Quote Originally Posted by Ryan82 View Post
Your above description should be a sign to stop. You should never have to take punishment during a shave, it should be comfort before closeness. Now, you could be one of the guys whose skin can tolerate an ATG pass, but many can't. If you decide to keep pushing it and eventually get great results then the more power to you. But if you just end up with redness and irritation over and over again just give it up. It isn't worth it.
Thanks for your concern. I agree that it's not worth it to continue irritating the heck out of my skin just to get a minor improvement on results. I assume that this will be a temporary phase that shouldn't last too long, though.

My first WTG shaves a couple of months ago, with the lousy prep, the shakey-handed death grip, and a razor that was only as sharp as I could get it at that time -- all had me glowing red in all sorts of places. But I got past that phase in fairly short order (owing to lots of help from the wet shaving community).

In fact, the ATG on the chin didn't really leave that area any redder than the couple of times I was determined to get BBS there on purely XTG passes. Umpty-five passes in any direction will do that

I guess the main thought behind starting this thread was to share with others who have been shaving with str8's for just several weeks (like me) that their progress might not continue in a straight line. I'm not feeling whipped by this at all. It's just another in a long series of challenges -- perhaps a little trickier than most. But if I hadn't made some pretty good progress in the previous 8 weeks, I wouldn't even be attempting ATG.

I'm going to use an expression that I don't even particularly like, but it seems to be appropriate to my SR shaving experience -- it's all good

I'm flying out for a 3 week vacation in the AM. I'm bringing my Robeson with me, but no strop, so I'll be using it sparingly (I'll see how well my forearm works in a pinch.) I'm actually wondering what a short hiatus might do to improve my shaves. I've often found that attacking a problem after a bit of a break brings good results.

Take care, I'll poke my nose in if I'm near a computer from time to time.

Ian