Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The Quick Shave

For the past two days I've done a quick shave, which is a variation on the standard (one-pass, with-grain) shave. The quick shave is characterized by the following aspects:

  • Simple beard wetting with splashes of cool tap water
  • Face lathering only once
  • First pass of oblique buffing, with grain, in an anti-raking stroke pattern
  • Face re-wetted with tap water but not re-lathered for second, clean up pass (there is enough residual slickness from the first lathering to give a good clean-up pass)
  • Clean-up pass done across and against grain with same razor as first pass
Both shaves were done with rather mild tech-type razors; today's shave, specifically, was done with the Rimei RM2003 razor, which is a modern version of the old Gillette Tech.



The outcome was a comfortable, fairly quick shave that was close enough to look good all day.

The shave was topped off with after-shave lotion to smell nice, and then some fragrance-free moisturizer for skin conditioning.

Happy shaving!
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3 comments:

  1. Thad LaundervilleOctober 28, 2015 at 9:03 AM

    Sounds kinda rough, like cashing in skin with extra strokes on the same spot. Then again, as a blade ages, it seems the extreme pitch angles converge onto a fairly safe median. I'd be interested to see you try blade stacking as an alternative: I've heard soldiers invented the multi-blade approach, and I'm too chicken/"sensitive" to try it myself!

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  2. Doug NealOctober 28, 2015 at 10:06 AM

    To your first point, actually it's not rough at all. Generally a comfortable and reasonably close shave. I did, in fact, use this technique with an eleventh- and twelfth-use Bluebird blade; I wouldn't do it with a new Feather blade, for example, for obvious reasons.

    I gave your blade-stacking suggestion some thought and study and am still considering the net effects. I am clear that, unlike in a Trac-II-type cartridge, stacked DE blades are very close together, which makes me wonder if they're too close to take advantage of hysteresis, and might even actually inhibit, rather than enhance, the performance of the razor.

    For my face, this sounds in sum like a formula for irritation and weepers. However, I'm going to give this more study, and, who knows?, I may give it a try some Saturday for a standard shave (one pass, with grain).

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    Replies
    1. Thad LaundervilleOctober 28, 2015 at 3:53 PM

      Thanks, Doug. My impression of this technique is also biased by the fact that my skin does not take water in very quickly or at all easily.

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