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Technique

How long before your technique was pretty darned good?

  • One Month

  • Three Months

  • Six Months

  • One Year

  • Two Years

  • More than Two Years and still working on it


Results are only viewable after voting.
There is lots of talk about technique. I do not think there is any doubt of its importance. My question...How long before your technique was, well let's don't say perfect, but very good? Tremors may mean it takes longer for me, but at what point were you not a noob?
 
3 months to get the basics down, for me. As it turns out, my R89 didn't work well with my face and as such it may have been shorter with, say, a Tech or a New.
 
I've been wet shaving for a few years, and I'm just recently feeling that my lather is consistently good, and I still struggle with a couple patches under my chin. But then, I also haven't been very consistent about shaving. I only need to shave every other day at the most, and depending upon my schedule, I may only shave once a week. I imagine most B&Bers mileage will vary.
 
About a month in, I'm getting the best shaves of my life. But in a few months, I'll probably be laughing at myself for saying that.
 
I'm about 10 months in and while my technique is getting to be pretty good it's making a better, more consistent lather that I think really turned the corner for me.
 
Id say three months or so. I did get some good shaves but it wasn't consistant. I also had a point where I got confident with a DE and started to rush my shave giving me terrible razor burn but once I bought another razor it came back to me and I started getting great shaves again.
 
I think all of us are always improving in some way. I think the question should be more like how long time it took before you got better result with DE than with cartridged.
 
At 3 months my technique with the razor was producing good shaves, however my ability to produce repeatable quality shaves was not good enough. This took another 3 months while I dialed in my lather technique and pre and post shave routine to produce GREAT shaves.

I voted 6 months.
 
A couple weeks before I got a great shave, but after three months, the technique is still improving. Still figuring out the area under the jawline and chin. I have crazy spiral hair patterns there.
 
For me it took more than a year. The simple reason for this was that there was no B&B in 2005.

Now that the knowledge is readily available and there are vintage and new hardware available even to us in Sweden it needn't take that long!
 
It took me a while to learn my own process I guess technique is different for everyone
with more then 1 year under my belt,at 1year I started feeling pretty darn good about how much I learned
After that as far as mastering technique I would say as a whole that May take up until my last shave
like a boxer your only as good as your last fight
and the nicks an cuts are evidence to that an they come around from time to time as we all know
jus have fun perfecting your technique

take your time I never feel rushed when I shave
-it can help your learning curve if your never on time for work or something
but on B&B for me it's all about taken my time for that current shave an smellin the roses
i just prefer to take my time a bit OCD now but everything must be right not rushed
 

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It didnt take me a full month and I can't see how it should take anyone more.
I can.

If you have 30+ years of shaving with a cart, needing to relearn muscle memory so as not to push dang blade against dang face takes a lot of practice.

Then add in other variables which could go wrong, like having a run of bad blades and making really poor lather, and you have the perfect set of conditions for something to take a very long time to become acceptable in quality. More so if the hiccups along the way result in some godawful razor burn or other calamities that require time away from the sink.
 
It took about 6 months before I felt my technique was decent enough to get good shaves from a wide variety of razors. There is always some level of growth as there are so many variables in DE shaving, but not anywhere near the first 6 months.
 
I would be very hesitant to say that I have it all figured out but after about a month of experimenting, and generally having many more good that bad shaves, I reached the point of really understanding what I was doing. I got to the point where I could get a excellent shave (of course not perfect) each time I took razor in hand. And I can do it daily. I do think it takes some time to teach your hand and muscles a new skill. And then there is the combination of brush/soap/blade to learn about. But I guess no one ever stops learning so no one ever has all the answers. Quite sure that I will look back at this post in 6 months and cringe but if my technique does not get any better than it is right now I would be mostly satisfied.
 
It took me about 3 months to feel really comfortable with my technique - I do believe the more experience you get the better the shave, faster, closer, less irritation - as with anything the more you do it the better you get. Having said that at 3 months I felt I could pick up most any of my razors and get a DFS - I hope one of these days I with land in a zenful state in the shaving nirvana and be able to just will my whiskers off my face ...
 

Toothpick

Needs milk and a bidet!
Staff member
My shaves got way better as soon as I became more active here. which was about the 6 month mark I think.

I'm still learning new stuff and trying new things.
 
My technique got decent enough that I didn't cut myself in about a month, but I'm always improving. I've been using a DE for about 8 or 9 years and didn't start getting regular BBS's until recently.

I find that the older I get, the more I realize that I don't know half of what I thought I knew.
 
About a couple of weeks to really get the angle and movements correct with a DE razor. A month to get the pressure down. It took months for me to really start to understand lather and what is a really good lather. Much more difficult than using the razor IMO.
 
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