• Shavette etc arrived yesterday and I threw myself at the task. It was possibly my scariest experience in many years but I managed ok (ish). Nicked myself here and there but nothing major. I found the worst part was chin &moustache as my beard is thickest there and it felt like the blade would take my whole face off, very weird feeling. Anyhoo, it was fun and I'll persevere. I'll have to use up the soap and blades at least which means twenty shaves before evaluating the concept properly.

  • Try shaving immediately after a hot shower, when your facial hair is softer. I find even drying my face a bit before lathering up to shave makes my bristles tougher to shave. The chin is harder because there's more changes of angle, I think. I find the best thing to do is just take smaller stokes, lining each one up with a different bit of the chin. Once you've roughly removed the beard around your chin, you can have a look for bits you've missed or bits where there's obvious differences in the closeness of the shave and do a quick second pass to even things out.

    The moustache is difficult because the upper lip is quite soft and pliant, and it's hard to get the correct shaving angle directly under the nose. Using your other hand to stretch and tension your skin can help.

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