Ingrown prevention advice needed !

Gents,

I've been wet shaving with a DE razor for over a year and the results have been great.

One of the main reasons why I switched from disposable blade to DE blades was to achieve a rash free, smooth, ingrown free shave.

I have been able to eliminate most of my ingrown hairs. However, recently the ingrowns returned.

Recently, a few hours after each shave, I get one or two really bad ingrowns. It's usually around he chin area. The irritation is pretty bad (looks like a single huge pimple).

I tried the rubbing area with a toothbrush but haven't been Able to eliminate / remove the hair.

The only way to get rid of the hair is to remove it with a tweezer - which causes more irritation.

I have very course hair that grows in different directions.

Shave technique is as follows:
Face wash - I shave before showering.
Lather with razoroxk (xxx or bayrum)
Face lather
Single wtg pass (merkur 34 w/ feather blades) & touch ups.
Rinse
Witch hazel

I tried a pre shave cream and did not notice much difference.

My shave technique has been pretty much the same since day one. The only change I made, as of 2-3 months ago, for time saving purposes, I no longer do 2-3 pass shave.

Am I doing something wrong?

Any thoughts / input is appreciated.

Ara .

I can't tell you what will work for you, I can only tell you that I found what worked for me by keeping changing shave routine.

BUT if you do this then be take care of the following:

1). Change only one thing at a time.
2). Keep your modified routine going long enough to see the effects.

I tried various post shave routines, but what worked for me in the end was dropping alcohol splashes - a light application of balm is enough.

My pre shave routine involves using a mild face scrub and rather than face-lather I switched back to bowl lathering - the result was just the right ammount of exfoliation without irritating my skin

On my face I only use the Plisson Synthetic brush. I used to love using boars and scrubby 2 band brushes but I found that was too much for my facial skin.

I never shave ATG and never shave a patch of skin without lather on it (it sounds obvious but I did it more than I realised when I actually took the time to be aware of this habbit)

Good luck

+1 on going back to the bowl for lather and no alcohol on the face...I also added a little bit of tea tree oil to alcohol-free witchhazel...(too much working on the skin with the brush was not kind to my skin but I miss it).

Also, make sure your blade is cleaned well at the end of the process although you are probably doing that.

I have had good luck with a moisturizer with salicylic acid in it but I only use it sparingly and on the more prone areas.

Best of luck!

I've found that the only place I'll get them is on my chin/ below my lip area.
What worked for me was to stop pulling my lip in to tighten the skin and when doing chin, nt to do the crazy face contortions to tighten the skin in that area. I do it a little, but not alot and that seemed to be what caused them for me.
ymmv and hope this helps.

Sorry I won't be much help as I still have this issue. A couple things I'd like to note that helped me out. Preshave oil considerably made my ingrown hairs worse. Shaving with cold water has seemed to help a lot for me. I started taking cold showers and stopped with the warm water prep and I think it has helped. I use witch hazel too but I'm not entirely sure it helps yet. One thing I've found is that sometimes mine just come back for no apparent reason. I could be fine for a month and even go on to start doing two pass shaves and be fine for awhile. Then out of nowhere I'll have ingrown hairs start popping up. I'll be watching this with a close eye.

Could you be using the same blade too long? I notice when I was trying to see what was the max I could stretch a blade that I got a lot of ingrowns the further I stretched a blade. I don't have the problem when I replace the blade every 4-6 shaves. Also stretching my skin too tight also increased the chance of an ingrown.

Because this is happening on the chin, I suspect inadvertent changes to blade angle, and maybe pressure. The Merkur 34c cuts at a wide variety of angles, and controlling blade angle around the chin can be difficult. It might help to try a razor like a Tech, which makes it difficult to cut at all if the blade angle is too steep. Use a light touch, even if that means leaving some stubble behind.

If possible I would also try some gentle exfoliation around the chin, before the ingrowns appear. Maybe a couple hours after shaving? That could be tricky to fit into your day, but give it some thought.

you might not using the witch hazel as it tightens the skin

I'm fortunate that I don't suffer from ingrown hairs, but I have read that they are generally caused by shaving ATG. When you start multiple passes again, you might try avoiding ATG passes in favor of two XTG passes in opposite directions.

1. Face mapping (let the stubble grow out, then rub a cotton ball over to find your actual WTG, XTG, and ATG directions).

2. 100% Tea Tree Oil; expensive but worth it. Dab over the ingrowns (or that area after tweezing) at night until they heal.

3. Only change 1 aspect of your routine as others have mentioned-I might go with shaving after the shower to allow for complete hydration of your facial hairs.

4. R-E-L-A-X! Although this may sound ridiculous, it works. Sometimes, we get into a 'routine' that is working, but unbeknownst to us, we have modified it somewhat( or pushing for that faster shave time) and things go awry. I have had times when ingrowns showed up for no apparent reason, but then when I slowed down my routine, I could see a positive response. Sometimes no matter what you do, if you are prone to ingrowns, you will get them no matter what! Stick with a good routine, give your face a rest when needed and you will see improvements eventually.


marty

Ara72 said:

Gents,

...I tried the rubbing area with a toothbrush but haven't been Able to eliminate / remove the hair. [I found that using a old tooth-brush to ‘gently’ exfoliate my skin was too soft in lifting up in grown hairs. I wash and prep my face with Cetaphil Antibacterial Soap (by loading my somewhat 'stiff' Natural Bristle Brush brush with Cetaphil soap then scrub my face in a circular motion...works great for ingrown hairs).]

The only way to get rid of the hair is to remove it with a tweezer - which causes more irritation. [If one or two present, the trapped hair can be gently [lifted], with sterilized tweezers [or needle],. The hair should only be coaxed out from under the skin (then shaved off), and not plucked out so as to avoid scarring and possible recurrence.]

...

Ara .

Click to expand...

Ara:
As a Afro-American...I've found the 'tips' above really helped me in my battle with ingrown hairs.

[FONT=&amp]"[For] many people, [shaving] is not [simply a] voyage of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance". Philip Andrew Adams[/FONT]

Ara,

I can relate. I too came to DE shaving to battle problems with ingrown hairs, and, over time, have mostly eliminated them. I still get that occasional patch, though, if I make a mistake (bad angle, too much pressure) or, sometimes, for reasons I can't explain. Like you, I generally stick to one WTG pass, or two WTG passes if I skip a day. ATG, or even XTG in my worst spots, is out of the question. For what it's worth, here's some other things that I do that have helped me:

* I go easier on the tweezers than I used to, and have gotten better at plucking a single hair without too much irritation. But, as someone above said, it is better to "free" the hair and shave it rather than pull it out. If possible.

*I use a product called Bump Patrol. It's strong on the alcohol... though it does come in a sensitive formula if the alcohol is a concern for you. You can apply it like an aftershave, after the Witch Hazel (which is exactly what I do) and I find that it works well that way. But the stuff really shines as a spot treatment the night before/between shaves or right after messing around with tweezers. If you haven't tried it yet, I'd recommend giving it a look.

* I converted to cold water shaving, and get a lot less irritation this way. I don't know how/why this helped, but it has. I think the hot water was just too much for tender, irritated patches.

The merkur is a really mild razor...how many shaves do you typically get out of a Feather? On my face I'd get the occasional ingrown hair with carts...when the second or third blade would cut the hair below the surface of the skin. Your "pimple" description tells me that might (somehow) be happening to you.

I typically only get a few shaves from a feather (salt air and hard water). First I'd try more frequent blade changes. If you'd like to try a different blade I'll PIF you a tuck of Wilkinson Swords. A buddy of mine gave me a nice stash of feathers after I gave him a couple tucks of swords. I like 'em both, but he gets a lot less irritation from the swords.

Thank you for all the great tips.

Lately, due to lack of time, I tend to rush a bit. I will try to allocate more time toward my shaving ritual.

As far as the blades go, the feather last me 5 shaves.

This morning, I was out of blades so I tried a persona from the old sample pack. (the blue "comfort coated" type).
It felt fairly smooth, and only got 1 ingrown.

Also, I just picked up the bump patrol. I'll give that a try as well.

Again, thank you all for the input.

I've struggled with ingrown hairs along my jaw line for several months now. I never used to get them with cartridge razors, nor did I get them while learning to shave with a double edge. But, now that I've got the hang of it, I get ingrown hairs. And so I've been focusing on what might be causing them and trying to reduce the risk. Not all of what I've found will necessarily apply to you, but I hope you're interested to read anyway.

(1) Eschew pre-shave oil for those areas. I benefit greatly from PSO on my neck, but I have stopped applying it on my jaw line. This is fine for me, because I only need it farther down my neck. I've done this for the last two shaves, and I haven't had a noticeable ingrown either time; if one has developed at all, it's teeny-tiny. So far, this is a noticeable improvement.

(2) Use an open-comb razor. Less metal is pushing against your stubble as you shave with an OC razor, and I think that makes hairs less likely to burrow back under your skin (as if they're voles or something). I get ingrown hairs less often with my Cadet open comb than I do with my Merkur 34c safety bar.

(3) Fewer strokes, fewer angles. Because my jaw line is my #1 tricky spot, I have grown more comfortable contorting my face in order to provide my razor multiple shaving angles to work with. Each new angle gets a new stroke with the razor, and I hold the razor at a slightly different angle as well for each stroke. This yields a very smooth shave but also immediate ingrown hairs. I have since been focusing on reducing the number of strokes on my jaw line and also the number of angles I attack from.

(4) Rinse very well after shaving. It didn't occur to me that I wasn't rinsing well enough, until one day my wife mentioned that the hairs she was tweezing out looked as though they had been loose hairs that didn't get rinsed off and managed to reenter a follicle. I now do two or three extra splashes with the water both before and after applying the alum block.

(5) Exfoliate, but not every day. I've seen marginal improvement by using an exfoliating body soap and a washcloth on my face in the shower. Exfoliating every day makes your skin produce even more natural oil, though, so it's best to do it every other day instead. Bear in mind that I shave every two to four days, and I rarely shower and shave at the same time of day.

(6) Reserve aftershave balm use for when you really need it. I used to use Nivea ASB after every shave, but now I rarely use it, only reaching for it when I irritated my face more than usual.

This can be easy solved. In many cases you get this when your hairs aren't short enough and you apply a ATG. You need to map your beard and see in which directions your hairs grow. If you know the directions you can apply the passes properly. Sometimes I couldn't do an ATG over some spots, later I found out I wasn't applying the passes properly.

EDIT:

I just wrote a mini guide on beard mapping it's over here:

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...art-newbies-don-t-know!?p=7546449#post7546449

I hope it helps!

What works for me:
1. cold water shaving
2. Don't stretch your skin with other hand as by doing so you cut the hair below skin level and that's how you get ingrown hair later.

I read a blog post on Sharpologist (pretty sure) about shaving with cold water, and decided to give it a go and haven't had any problems with razor burn since. My shave since then have been completely irritation free. I miss the warm brush but I figure that its a small price to pay.

I'm guessing cold water tightens the skin, making the hair stick up higher. There must be a cosmetic solution which is equivalent