Thread: Water shave

What type of soap were you using, hard or glycerine? Did you re-wet the lather on your face before starting to shave? I use hard soaps and definitely prefer lathering up before I strop.

That's why I lather, strop, rinse, re-lather.

I was running late before going to work last night, and thought I'd just skip shaving; but when I got out of the shower, I decided to do the "just water" thing w/ my Merkur HD Slant Bar. It worked fine. Close shave, no burn or nicks. But it just wasn't as much fun!

What he says may be true about the usual canned crap, but there's really an advantage to using a good lather. And I don't mean expensive. There are some good canned products out there like Noxema and some good gels. Some gys have used water, but it's not for most of us. You don't know what kind of skin or beard those guys had.

With great prep you soften the beard and achieve much of what the lather does, but it has more body and helps stand up the hairs. Also, a good lather is quite slippery. Plain water can't come close, especially if you've just prepped your face and removed natural oils.

I woulldn't even try it unless you have very tough skin and/or a light beard. You might get away with it on your cheeks, but watch out for the neck and some of the trouble spots. Why invite trouble? barbers have been using lather for ages. They don't make money on it. If anything it's an expense to them. Why would they use it and suffer the extra expense. Sometimes it even meant getting a lather machine, which is not cheap.

I do a 2 pass shave with my Feather AC, and then a pretty thorough cleanup pass. The last pass is without lather. I just rewet my face without rinsing it off. Sometimes, there's some residual slickness there from my previous pass, sometimes not.

There's nothing like seeing the very last vestiges of whisker being lopped off and running off the blade with the water.

Originally Posted by ScottS

I do a 2 pass shave with my Feather AC, and then a pretty thorough cleanup pass. The last pass is without lather. I just rewet my face without rinsing it off. Sometimes, there's some residual slickness there from my previous pass, sometimes not.

There's nothing like seeing the very last vestiges of whisker being lopped off and running off the blade with the water.

It's the residual slickness that makes that work. If you washed your face clean and just used water, it wouldn't be as smooth. But the Feather AC is the razor that could do it, if any razor could.

I think the residual lather helps, but I don't think its necessary. This AM, for example, I did a pretty thorough rinse before the cleanup. I think you're right that the Feather would be the go-to razor on this. Perhaps this is why I don't get as many shave off of a Pro Super blade as some others.

In any case, there are some places where I can do this and get excellent results. My neck can jawline, to be sure. I've had a tad more trouble doing this with my cheeks. Also, I find that the shave needs to be really close, and the beard reduced quite a bit before I can get away with this. While I say its my third pass, I confess I've done quite a few with the grain and across the grain passes on my chin area, sort of during the first pass, and with the blade at an obscenely big angle, to reduce the beard enough for the razor not to pull or hang up on the water-only clean up. For some reason, on my chin, this just doesn't lead to irritation or ingrowns.

http://www.en.nassrasur.com/razorcentral/secpass.html specifically mentions using a water-only second pass for a plain old straight razor shave. I don't know that I'd want to try that with a conventional straight, though.