Thread: trouble shaving

My new straight razor is great, although I am having real problems shaving my mustache and the hair on my chin. It feels like the blade is pulling the hair, and I always end up with burns on my mustache and chin. Can someone please give me some pointers one how to shave that area?

Do you get the pulling feeling on your cheeks and neck? if not that makes me think its not your edge but maybe your angle.

Try adjusting your angle while shaving
Make sure you have good lather to lubricate
Stretch skin. tighter the better

Those are the most diffiicult areas for me to shave as well. There are shaving videos in the SRP Wiki that you can check out which may give you some skin stretching ideas. On the knob of the chin I like to take my thumb on one side and index finger on the other and stretch towards my ears. Then use the bottom third (towards the heel) of the blade and do buffing strokes side to side. Light pressure, flatten out the blade angle and don't try to get it all in one pass.

I don't think I've ever tried the thumb+finger spread technique. I'll have to give that a try. Thanks, JimmyHAD. For my chin, I like doing a WTG pass, jutting my jaw down and pulling my lower lip in for the downward pass. That's foreplay, I like to do diagonal downwards strokes on the chin, for going across the chin I do short strokes, pulling the skin back with the second hand, usually digging in with my fingernails (fingernails are important when you're a manly man of a straight shaving man!). I can't stray far from my stretching fingers on the chin, it's not easy to get the skin taut enough for effective shaving. The skin's sponginess on the chin (for me) makes stretching of that area of paramount importance for avoiding razor burn.

For the mustache area, if you are using a square tip or good french tip, if you have burn directly under the nose I would suggest going for a paradoxically closer, yet less burning stroke direction (if done lightly enough) of across the grain. Because if you go in a downwards stroke directly under the nose you have to use a much higher angle than normal, with the nose in the way, but going using a left or right motion, if you want to go easy try rightwards on the right side of the philtrum, and leftwards on the left side of the philtrum, using just the tip to scrape off those pesky hairs directly under the nose.

The mustache area can be stretched with a combination of stretching the skin by pulling the jaw down, just like stretching the chin area, and pulling the skin of the upper lip taut, pulling your upper lip inside your mouth. You can also facilitate this upper lip tightening by pulling up and to the side with the second hand on the upper cheek, though with a sharp enough razor I haven't found this necessary. Super sharpness is super easy and super safe, in this case. I've found the less easily stretched upper lip, mouth/lip hairs, and chin area to be the ultimate diagnostic areas for whether or not a razor is of truly shaveready sharpness.