Thread: Direction of hair growth makes WTG & ATG shave difficult

In addition to scything and oblique or "guillotine" strokes, one other thing I've found helpful is to tilt my head to the side (to the left when shaving the right side; to the right when shaving the left). That allows you to keep your wrist and arm in a more comfortable position when doing the ATG strokes.

Cheers!

I quit worrying about direction of my hair growth a long time ago.

I do one north-south pass (superior to inferior)
Then one south-north pass (inferior to superior)

Then I touch up the rough spots east west or west east as needed (medial to lateral, etc...)

I have E-W grain, coarse whiskers that lie flat to the skin on my neck and underside of my chin, relatively deep grooves along my trachea, and easily irritated skin. I think I have coarser than average whiskers based on only getting 1.5 shaves from a cartridge razor before irritation starts and getting severe bumpy irritation on shave 3. So YMMV, but here's what works best for me:

Face and underside of chin: Pull skin upward at the cheekbone and shave N-S on pass 1 + ear-to-chin on pass 2. Result = 12 hours of no 5 o-clock shadow.

Neck. Pull the skin downward and toward the ear and shave N-S on pass 1, and S-N on pass 2. Yes, this is the opposite direction than all the advice says to pull on the 1 side - but it pulls the skin out of a groove, and onto the flatter side area of the neck. Result = 8 hours of short enough stubble it doesn't stick into the collar of my dress shirts when I turn my head. Since I have to wear the dress shirt more than 8 hours, I do a 3rd pass on my problem areas (the trachea grooves), unless my neck is already irritated.

For the neck groove where I cutting toward the center, I'm cutting "downhill and into a groove", so I have to use a very curved scything motion and only cut with the last inch of the razor. This causes the part doing the cutting to be traveling close enough to horizontal to give a DFS shave. Result = 12 hours of short enough stubble to not grab my shirt collars - BUT I can only do this 2 days in a row. If I try to do this a 3rd day, I'll get irritated bumpy skin in my problem areas that takes 2-3 days of "1 pass shaves" to recover. (If I do 2-pass shaves during this period, the recover time stretches to 5-6 days). For this area, I've found 5/8 shaves closer than 6/8 since it fits into the grooves better, and stiffer full hollow work better than flexy extra-hollows.

For the neck groove where I'm cutting away from the center, I'm going "uphill, and onto a flat area", so I can make the path of the razor about 45 degrees from center and shave lightly. I can do this 4 days in a row if I shave lightly, and it only takes 1 day of "2-pass shaving" for the skin to recover. For this area, the grind makes no difference.

I've also found that an extra sharp razor is a very noticeable improvement for getting BBS-ish on my neck. As a result, I touch up my edge every 7-10 shaves. I know it's sharp enough when I can shave ATG in the dense mustache area with no extra pressure.

I've never tried a DE, but have often thought buying one - just due the problems I have with my neck.

I too share this problem, so I use just the tip of my razor to shave my neck in a "straight sideways" pattern, (from the back of my neck toward my adam's apple). I have to be very careful with a spike point, but for the most part this works.