Thread: Cold water shave is the best & worst ever

If anyone is having doubts about the wonderful shaves you get off cold water. Check out my soon to be posted pics of my 18 days of growth shave with nothing but COLD water! No nicks, cuts, razor burn, pulling, just 2 passes to bbs!

http://straightrazorpalace.com/shavi...g-month-7.html

Another cold one today. A problem I had was the lather, this particular soap kind of slops it around. I might need to change soaps, maybe use a cream tomorrow.

I'll have to try it !
My next shave will be with cold water and I'll see how it goes!

I've been cold water shaving for months and months now. For some strange reason I decided to make hot lather.... man was it nice to feel that warm lather on my face. I still prepped and finished with cold though, probably not going to waste the time keeping everything hot and wasting hot water

I have been using ONLY cold water past 5 shaves or so and no problems whatsoever. I will continue using this method. For beard prep all I do is Proraso pre-shave cream.

I shaved today with cold water, didn't feel any major difference, but I can say that I've got a nice smooth shave, so I'll stick to it for a while and see how it goes, it saves me some time in preparations

Originally Posted by tuxsax

I shaved today with cold water, didn't feel any major difference, but I can say that I've got a nice smooth shave, so I'll stick to it for a while and see how it goes, it saves me some time in preparations

For me it felt like my skin just took the shave much better, and resulted in less irritation. My increasingly better technique may have had something to do with it as well, though. And yes, knocking out all that prep time is a huge bonus, for me anyway. I also much prefer the refreshing feeling of cold water on my face compared to warm or hot water. Wakes me up in the morning!

I first read about this on a site called "the art of manliness" I guess it's a bit of a trendy site and tends to promote the odd fad I wonder how long will last.
I first tried cold-water shaving not because of any trend or difference in results but simply because the summers here in Australia can be brutal and really the LAST thing you feel like is a hot towel, lather and brush against your skin.
I found when it's really hot I can actually get little irritation from a hot shave, but I put this down to a mild heat-rash.
I guess I didn't notice a great deal of difference in the quality of the shave, but shaving with cold water in hot weather was very refreshing (in much the same way as shaving with hot water when it's cold is really nice).
I keep a bottle of 4711 blood orange and basil in the fridge too for a quick icy spritz post-shave, really refreshing on days when you break a sweat just sitting in an arm-chair.
I did find less need for after-shave lotions and balms with a cold water shave, maybe that's just because lotion in the heat just feels really icky, I'm not sure.
I guess if I was going to advocate, it would be to let the temperature of the environment dictate whether I opt for a hot shave or a cold one.

I can imagine that if you don't have air conditioning in your house a cold water shave would be refreshing and conversely if you have no furnace in your house a hot water shave in cold weather would be just the ticket. Fortunately we have the extremes of climate here so we have both A/C and furnace so the outside temp has little bearing on the water temp for shaving for me.

I get as good a shave with either hot or cold water but I save a little water by not running the tap to get hot water and energy too by not having the gas hot water heater fire up. Using cold water has not made any difference in how easily or well any of the soaps I use lather either. Just seems to work with possibly a little bit of savings in the long run. No real advantage one way or the other with water temp.

Bob

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Thanks to this 1906 pdf posted by LuckyCynic in this thread here and to forum member Frankenstein pointing out the instruction to use cold water to prep I gave it a try and got the best and closest shave with the least effort that I have ever had.

At the same time it really was a drag doing all of this with cold water. Still the results were so great that I am going to suffer though it and put my scuttle away making cold water shaves my default. It really is unbelievable but truly superior.

Yeah JimmyHAD, you're the numbskull that first brought up the subject to me in one of your posts and I independently found it in the Shaving Made Easy book (pp. 51-52). I tried it and got a great shave.

Still, I thought this can't be right if barbers use hot water and all these guys on YouTube showing us how to do it followed suit. I went back to hot water shaving twice.

But I couldn't forget what you posted, JimmyHAD. I instinctively knew you were right. So for about the last month I switched back to cold water shaving for good.

I hope you're satisfied.