Ive only been wet shaving since February, but recently Ive noticed two things: Ive been getting some really amazing shaves, and Ive calmed down about the whole wet shaving phenomenon. I still really look forward to my shaves, but I dont spend every spare moment on Badger and Blade or on obscure barber supply websites hunting for the perfect cream. Im enjoying the shaving more and worrying less about learning and about the equipment. I thought some of the things Ive learned in the past few months might be useful as advice for new wet shavers. Maybe Im unusually neurotic, and maybe Ive thought about this a LOT more than most new wet shavers, but I think that my experiences will have relevance for people starting the learning process. The too long, didnt read version is basically relax, have fun, and dont listen too closely to the advice of others (including this post).
You might think about why you got into wet shaving in the first place, and what your goals are in the whole process. It sounds silly to mention goals when it comes to something as inconsequential as shaving, but I realized a few weeks into the whole experiment that I had all kinds of shaving goals swirling around in my head, and it took a few months for me to really make sense of them. This activity, which some might call a hobby, rapidly takes on a huge symbolic importance for many of the people on this board, and I was one of them. I found that making sense of shavings importance for me helped me enjoy it much more.
I started wet shaving for two reasons one, I was sick of paying for Mach III cartridges, and two, I had impulsively bought a cheap Van der Hagen boar brush at CVS and thought the idea of old-fashioned shaving was neat. So the reasons were not especially personally important. A few weeks into my new experiment I found that I was making myself miserable by constantly reading about shaving and constantly comparing my results to an imaginary standard of perfection. My goals had shifted instead of saving money and exploring an old-fashioned practice I had entered a totally humorless competition in which I held myself to a strict standard of perfection.
Maybe your goal is getting the perfect shave, but this wasnt working for me, and it was leading me to feel bad every time I shaved, which is obviously not good on any level. I would advise the new wet shaver to think about why hes doing this: maybe youre after the perfect shave, maybe youre looking to explore something fun and unusual, or maybe youre trying to find a solution to a problem (like sensitive skin). I eventually realized that I was really just doing this for fun and to set aside some time to relax every day, and this (perhaps ironically) helped me get better shaves because I was more relaxed and I cared less about the outcome.
This brings me to my two next points: manage your expectations, and dont get overwhelmed with information. Dont expect wet shaving to be a total, instant transformation. At first, and even quite a bit later, you may have some rough shaves, you may look like someone spritzed you in the face with Windex, and you may nick yourself here and there. None of these outcomes are failures. You wouldnt expect to get on a horse and immediately win the Kentucky Derby, and although wet shaving is nowhere near as demanding as being a professional jockey, it still takes some learning time. Its learning, not a competition.
This is where not getting overwhelmed comes in. When I started wet shaving I pored over all the available resources on Badger and Blade, and I did it in a pretty stupid way. I read about Merkur razors I had to have a Merkur! I read about Tabac soap I had to have it! Eventually I read tons of stuff about straight razors and decided that they were obviously the best way to shave and I had to have one!
I got completely consumed in the opinions of strangers on the internet and they blew me hither and yon like careless winds. I ended up getting a straight razor and making myself totally miserable over it was I stropping it correctly? Was it sharp enough? Would it pass the hanging hair test? Was I drying it sufficiently? Should I shave with one hand or two? Was I over-stropping? I was scared to shave with it, and I felt like I had failed all the time. I literally had to put it in a drawer so I couldnt see it and feel guilty about having spent so much money on it.
Really this isnt specific to straight razors (and more power to the people who use and love them). What had happened was that I had convinced myself that I should be doing something that would give me the best possible shave and that would, in some irrational way, please the nice people who had written so intelligently and in such depth about the technology. But I hated doing it! Eventually I cut myself relatively badly and decided that it wasnt for me, and sold it on the Buy, Sell, Trade forum. It felt so good to be free of it! I look back on it as a funny, slightly humiliating episode now, but the lesson I took away from it is, if something isnt working for you and isnt any fun you may be better off getting rid of it, and you shouldnt feel like youve failed. Thats one of the nice things about Badger and Blade, actually you have the marketplace forum to sell shaving stuff that doesnt work out, so you dont have to feel like youve misspent.
Remember, its all personal opinion here, a fact tartly summarized by the acronym YMMV (your mileage may vary). You dont have to feel like a dork if you dont like Tabac, the Kent BK4, or Tony Miller strops.
Two final points you might want to examine your preconceptions about shaving, and if you can bear it, its always better to buy quality. Preconceptions - when I started wet shaving I decided, basically arbitrarily, that I was a soap guy. Soap! I would get a whole bunch of shaving soaps, and use mostly soap, and soap was just wonderful and people who used creams were sort of sad and deluded. I think you can see where this is going after a while I tried some creams and found that I liked them better, they agreed with my face better, and they worked better for me. Again, this has nothing to do with soaps or creams maybe youll decide that youre a Gillette man, that you only like Turkish products, or that youll only ever use vintage straight razors.
If this is the main reason youre getting in to wet shaving then go for it, but theres no reason to artificially limit your choices if youre just exploring and trying to find what works best. Specialize later. On this subject - a few of the other newbie guides stress getting a minimal setup and sticking with it, varying nothing, until youve learned to get a good shave from what you have. In my opinion this partakes of a competitive view of wet shaving: the goal is to get the best possible shave, and this technique tries to get you there as fast as possible. As I write above, if thats what youre into, then go for it, but if you want to try a bunch of different, rad-smelling creams, sample unusual brush designs, and collect the entire line of Master aftershaves then go for it and dont look back. The technique will come eventually it's not that difficult, and there's no hurry, this isnt thoracic surgery.
That said, my personal proclivities and budget led me to do my exploring in the shallow end of the pool I bought a lot of cheap soaps and creams and, in retrospect, I wish I had been gutsy enough to go for a few nicer things rather than lots of inexpensive ones. The good news is that there are lots of cheap shaving products that are really great (take Musgo Real, Spieck, and Omega boar brushes, for instance). You can get an excellent quality Gillette vintage razor on the Buy, Sell, Trade forum for less than $20. But if wet shaving grabs you youll eventually want to get some high-quality, expensive things. As I wrote above you actually dont stand too much financial risk buying shaving supplies people on the marketplace forum are happy to relieve you of things that didnt work out (unless theyre just obviously terrible).
I think the place you can see this most is with brushes its pretty hard to wrap your head around the fact that someone would pay $100 for a brush you use once a day (or $70 for a STAND for a brush you use once a day). Heres the most practical part of this whole extremely long post I would advise new wet shavers to go straight to a quality silvertip brush. If you get a Shavemac 177 or a Kent BK4 I dont think youll spend any time thinking, Gee, I wonder if that $20 Tweezerman Pure Badger brush on Amazon is nicer than the one Ive got? It sure aint, but if you get the Tweezerman, and if youre like me, youll be thinking, Yeah, this brush is soft and makes a good lather, but I wonder
This has obviously gone on way too long. So despite this long and rather serious post I urge all of you not to take wet shaving too seriously, to have fun, and to do what pleases you, not what sounds the most complicated or promises the "best" results. Remember, theres no Olympic event for shaving YET.
You might think about why you got into wet shaving in the first place, and what your goals are in the whole process. It sounds silly to mention goals when it comes to something as inconsequential as shaving, but I realized a few weeks into the whole experiment that I had all kinds of shaving goals swirling around in my head, and it took a few months for me to really make sense of them. This activity, which some might call a hobby, rapidly takes on a huge symbolic importance for many of the people on this board, and I was one of them. I found that making sense of shavings importance for me helped me enjoy it much more.
I started wet shaving for two reasons one, I was sick of paying for Mach III cartridges, and two, I had impulsively bought a cheap Van der Hagen boar brush at CVS and thought the idea of old-fashioned shaving was neat. So the reasons were not especially personally important. A few weeks into my new experiment I found that I was making myself miserable by constantly reading about shaving and constantly comparing my results to an imaginary standard of perfection. My goals had shifted instead of saving money and exploring an old-fashioned practice I had entered a totally humorless competition in which I held myself to a strict standard of perfection.
Maybe your goal is getting the perfect shave, but this wasnt working for me, and it was leading me to feel bad every time I shaved, which is obviously not good on any level. I would advise the new wet shaver to think about why hes doing this: maybe youre after the perfect shave, maybe youre looking to explore something fun and unusual, or maybe youre trying to find a solution to a problem (like sensitive skin). I eventually realized that I was really just doing this for fun and to set aside some time to relax every day, and this (perhaps ironically) helped me get better shaves because I was more relaxed and I cared less about the outcome.
This brings me to my two next points: manage your expectations, and dont get overwhelmed with information. Dont expect wet shaving to be a total, instant transformation. At first, and even quite a bit later, you may have some rough shaves, you may look like someone spritzed you in the face with Windex, and you may nick yourself here and there. None of these outcomes are failures. You wouldnt expect to get on a horse and immediately win the Kentucky Derby, and although wet shaving is nowhere near as demanding as being a professional jockey, it still takes some learning time. Its learning, not a competition.
This is where not getting overwhelmed comes in. When I started wet shaving I pored over all the available resources on Badger and Blade, and I did it in a pretty stupid way. I read about Merkur razors I had to have a Merkur! I read about Tabac soap I had to have it! Eventually I read tons of stuff about straight razors and decided that they were obviously the best way to shave and I had to have one!
I got completely consumed in the opinions of strangers on the internet and they blew me hither and yon like careless winds. I ended up getting a straight razor and making myself totally miserable over it was I stropping it correctly? Was it sharp enough? Would it pass the hanging hair test? Was I drying it sufficiently? Should I shave with one hand or two? Was I over-stropping? I was scared to shave with it, and I felt like I had failed all the time. I literally had to put it in a drawer so I couldnt see it and feel guilty about having spent so much money on it.
Really this isnt specific to straight razors (and more power to the people who use and love them). What had happened was that I had convinced myself that I should be doing something that would give me the best possible shave and that would, in some irrational way, please the nice people who had written so intelligently and in such depth about the technology. But I hated doing it! Eventually I cut myself relatively badly and decided that it wasnt for me, and sold it on the Buy, Sell, Trade forum. It felt so good to be free of it! I look back on it as a funny, slightly humiliating episode now, but the lesson I took away from it is, if something isnt working for you and isnt any fun you may be better off getting rid of it, and you shouldnt feel like youve failed. Thats one of the nice things about Badger and Blade, actually you have the marketplace forum to sell shaving stuff that doesnt work out, so you dont have to feel like youve misspent.
Remember, its all personal opinion here, a fact tartly summarized by the acronym YMMV (your mileage may vary). You dont have to feel like a dork if you dont like Tabac, the Kent BK4, or Tony Miller strops.
Two final points you might want to examine your preconceptions about shaving, and if you can bear it, its always better to buy quality. Preconceptions - when I started wet shaving I decided, basically arbitrarily, that I was a soap guy. Soap! I would get a whole bunch of shaving soaps, and use mostly soap, and soap was just wonderful and people who used creams were sort of sad and deluded. I think you can see where this is going after a while I tried some creams and found that I liked them better, they agreed with my face better, and they worked better for me. Again, this has nothing to do with soaps or creams maybe youll decide that youre a Gillette man, that you only like Turkish products, or that youll only ever use vintage straight razors.
If this is the main reason youre getting in to wet shaving then go for it, but theres no reason to artificially limit your choices if youre just exploring and trying to find what works best. Specialize later. On this subject - a few of the other newbie guides stress getting a minimal setup and sticking with it, varying nothing, until youve learned to get a good shave from what you have. In my opinion this partakes of a competitive view of wet shaving: the goal is to get the best possible shave, and this technique tries to get you there as fast as possible. As I write above, if thats what youre into, then go for it, but if you want to try a bunch of different, rad-smelling creams, sample unusual brush designs, and collect the entire line of Master aftershaves then go for it and dont look back. The technique will come eventually it's not that difficult, and there's no hurry, this isnt thoracic surgery.
That said, my personal proclivities and budget led me to do my exploring in the shallow end of the pool I bought a lot of cheap soaps and creams and, in retrospect, I wish I had been gutsy enough to go for a few nicer things rather than lots of inexpensive ones. The good news is that there are lots of cheap shaving products that are really great (take Musgo Real, Spieck, and Omega boar brushes, for instance). You can get an excellent quality Gillette vintage razor on the Buy, Sell, Trade forum for less than $20. But if wet shaving grabs you youll eventually want to get some high-quality, expensive things. As I wrote above you actually dont stand too much financial risk buying shaving supplies people on the marketplace forum are happy to relieve you of things that didnt work out (unless theyre just obviously terrible).
I think the place you can see this most is with brushes its pretty hard to wrap your head around the fact that someone would pay $100 for a brush you use once a day (or $70 for a STAND for a brush you use once a day). Heres the most practical part of this whole extremely long post I would advise new wet shavers to go straight to a quality silvertip brush. If you get a Shavemac 177 or a Kent BK4 I dont think youll spend any time thinking, Gee, I wonder if that $20 Tweezerman Pure Badger brush on Amazon is nicer than the one Ive got? It sure aint, but if you get the Tweezerman, and if youre like me, youll be thinking, Yeah, this brush is soft and makes a good lather, but I wonder
This has obviously gone on way too long. So despite this long and rather serious post I urge all of you not to take wet shaving too seriously, to have fun, and to do what pleases you, not what sounds the most complicated or promises the "best" results. Remember, theres no Olympic event for shaving YET.
