Thread: 11 Shaves In - Need Advice

I am only a few shaves ahead of you but i have found that two WTG passes on face gives a good presentable shave, not BBS but pretty nice. For my neck the beard grows EW so still finding it hard to go WTG but find two N-S and one S-N, essentially 3 XTG passes makes for a very nice presentable shave

I've been using a straight exclusively for about a year now. My neck grows south to north as yours does. Following standard practices I was always doing a WTG first, then a XTG, then an ATG. I always had trouble doing the ATG on my neck. Felt like it was pulling, hard to do, etc. whereas the rest of my face easier and I was getting a BBS shave. I eventually quit trying to do an ATG on my neck. It always bothered me though that when I ran my fingers over my neck it wasn't as smooth as the rest of my face.

One day I was doing my normal N-S WTG shave on my face and just kept going down the side to my neck. Seeing how far down my neck I went I said, "hey, that felt kind of good, I may as well finish it up..." It goes against everything that is generally known as "best practice", but I now do an ATG on my neck first and then a WTG to get anything missed and can now get a nice clean shave on my neck with minimal to no irritation. Now, granted, you need to use a steady hand and a quick short motion (buffing) tends to help, especially on the lower left part of my neck, but I have much better results doing an ATG first on my neck.

Perhaps this is because the hair is longer??? I don't know. YMMV, but something to try if you're up for it.

Originally Posted by mcpell

I've been using a straight exclusively for about a year now. My neck grows south to north as yours does. Following standard practices I was always doing a WTG first, then a XTG, then an ATG. I always had trouble doing the ATG on my neck. Felt like it was pulling, hard to do, etc. whereas the rest of my face easier and I was getting a BBS shave. I eventually quit trying to do an ATG on my neck. It always bothered me though that when I ran my fingers over my neck it wasn't as smooth as the rest of my face.

One day I was doing my normal N-S WTG shave on my face and just kept going down the side to my neck. Seeing how far down my neck I went I said, "hey, that felt kind of good, I may as well finish it up..." It goes against everything that is generally known as "best practice", but I now do an ATG on my neck first and then a WTG to get anything missed and can now get a nice clean shave on my neck with minimal to no irritation. Now, granted, you need to use a steady hand and a quick short motion (buffing) tends to help, especially on the lower left part of my neck, but I have much better results doing an ATG first on my neck.

Perhaps this is because the hair is longer??? I don't know. YMMV, but something to try if you're up for it.

I took a break for three weeks, used a buzzer to knock all the hair off my face, and then tried this method.

The results were a bit mixed.

The Good:

I did notice a closer shave, felt more tug than I am comfortable with but I went ahead anyway and...

The Bad:

I got about 10 nicks from my first stroke ATG on my neck. My next passes I paid much more attention to the blade angle and did not cut myself but still had some agitation.

I think I am going to do a few more shaves since it has been a few weeks, then try two WTG passes and see how that goes.