first shave

So I had my first shave with a double-edge razor last night.

It was okay.

I was somewhat worried I might slice my face to pieces - that is the traditional criticism of DE shaving and certainly my dad always said he used to slice himself to bits.  That didn't happen.  There was a tiny nick on my jaw line, but we are talking scrape, rather than cut.

I have been using the prep technique for a good few months now as I wanted to have all that to a stage where it was natural and normal so that when I did finally give the DE razor a go I would be able to focus on that as the single new element, rather than totally confuse myself.  I think that worked well, although I was a bit heavy with the shaving soap and I think the lather produced dried out a bit much, but I don't think there was anything wrong on that front.

It wasn't a spectacularly close shave.  Partly I was a bit nervous, as I say, but also I had a lot of razor burn.  I went back and consulted the book I had read when working out DE shaving and it turns out that I had gotten the angles all wrong.

The blade for a DE sits between two edges of the razor (one above and one below, where it's clamped in) and I had done my angle based on the lower of these.  I'd remembered it should be a relatively shallow angle (30 degrees-ish) but because I was doing that from the lower edge, I essentially ended up scraping the blade across my face, scratching the skin and causing the razor burn.

I should have been going from the upper edge.  In other words, I'd started with the razor parallel to my skin and moved it up, where I should have started with the razor perpendicular to my skin and moved it down.

Other than that it was okay.  I don't think I applied too much pressure - I was all very "light touch," though as I say, difficult to really tell with me having the blade at the wrong angle.

Certainly the overall shave was not close one.  It was a brand new blade and I did two passes (one with, one across - I'm saving against until I'm more comfortable with the blade as a whole) and the resultant shave was similar to what I end up with after about the third or fourth shave with my mach3.  So not baby-soft smooth but clearly shaved rather than unshaved and with a touch of razor burn that would tell me to change to a new cartridge.

I'll keep going - this weekend I'll give it another go and see if I can get a better handle on the technique.