10 shaving tips
13 May 2011 – London
What I Learned About Shaving in the three months since I switched to traditional wet shaving with a DE razor.
- Let the weight of the Razor do the work. The aim is to cut your beard not scrape off a layer of skin. Best way to do this, I found, is to shave with your fingertips only. Think of the razor handle as a lever to align the blade to your face not as something to pull on.
- When lathering your aim is to fill the brush head with thick soap. You are not trying to fill a bowl with suds. This tip makes the correct consistency obvious, I find, as it needs to be thick enough that the brush will hold the suds.
- Give your badger a good soaking and gently squeeze most of the the excess water out. Two swirls in the soap — the aim being to fill just the tips with cream and start to work the brush in your bowl. To add more water just splash a few drops with your fingers — it’s much easier to slowly add water than to try and add more soap to a too runny mix.
- Styptic Pencils and alum blocks can stop you bleeding, but the most useful thing they do is let you know you are doing it wrong. Specifically, if you are nick free and but an alum block is like some act of machismo to apply then your shave is too close.
- Prevention is better than cure. I.e. it’s much better to be able get a quality shave (See #4) than to try and fix it afterwards with balm, moisturiser, etc.
- Cheap stuff that just works: Palmolive Shave Sticks, Nivea After Shave Balm, Cold Water
- If your shave is not good you probably need more prep.
- If you really must spend money: Buy better soap as it will improve your shave.
- Waste of money: high end post-shave treatments. I mean understand why people spend money on Skin Food and the the like but it’s, IMHO, not really about the shave.
- Despite #9 I love my Fitjar Neroli Fuktighetskrem despite being tempted to eat it like some sort of mentalist 6 year old stuck in Freudian Phase 2.