Under the chin

[webguru24]

I've been DE shaving for a little over a week now and for the most part, I've been really pleased with the result. But I keeping having trouble shaving on my chin and under it. I've been touching it up with an M3, but I was wondering if anyone had any techniques for shaving this area with a DE? Just curious.

[mrob]

My chin has been a problem spot for me, too. Here's what I do:

1 NS pass
1 EW/WE pass
1 SN pass

I rinse between passes, and relather. After pass 3, I wet my face and do some touch & cut, placing special attention on short, slow strokes on the chin and upper lip areas. These are the only places on my face where I use a little extra pressure, and stretch my face around to make the dimples and cleft in my chin lay as flat as possible. I find that I spend about half the time of the total shave on these 2 areas, and the more time and attention I spend here, the better the shave. The trick is to know the line between extra time and pressure, and razor burn.

[tam.audio]

I'll tell what I do and it may help you, you may try it out. Lather the area, then find your angle and use a N-S stroke with VERY LITTLE pressure, just the weight of the razor. Follow that with a S-N stroke, again with VERY LITTLE pressure, always re-lather between passes.

Now when I say N-S and S-N I really mean with-the-grain and against-the-grain. This is what I do and it works well for me, meaning it may not work for you but it is something to try.

[Jim]

Joe
Sounds like you are doing fine, I cannot really add to what already has been said other than make sure you are getting a great lather built up and shoot for beard reduction over many passes. I need to go over my goatee area many times before its bbs. I would give it a few more weeks to get the hang of it , then try for a against the grain or just off against the grain pass. This is a tough area for many of us.

[Magruder]

Joe,

I'm just a little over two weeks ahead of you. I'll have four weeks experience with a DE in a few more days, and I also had to spend a lot of time on and around my chin -- both on my neck, below the chin, and the region between my chin and my lower lip.

I've gone from making 6 to 8 passes on those areas (not good -- too much exfoliation!), to 2 or 3, and I'm getting it BBS, or very close to that.

The two things that made a difference are:

1) Stretching my skin. I learned how to do it effectively. It took a lot of experimenting, but now that I've got it down, it makes a huge difference.

2) Blade angle. After a couple of weeks something just kind of 'clicked' with what angle to use, and I was able to clear the stubble in 2 or 3 passes.

I also paid attention to Kyle's photos of how to hold the razor. This helped me with getting the right angle, as well as with the pressure.

Experience seems to be a big piece of this. I hope these comments help a bit.

[axiomata]

Count me among the new wetshavers having difficulty with the chin area.

I believe the difficulty is arising from two main reasons. First is simply the curvature of the chin. Once you find the right angle on the cheeks it is just a matter of keeping that angle. However, for the chin, in order to keep that perfect angle you have to continuously rotate the razor. This part, I believe, will just take practice.

The second cause is that it appears that the whiskers on the chin seem to lie down more than other parts of my face. The N-S stroke often seems to do nothing. The S-N stroke gets the whiskers when performed at the right angle, but because of the problem keeping the right angle mentioned above, it is very easy to miss a section or make a section too raw. Then, when you go back to the missed areas, you also go back over the raw areas causing further irritation.

I'd appreciate any tactical suggestions for this problem area.

[TraderJoe]

1) Stretching my skin. I learned how to do it effectively. It took a lot of experimenting, but now that I've got it down, it makes a huge difference.

Ditto on this. Brought my shaves to a whole new level.

[jduffy]

The stretching of the skin with your free hand really helps me with my jawline. I was having a hard time getting the whiskers there but pulling up the skin makes it accessible.

Haven't tried pulling on my skin for my chin yet. I tend to make funny faces which tighten the chin up. It was tough at first getting the right angle with the razor but I'm getting pretty good at it now. I've been using a DE for about 5 weeks.