work. Make it work for you; shaving while learning is hard enough. We all need to see clearly what we are doing.

I've been looking at those extended mirrors, haven't brought myself to spend the $$$. Rather spend it on razors. That being said, I really haven't had a problem shaving with the wall mirror, I just use it to position the razor, I mostly shave by feel.

Just saw one at IKEA for $10

here is a link:

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/store...ts=13716*13721

And if you wipe your backside with twenties....

http://www.homecenter.com/product_de...U%2E6918%2DAPC

Haven't tried it with a straight yet, but 95% of my shaving is in the shower with no mirror whatsoever. When trying to shave the back of you head and sides a mirror is useless, unless you want to use 2 or 3 of them.

Ok, so the first year I cut myself once a week ... now I am down to maybe once a month. You do get to know every hair on your head by shaving "blind".

Picked this one up this afternoon from Bed Bath & Beyond for $30 and put it up this evening. Will try it out in the morning! Seems well made for the price. http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/prod...p;SKU=11726275

I bought one of those 1x 5x mirrors that Ray sells at Classic Shaving. Expensive ($50) but it works great. At first I did not care for the 5x, but now I really like it. You can see the individual whiskers being cut, and you can see why you don't cut certain areas well.

You can see where you are going too much with the grain for example, and just what angle of approach works best. The 5x has convinced me that all my razors are plenty sharp, and that my technique is what makes the difference. I can see that some difficult areas are in mini valleys. I can use the tip of the razor to get into those valleys and it works great. In other areas, the grain of my beard is too strong, and it will lie flat no matter what. There, I have to go a bit side grain. I can see that going over some areas time and again makes no improvement - that I have to approach that area differently.

It takes a while to get used to shaving with 5x, but once you do, it is really valuable.

Bob