Thread: The Hybrid Pass

This all makes perfect sense to me. That is what I thought might be the case.

What I have been doing is adjusting the angle of my blade on the fly to accommodate the WTG/XTG/ATG stroke since I too have ever changing grain direction.

So my North to South stroke starts as a WTG, changes to a XTG and then returns to a WTG. I just drop the angle mid-stroke and then raise it again. But again, me being anal retentive and a tad OCD, North to South is just that until I have completed the whole pass.

Maybe I can get crazy, break out of my mould and sort the strokes differently. I feel years of therapy in my near future. I doubt if my insurance will understand.

When I was shaving with a DE (Merkur 34C), I learned in the first few weeks that I could begin my shave with an ATG pass all the way from the neck to the sideburn area and continue to do the whole face this way and then just touch up the jaw and moustache area. Most cringe at this idea, and I'm not recommending it, just saying it works for me.

With straights, I do a WTG pass then an ATG pass, then touch up. One of these days I'm going to try starting with an ATG pass and see how that works now that I have some shaves under my belt (no, I don't mean I actually shaved below the belt). I tried it early on in my straight shaving experience and I was clearly not ready for it then, nor was my face.

I'm just now figuring out (slow learner) that there are places on my face where N to S is actually XTG and approaches ATG. Plus, I've discovered that the only way to get my thick and corse beard to actually shave rathern than rip and tear (blade straight from Lynn, don't question my sharpness!) is to slice. So, but the time I modify for hair growth and then slic, I'm sure i look like I'm going Northeast to Southwest, but it seems to be working, so...