Monday 4 February 2008

Wet Shaving

Shaving well may not make you a Gentleman, but as I have said, as a gentleman you should strive to make the world a better place for others... You will certainly be in a better mood in the mornings if you have enjoyed a good shave.
And besides, grooming is something you should pay attention to and it's something I will probably pay more attention to on this blogg -- mainly because the ethics thing doesn't seem to be coming up as often as it was when I started this.

I remember very clearly the day when one of my teachers told me that it was high time I 'shaved the fluff off my face'. I was about 13 and my dad wasn't around at the time so I asked my mum to get me some shaving gear, and it was her who taught me... and in fairness, she didn't do a bad job.

A little while later when my dad was about he noticed I no longer had the bum-fluff and that I was suffering terrible razor burns. He said that he suffered the same problems and advised that I shave in cold water. He also bought me some Yardley's Original aftershave which felt like applying napalm but did sort out the rashes.

That was over twenty years ago and apart from the fact that I was now using gels instead of cream in a can, and 5+1 blades on my swivel headed razor, not much had changed. I don't get razor burn no matter what I do these days -- I could scrape away at my face for an hour, and sometimes I did, but I never got a really close shave.

And then I came across the idea of wet-shaving with a double edged safety razor.
Maybe I'll go into details of my experiences at a later date... but when it comes to why you should make the change, and how to go about it, I can't do better that to point you in the direction of mantic59's YouTube videos. There are loads of movies there, and he also has his own shaving blog. But to start you off, here is a good playlist:-



This is not the be-all-and-end-all of shaving, there are many techniques, this is however a superb introduction to the subject.