Thread: Pre-shave creams & oils

I have been avoiding facial oils.

I do love Proraso pre/post cream. It is amazing stuff.

I found another use for it this morning.

I woke up with a stiff neck and I was all out of T balm.

I hit it with the Proraso aftershave and creme for a cooling muscle lotion to tide me over til I could get some traumeel.

I'm sold on Shave Secret. I just apply my lather (built off face) over it with splendid results. To my nose, I find it lightly mentholated. With only a rinse off and pat dry, it leaves my skin feeling natural not oily. I haven't noticed any "carry-over" to the brush, nor extra grunge on the sink. Rather than fighting the menagerie at Walmart, I bought mine from the Shave Secret website. Ony took two days, Texas to Oregon. Now that's service!

I have tried many oils but I hate those like AOS that use olive oil.

The best I have found so far is REN which uses Timanu oil as the base.

Is there a technical way of defining which vegetable oil is the slickest and washes off with water the best?
I fancy making my own. The ingredients are relatively inexpensive and there are plenty of choices but I was looking for a technical way of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

I was using straight jojoba oil as a pre-shave. But the last couple of days I've been using a 1/2 1/2 mix of jojoba and liquid vitamin E. The vitamin E seems to have lubed things up a bit.

Usually it takes a bit to rinse off the straight jojoba on the blade, but with the Vitamin E mixed in there, it slips off easily. Seems to work similarly on my face too!

My GF is studying at and Aveda school and brings home neat info and oil samples. After reading here and there I have an idea...
Mix Jojoba oil with one or more of the following: eucalyptus, cinnamon (in clove oil), rose, and bergamot essential oils. I find jojoba really settles into my face, moisturizing it instead of sitting on top. The Eucalyptus and bergamot invigorate the oil glands and the cinnamon and rose oil "heats up" the skin, bringing blood to the surface. This seems to be what hot towels are also about. Purely hypothetical at this point. After some discussion I'll mix it up and give it a go.

When I bought my razor I bought the sample pack of AOS stuff. It was a lemon scented one. The oil was nice but quite thick and the lemon reminded me of lysol all purpose cleaner too much so I just made my own. My first batch was mixed up in a 4 oz bottle. I used 2 oz cold pressed castor oil, 2 oz of extra virgin olive oil, and about 50 drops of Sandalwood essential oil. Immediately after mixing it smelled live olive oil but a couple days later now it smells more on the sandalwood side but still a hint of the olive oil. 50/50 like that made it a little on the thin side. For future use I will probably use 75/25 castor/olive with essential oil(may mix a couple scents). Sandalwood is really weak and needs a decent amount to actually do anything(astringent, aids healing, ect). More potent essential oils would obviously take less.

Even though it is thin is works amazingly well. I use a small skim of it as soon as I get out of the shower then strop, lather, and finally shave. If you take it easy you never feel it on the razor. The AOS stuff is castor/olive/essential in the mix but I can gaurantee it is not extra virgin, thus removing anything beneficial from it. It is also heavy on the castor side which is evident by the thickness. I would guess theirs is 90/10 castor/olive.

Question: Yesterday was my first shave (thanks Lynn) and I was concerned that I may need a few layers of protection I went down the to local AoS and picked up a jar of creme for the Super Lather (thanks Jockeys). More on topic, I picked up a travel bottle of their preshave oil. The one thing I didn't ask or read was how to apply the oil. Is this something that you do on dry skin or wet? How much do you apply to the skin?

Originally Posted by travec

Question: Yesterday was my first shave (thanks Lynn) and I was concerned that I may need a few layers of protection I went down the to local AoS and picked up a jar of creme for the Super Lather (thanks Jockeys). More on topic, I picked up a travel bottle of their preshave oil. The one thing I didn't ask or read was how to apply the oil. Is this something that you do on dry skin or wet? How much do you apply to the skin?

Wet hands and wet face. Right out of the shower I will wet my hands and rub my face, then about a nickel size amount of oil(depending on face) and rub it over the entire area. I then wash my hands with soap(important step before handling the razor). Strop. Lather. Shave.

Your face should just glisten with the oil not plastered.

The routine that has given me the best shave over
the years is Proraso pre-shave, followed by Proraso
Green creme. Either apply the pre-shave, then build
lather in a bowl, apply the lather, strop, shave, OR
apply the pre-shave, strop, then build lather on your
face and shave.

Absolutely my favourite shave -- I'm finding it really
hard to use anything else, and my collection of soaps
and cremes has shrunken dramatically as a result.

- Scott

I've tried quite a few different pre-shave oils (sensitive skin and heavy beard here) and an inexpensive mix of extra virgin olive oil and castor oil works just as good as any. I also add essential oils to the mix, but be careful when doing this as some can irritate the skin. I made this mistake with peppermint. It's fine used in other skin conglomerations, but when used as a pre-shave oil, it was pretty irritating and dried my skin out. Counterproductive to say the least.

I use the AOS preshave oil as well. It works great. I knew it was primarily castor oil from the feel of it, so I tried making some of my own oil. I mixed about 7/8 castor oil with 1/8 olive oil and I can't tell the difference in shave quality between my oil and the AOS oil. Oil definitely improves the smoothness of the shave. I also discovered a good way to make the shave cream thicker and slicker. I whip up a lather first using a shave cream or shave soap, then I squirt a tiny amount of Edge shave gel into the cup and whip it up with the other lather. It creates a really thick and slick lather. I'm happy with the result.