Brushes, Creams, and Soaps

Grain direction shaving

By now you have gotten a good start on mapping the direction of your beard growth and should be seeing improvements in the finish product. It's really not all that difficult but once learned, you will find that shaving is more enjoyable and conquering "the beast" a victory every time you shave. Keep at it. Once you learn the general direction of your growth, you will begin to find the little areas that seem to go against the norm. It takes a lot of practice and attention while you are shaving, but it is worth it every time you get a little better shave!

You don't have to spend much

If you have taken the time to start exploring items on various websites, you can see that prices range to just a few dollars to over $200 or even $300 dollars! In all actuality you do not need to spend that much to get started, For what you currently spend just buying a package of the cartridge razors, you can get set up with an inexpensive razor, blades, soap, and brush. You just have to know where to shop, what to expect and what you are willing to call acceptable.  I really is subjective. Acceptability is not having the best money can buy, but rather what can give you a good, comfortable shave. In the end, that's what it is all about.

Purchasing Starter sets

There are several pros and cons with buying starter sets. These sets and generally put together with the intent of helping the new wet shaver to get started without getting stressed out over what to buy. There are a lot of products out there and user reviews are just a diverse. All of this just leaves the prospective buyer at a loss of what to get. Purchasing individual items can take time to research and the temptation to buy a starter set is tempting.

When I first got started, I purchased the Van der Hagen Premium shave set. This came with a small bowl, a 2.5oz puck of their deluxe soap, and a 22mm knot boar brush. All of this for around ten dollars at my local grocery store. It really wasn't a bad deal. I like the small bowl as it fits my hand nicely as I build up the lather, and their deluxe soap is easy to lather and stays thick during the shave. not quite as slick as I like my soaps and creams, but I have a remedy for that. I'll share that in another post.

Van Der Hagen Premium Shave Set

The brush however is not quite as nice as some that cost a little bit more. It is a boar hair brush that required a good cleaning before use, and it took it about a week to get rid of the smell. Probably the thing that bothered me the most was that it shed bristles like a shaggy dog. I was constantly having to pluck them from the cream on my face and from the soap puck for about four months. It did eventually settle down and became a nice soft brush. After about six months of daily use it became a pleasure to use. Not very stiff, but soft. So if you are willing to put up with loose bristles for a while, I would recommend spending the ten dollars.

Keeping it simple

Semogue 1305

There are other options if you decide not to go with one of those pre-packaged starter sets. You can do very good by spending a little extra on the brush and skimp by purchasing a small pudding dish at Wal-Mart or other type of store and then pick up a puck of VDH Deluxe soap or a tube of Derby shave cream. Here would be my recommendations:

For a nice brush that has a good backbone, bristles with very low animal smell, and becomes a sheer pleasure to use once it is broke in (about 15 to 20 shaves,) is the Semogue 1305. It is an 18mm knot brush that lathers pucks, soap sticks and creams wonderfully. It builds a great lather and holds it until you are ready for it. This was my third brush and my favorite. I think I have only lost 4 or 5 bristles out of mine since I have started using it. To me, choosing a good brush is of more value than an all in one kit!

Nordic Ware Prep Bowl

I went cheap on a lather bowl! For the most part I just face lather because it saves time and is less messy. However I do soak my brush for a couple of minutes before use and sometime I do bowl lather. The bowl I chose was the Nordic Ware Mini Prep bowl I found at Wal-Mart. It is about as small as I would like to go with a bowl, and it doesn't take up a lot of room in the drawer. But then for $1.00 I couldn't pass it up. Besides if it didn't work out It would wind up in the kitchen! One nice thing about this bowl is that if you do purchase the VDH Premium set above, this bowl provides a nice cover over the top of the ceramic one in the VDH set.

Soufflé Dish

And then finally I bought a ceramic dish for my soap puck. It is a simple 9oz.  Soufflé Dish that I picked up at Wal-Mart for $1.50. It is ceramic and looks similar to this one.  It holds a 2.5oz soap puck without any problem and has plenty of room to load a brush. It didn't come with a lid, but I found that a lid from a can of peanuts worked just fine!

Soap or Cream?

Van Der Hagen

You don't really need to make a decision on this. I use both and rotate them around to change up my shave. Soaps can run you less than $2.00 for Van der Hagen Deluxe and around $3.00 for a 100ml tube of Derby cream. These are the cheap ones and do an excellent job of giving you a good close shave. I will say that starting out with a cream may be easier than the puck. Getting the water to soap ratio can sometimes be difficult when starting out. The creams just seem to lather easier and have a good slickness to them. And, if you don't want to purchase a bowl, you can just load the brush and go straight to a face lather. Most days, I just leave my bowl in the drawer!

Derby Lavender Shave Cream

So as you can see it doesn't take much to get started (at least with the soaps.) The brush being the most important and expensive piece of hardware we've talked about today. A simple investment of $10 to $25 dollars can get you set up nicely with the soap side of the equipment that will last you for many, many years.

 

Mapping the Terrain

Calming the savage beast

If you took my advice in my last post, you should already begin to see the benefits of using Witch Hazel. It is a great anti inflammatory agent that really reduces the redness and pain from razor burn. If you are a young guy with bouts of acne, you will also see an improvement in that also.

When I first started DE shaving, I had a lot of trouble with remembering to use light strokes. Having used those disposable cartridge type razors for so long, I was use to the fact that you had to press down on my skin to get it to shave. Using DE razors the opposite is true. You have to remember to use light pressure and let the blade do the cutting. If you press to hard then you will begin to irritate the skin and razor burn and bumps will be the end result. Witch hazel is your best first line of defence.

One thing I did fail to mention in my last post was that Dickenson's comes in two different types. There is the one I use that is in the blue bottle and is found in the pharmacy department, and then there is another type that is found in the cosmetic department. From reading the contents on the bottle there is not a noticeable difference in the contents of either. The main difference is the one found in the cosmetic department is a couple of dollars more.

First aid use

Cosmetic use

Mapping the direction of growth

So far I haven't ventured off into DE shaving products yet. If you are still shaving with the multi-blade shavers, don't make a change just yet. One of the basic things that you need to know first is how to shave with the growth and get the best benefit with each stroke.

Learning the direction of hair growth is kind of tricky (at least it was for me.) When you look at your face, look at it as five different quadrants. You have your right and left cheek, right and left neck and chin.

Spend some time rubbing your hand up and down and sideways across one of your cheeks. You will notice that you will feel the pickiness of your beard as you go against its direction of growth. Begin to make mental notes of this growth and see if it is the same on the other cheek. Do this also with each side of the neck areas. What you will notice is that the beard grows in all different directions and this needs to be remembered as you shave. I would recommend that you concentrate on one area such as your cheek and learn how to shave in relation to the growth.

In my particular case, the growth on my cheeks are the same on both sides. However, it grows straight down next to the ears, it angles outward and down from the end of the moustache area, and then from the ears to the chin right above the jawbone area.

My chin area grows inward from the corners of my mouth to the center of my chin. Under the jaw line, it grows from the bottom of my ears to the centre of my chin. Then the neck areas it grows from my Adam's apple to the side of my neck only to switch 180 degrees about two thirds of the way.

As you can see it is not uniform, but consistent in each quadrant so there is a pattern that needs to be discovered to get a close shave. this keeps you from dragging your razor over the same spot numerous times trying to get everything shaved off. Learn the growth, speed up the shave and get better feeling results!

Once the direction of growth is learned, then you can apply the three pass shaving method. This consist of first shaving with the grain (WTG), across the grain (XTG) and then against the grain (ATG). This is then followed by a few pick ups that may have been missed.

Here is a hand map to use that is easily found on the internet. Print it out and draw little arrows that show your growth.

Thick or thin, standing or lazy?

Another thing that you have to think about is what type of hair do you have. Is it thick and closely grown, is it thin and finely spaced? These things can make a difference when it come to selecting a razor and blade. It also makes a difference in what type od shaving cream you use. So, when you are mapping your direction of growth, it doesn't hurt to identify what type of hair is growing there. It will help you to remember when you start learning technique.

Another thing that you need to try and make note of is whether your hair stands out or lays down. I have both and as luck would have it, my beard lays down on my chin area. This makes getting a close shave on a hard to navigate area. My razor has a tendency to just ride over the hair if I can't make it stand up. So try and note this also.

Tough or sensitive?

I really envy those guys that have a tough skin. My most tender place is on my right neck area. If I don't get things just right with blades, soap and technique, shaving there will make me cry like a baby. Even though the hair is fine, the sensitivity of the skin is extremely high. If you are thick skinned, count your blessings!

Avoid ploughing dirt

Finally, avoid ploughing dirt! What I mean is, start learning to use less pressure on the razor. This is a very, very, important thing to remember once you switch from multiple blades to a single blade, When you get this under control, your shaves will become very comfortable and you will begin to feel like an artist. When I get that perfect shave with no razor burn or nicks, I point into the mirror and at my face and say; "Beat you again, you fiend!"

All's fair in love and war!