Thread: Last hope of a Desperate Man!!

It is hard to tell. As your blades are sharpened by someone who knows what he is doing I presume sharpness is not the problem.

I can think of a couple of things.
1st: you use too much pressure while shaving.
2nd: you dull a perfectly sharp razor when stropping. Make sure your razor is flat on the leather, you turn it round keeping the spine on the leather. Keep the strop taut and do not apply too much pressure.

Another thing: hones sometimes leave a harsh edge. You can soften it by using a Cr2O3 pasted strop.

Hope this helps.

While I'm no expert by any means having only been shaving continuously with a straight for a week or so (and maybe half a dozen shaves with a straight in the 3 months prior). I did notice similar issues with my first few shaves. My problem was that I was using way too much angle on the blade. Try flattening the blade out so that the spine is just barely off your skin. What I thought was about 30 degrees was probably closer to 45ish and it was giving me a quite harsh shave. As soon as I flattened it out to a proper angle, the comfort level went way up for me and I got a closer shave with less irritation and razor burn afterward.

I'm about two months in myself, similar kit, also shave everyday or every other day, and am still getting quite a bit of irritation on my neck.

After two months, I am just now reaching a point where I have enough experience to recognize some of the finer details that are actually causing it - such as...

• Pressure - I thought I was using a light touch. Then I saw another member's signature line which said a barber told him to flex his fingers when holding the razor for better feedback and lighter pressure control. Tried it and was AMAZED at how heavy a touch I had really been using. Now I can actually feel when I've hit the 'line of grain change' on my neck without crossing through it - which had been causing slight pulling and adding to my irritation
• Angle - thought I was using a consistent angle on all parts of my face. Not only did I realize I wasn't being as consistent with my angle as I thought - I discovered that different angle work better on different parts of my face: i.e. one spine width on my cheeks but only half a spine width on my neck
• Angle of Attack AND Stretching - two quarter-size hollows on either side of my Adam's apple were causing me immense trouble - until, just this week, I discovered stretching the skin there upward instead of toward the ear and using an upward sweep with the blade instead of downward were the key to these little trouble spots
• Stropping - on some days, or on some blades, I was using a little too much pressure - not enough to cause the blade to drag on my beard but enough to cause a little more irritation
• Blades - for whatever reason, some cause me more irritations than others (I discovered this when I picked up a few different ones from the same honemeister)

In fact, it was just this week that something started to click and I suddenly began to notice ALL of these little areas for improvement.

The thing is, while it all sounds complicated, it isn't - it just takes time for our minds to consciously, or subconsciously, pick up on this stuff and make the necessary little corrections and turn them into habit.

In other words, some people get it quick. Some people have more sensitive skin... denser beards ... have more complex growth/grain patters... etc. to deal with so it takes them a bit longer to discover their personal technique and get it down.

It may be that you just need a little more time for it to all really start to 'click'.

Even though I'm starting to notice areas where I can make little changes that deliver big improvement, I still wouldn't be surprised if it takes another four to six months before I'm getting 100% irritation free shaves... let alone consistent BBS over my entire face.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't give up hope yet - maybe you just need to give yourself a little more time before you begin to see real leaps in improvement.

Something different to try. Go back to basics. Just do the areas between your sideburns and jawlines using WTG only. Do that until you are totally comfortable with the razor. You will not get the BBS using this only. But right now you aren't getting one anyway. When you have mastered this technique (and comfortable with the pressures and angles) you can start to add XG, AGT, and new areas of your face. Take your time. It took me a month to finally put it altogether...

When you were using other shaving tools did you get a close and comfortable shave without the skin issues ? If the answer is yes than I would say it is either, as Ben says, a sharpness issue, or as Kees and grubbah said, a technique issue ... or a combination of the two.

With a truly shave ready razor and the proper technique a straight razor should perform as well or better than any other shaving tool IME. Keep trying and lighten up on pressure. If proper stretching is done with a sharp enough razor it isn't necessary to force it through the whiskers. If you hold the razor as I mention in my sig line you will avoid nicks for the most part. If the razor is effortlessly gliding through the whiskers on both sides of the chin it is sharp enough IME. That is all I know.

You're getting some pretty good advice here and you would be wise to try it. I would just add one thing: you may actually have an allergy or sensitivity to glycerin which is in all those products you used. In fact it’s in darn near everything that’s marketed for shaving. That sensitivity will cause your skin to swell ever so slightly which will affect the shave negatively and cause or exacerbate the irritations you’re getting.

Get your blade professionally honed. Then try using Noxzema as your shaving cream – plain old Noxzema – nothing else. Wash your face prior to shaving using a detergent bar like Dove Sensitive which does not have glycerin in it. Do this for about a month. If your condition does not improve then it’s got to be your technique. Hope that helps.

Best Regards,
EL

I'm not an expert, but having just put together some of these building blocks in the past few months, I can say that I walked a mile in your shoes, and I've found one thing, and one thing ONLY, is really responsible for any variation or disappointment that I've had with SR shaving . . . THE BLADE ANGLE.

The simple truth is that some blade angles work and some don't, period. Yet even when you are using the wrong blade angle, it can still feel like you are actually shaving (when instead you are just scraping the blade over your whiskers). So you keep lathering and scraping, lathering and scraping, and nothing seems to happen. It's not the moisturizers or the stropping that is holding you back at this point -- it is shaving technique, and more specifically blade angle that is the problem.

Like others have said, you have to reduce the angle drastically when you are shaving against the grain or even sometimes across the grain. I find this very tricky to do, because I don't like going against the grain to begin with, and making the angle shallower only seems to make things more difficult. But IT DOES ACTUALLY WORK.

If you want proof of this point, try this experiment. Use your SR for the first pass WTG. Then relather and pick up your favorite DE, with a nice fresh blade, and use that for the second pass ATG. Now, I bet you will have just about the cleanest, smoothest shave you've ever gotten, and it's not too hard to see why. Your blades are plenty sharp, your pre-shave routine is fine, and even when you are shaving WTG, there's plenty of room for error when it comes to the blade angle. But with ATG, you need that really close, really shallow angle, and it so happens that DEs are set up perfectly to give you exactly that angle.

Anyway, that's my guess for what is going wrong, and I hope it helps.

+1 on all the good advice so far!

Like they said, a VERY light touch is needed and make sure you are stretching real well.

It might also pay to play with the angle a little bit, if you haven't already.

I don't know who you're having sharpen your razor, but if they're not getting real sharp, or if the stropping is dulling the edge a little, that could be part of it as well.

How often are you having to get your razors sharpened?