Shaving without cutting my throat, part two

So, ready for part two of my shaving journey?

I have all my supplies, it's the start of the day, I have whiskers, now what do I do? Well, a quick survey shows that there are many ways to go, but here's the daily routine I've found:

1. Shower and wash: The whole idea here is to wet shave, so showering in hot water is a must. I also make sure to use a facial wash - right now I'm trying Clean Jack's Mint (thanks Target). I don't know if this actually helps, but I truly have lousy skin, so every little bit helps.
2. Shaving oil: Not a lot of folks do this, but after a few filets of the face I found a little lubrication helps. I first tried a dedicated oil with menthol, which was quite nice but didn't last nearly as long as promised. Now I'm trying good, old baby lotion - which seems to have more staying power but leaves me smelling like, well, a baby. Big surprise. Will go for the industrial sized, no scent version next time. Unless I find some manly but affordable alternative, of course
3. Lather up: Now the fun begins. Grab the aforementioned brush and shaving cream and start working up a lather. Originally I would soak the brush in hot water, grab a bit of cream on the tips, and lather directly on my face. However I found that sometimes this resulted in lather that was too thick and dried out while shaving. Now I have a cheap, open cereal bowl (again, Target) that a put a bit of water into and work the lather in. This way I can add water if need be and get a smoother, more slippery result. Warning to newbies, this will seem watery next to cream from a can. Just work up a nice lather with fine soapy bubbles; I like it just opaque enough to cover my skin in white.
4. Short, light strokes: Here's where the learning begins. The classic advice is to only apply the weight of the shaver to the skin at an angle as close to perpendicular as you can find. A bit of a trial and error process. Just remember there things. First, the idea is to slice of a bit of hair; you're going to be making a few passes for a good shaven, so don't even try and get it all off in one stroke. Second, keep the strokes short - whenever I try to make a long stroke more than a half inch or so, blood appears. By keeping the strokes shorter, you can concentrate on the angle of attack for that part of the face. Finally, you'll know a good angle by it's sound. Two shallow and you'll smoothly remove shaving cream but not much else. Too steep and you'll need band aids. So ease into the angle - you'll hear when the whiskers start parting, the just stay in that zone.
5. Repeat: Yeah, this isn't the fastest way to shave, so you end up sacrificing time for quality. I find myself using a minimum of three passes - one with the grain, one across it, and one against it. For the first two passes I choke up pretty high on the razor; luckily there's a little groove where my fingers seem to go. The last pass forces ,e to move my hand down the razor to get the right angle, and suspiciously there's a groove cut there too. Use more lather with each pass, and I also use oil on the second pass (with the baby oil, there seems to be enough residue to skip it on the third try).
6. Splash and moisturize: Okay, time to rinse everything off, including yourself. Switch now from hot to cold water; while the hot water softened the beard and opened the pores, you want to now seal the pores up. So splash away. Now is also a good time to tend to any wounds. Many would reach for the styptic pen, but I'd search Amazon for an alum bar. Basically, it's a block of mineral that you can wet and rub across the face to seal up raw spots. I started using it regularly, but ow that I'm getting accustomed to it all I only reach for it when I feel razor burn threatening. And moisturize at the end - you just finished scraping a layer or two of skin away!

Thats about it. And I honestly assert that the shaves have never been closer, nor lasted as well through the day. Nor is the razor burn as bad; once I feel a bad shave coming (about five to six days on a blade for me), I retire the blade and get a new one. And since it cost pennies rather than dollars, I don't mind retiring a blade at the first hint of trouble. Once you get your technique down, a bad shave usually means a bad blade, so act accordingly.

Furthermore, I do actually enjoy the experience more. That extra bit of time shaving is my time, a time to concentrate on doing one thing slowly and with purpose. While it would be too generous to call it meditative, it does force me to be in the moment, rather than rushing ahead to work or languishing behind in bed. Oh, and the ladies don't mind a smooth face, or at least not the one I'm married to...

Long Time, No Write

Well, I'll be damned. I still exist. No one but myself to blame, and no one but me to notice (I'm guessing I lost all three readers a few years ago). But no more - I have something to say again.

So where was I? Well, had another son, that's a few years gone right there. I became a front-end developer, basically a webmaster with new business cards. And most importantly, I took a hiatus from being an artist - something I wasn't really involved with since Y2K or so. Yeah, that long. And since I thought of this blog, however unsuccessfully, as a place to explore the convergence of analog and digital art making, i wasn't left with a lot to talk about. Game over, digital won!

And yet I'm back? Yeah, something new is tickling me. While I've spent the last few years being a good digiteratti (not only bought the iPhone but also made an app, for God's sake), something else has been happening behind the scenes. More and more I'm picking up habits from the last century. Need to shave - use an old fashioned brush and safety razor rather than the rechargeable ten blade Gillette. Need to go bundle up - what about tweedy wool rather than Tron-ish neoprene? Why check the time on the iPhone when watch hands will do?

Don't get too worried yet - I'm not milling my own paper or carving a dining room set yet. But I am slowly but surely turning my clock back fifty or so years, trying to understand what me father and grandfather already knew. I'd like to think I'm trying to find a more authentic experience, trying to insert meaning in the daily routine. Or as someone recently pointed out, maybe I'm trying to avoid boredom. Either way, I'm finding this analog/digital juxtaposition interesting.

So awaken, thou sleeping blog. Let us together explore this dual life, where I hold an iPad in one hand and a pocket knife in the other, where I take my cues from Steve Jobs and Beau Brummel. Let's live life both in the village and on the grid. Maybe we'll find something between the two that's worth writing about...

Shaving without Cutting My Throat, Part One

So as I mentioned before, I'm exploring the look and style of things old. Not just dressing like Mad Men, but finding things in my life that need a little more care and attention. And ironically, that started with my beard (or general lack thereof).

This all started with a digital obsession of mine, podcasts. I love these things - little tidbits of talk radio produced in basements and home offices rather than corporate studios. And one of the new ones in my rotation is Put This On, a fashion video series by Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor. Basically, they're trying to teach men of today what we should have already learned: how to dress like a gentleman. Although they've only done a few shows (five at the time of writing), it seems that every one makes me want to spend money, be it on raw denim, tweed jackets, or cordovan shoes.

Episode four took on the timeworn trial of grooming. Now grooming has never been a "problem" - I shower like the rest of of my kin. But ever since those charming grooming films in elementary school, it seems like personal hygiene is a chore rather than a pleasure. The basic idea was to bull through it, completely but quickly, and get to the coffee pot as soon as possible.

Mr. Thorn dedicated much of the above episode to wet shaving with a safety razor. You know, those odd razors that unscrew or butterfly open? The one in your grandfather's kit that you were forbidden to touch, lest you cut yourself on the double-sided blades? Yeah, that widow maker. Seems like before miles of tape (or gigabytes of disk) were recorded in ads for the newest nine-blade, vibrating, self-lathering disposable, men had to actually put blades into a metal holder and
slice the whiskers without slicing the veins. And don't get me started on the shaving soaps that don't come in cans!

Here's the rub: Mr. Thorn seemed to be enjoying shaving. I mean, like it was fun versus a chore. And as he extolled his shaving technique, I realized I hated shaving. I mean, HATED it. Expensive cartridges, razor burn, wasteful, painful, blah blah blah. Who looked forward to shaving? Yet Mr. Thorn seemed happy enough!

So I ponied up to try it out. First of all, I was very disappointed in my local drug store (I'm looking at you, Rite-Aid). Men have shaved with a safety razor and a brush for over one hundred years. So the number of razors I found? Zero. Number of shaving brushes?. Zero. A few cheap blades and a chintzy brush/soap combos were the best my local apothecaries had to offer. It's as if Gillette paid big bills to put that Fusion display on the end cap, and competition be damned. (Pause for dramatic effect.)

Luckily there is Amazon, and I recommend starting there. Anyone embarking on wet shaving needs a minimum of four things: safety razor, blades, brush, and shaving cream/soap. Here's what I went with...

• Razor: I went with a classic Edwin Jagaer Chrome. Lots of people (via shaving enthusiast sites) recommended either vintage or Mekur versions, but I liked that the Jagaer was described as "forgiving."
• Brush: I went with the cheap Tweezerman version from Amazon. It was a good price while assuring the buyer as being made from Badger hair (which the aforementioned hobby-ests assert is essential).
• Shaving Cream/Soap: Splurged a bit here and went with the "avocado" flavor of shaving cream from Old Taylor of Bond Street (again, thank you Amazon). In a past life I had tried a cheap shaving soap; I found it thin and watery (though I know assume this is from my inexperience). Whether the fault lay in the soap or myself, it was an unpleasant, painful experience. This tine I wasn't taking chances, and accordingly invested in a recommended cream.
• Blades: Admittedly, I paid the least attention to the blades I chose - the Shark blades came in a package with the Jagaer razor.

Next post, the (bloody?) result of my experiment...