Even better this time around

[kooshman7]

Did better with lathering up the soap this time. Still need some practice, but it definitely went better! Got a few mild nicks, but my alum block took care of that. I was in a bit of a hurry as I was pushing almost 3 am and had to be up at 7:30 AM at the latest.

Shaving order:

Fill sink and bowl with hot water, let brush sit
Put a little hot water on soap to soften
Hot towel over face until it got cold, would've done it a few more times but was running low on time.
Dumped water out of shave soap
Put Proraso Preshave on (I remembered! )
Dump bowl out and squeezed and shook out most of water, until it was only slightly damp. Thought the last time it wasn't as good was because of too much water
Load brush by rubbing in circles, sweeping back and forth, pushing up and down a bit until bristles clumped together
Started mixing in bowl
30 seconds whipping, then a tiny bit of water repeated for about 2 minutes.
Went back to soap to load a little more
Back to whipping up lather
Finally figured I was done, applied, saw I needed a little more so did it again
Hard to describe my beard, almost like when I shave straight up and down I go a tad against grain, and with it, but down pass
Reapply lather
Left to right while curving over the surface, again hard to describe
Rinsed off in cool water
Applied alum
Waited until face dried
Rinsed off alum in cool water
Applied Nivea Sensitive Balm
Skin was a bit dry still so tried putting on Proraso which helped. Might need something more.

All in all though, very happy! Very minor problems, most of which was just slightly rushing it. Nice and smooth shave. I think I'll take a shower first though like the last time. Got a bad ingrown that is slowly coming undone. PFB is also helping in the healing process. Nice to have a shave with very little irritation! Make shaving something to look forward to for once!

[SRock]

That's a lot of work to get to the finish line, but then again it is a process of elimination to find what works best for each of us.

Stick with it! Over time you will work out the details:

- What steps are a must?
- What steps are unnecessary?
- What products work?
- What products don't work?

etc. etc.

Congrats on a better shave!

[kooshman7]

Yeah right now no too worried about the time. I am at home quite a bit and not somewhere where I'd have to be clean shaven every day, so that does help at the moment. I would've had plenty of time if it weren't for my blasted music collection I have to put back on my hard drive. So many hours doing this... I think if I had the choice I'd rather pick out all my hairs on my face with tweezers than to do this again.

[derrickm]

I almost gave up because of the time it takes. But it really did start to get a lot faster once you figure out what steps work for you and which ones don't. I can do my entire routine in about 15-20 minutes now. When I first started it was about 30-45 minutes.

Keep at it!

[bokaba]

Keep up the good work!