Yuku free message boards

I'm assuming you use a straight and build lather with a soap/cream and a brush, derazorguy. If that's the case, I wouldn't worry about going against the grain, given that your beard isn't tightly curled, your blade is honed sharp, your lather isn't sub-par, you're not baring down with your razor, you wittle down your stubble with a with the grain and across the grain pass first, and you're not tugging your skin so hard with your free hand that the skin from your adams apple ends up in your side burn area.

The troubles of against the grain shaving usually come from cartridge razors. Whereas a ninja sharp DE or straight razor slices the hair clean at the skin level, cartridge razors work by tugging the hair out of the pore with the first blade and slicing it off with the next blade(s) before it has a chance to go back into the skin. Naturally, this leads some guys to have their beard hair grow back in at an angle and get trapped under the skin, and thus, ingrown hairs.

Shaving with anything out of a pressurized aerosol can contribute to this as well because there's so much air in the product, it can't produce the same slickness and water retention capability of a good, old-fashioned lather. Most of them contain facial numbers to make you less aware of this, and that's the case as well with the new battery powered cartridges. They are more convenient, however, and do provide more cushion, so to each their own.

Most guys seem to think that the "retro tools" are out of date and thus sub-par, as is the case with most technology, but with shaving, it's more just convenience. Think McDonalds and Hungry Man dinners in comparison to a home grilled steak. Gillette didn't introduce the cartridge originally because it was inherently better; they did so because their previous handles, double-edged safety razors, could be loaded with any company's blades. This naturally led to a loss of sales, which Gillette couldn't have. They needed to find a way to control the blades that were loaded into it, and thus, the cartridge was born. It's usually upgraded with a new latest and greatest every 10 years because, aside from being able to convince you that the shave is better and consequentially raising the prices, the patents on their older razors eventually run out. Of course, when they do, anyone can manufacture generic, less costly blades for the handle, and Gillette couldn't have that. Some skeptics out there believe that they purposefully make their older products worse when a new product hits so that when you try out the latest and greatest and go back to the previous generation, you find your shave suddenly doesn't measure up, and thus, you switch. There's no real hard evidence on this that I'm aware of, however.

My routine is fill the sink with hot water and put a couple of drops of water on my soap to soften it up while I shower, put the brush in the sink, shower, leave my beard area wet when I towel dry, load the brush with soap, and then build the lather directly on my face with the brush. I shave with and then across the grain, rinse off any residue with the hot water in the sink, then repeatedly splash cold water to close up the poors. Then it's off to clean up and ASB.