From the time I was a pre-teen until I was well into my 70s, my facial hair was slow growing, soft, and easy to shave with an electric or safety razor.
Towards the end of that period of my life, I started experimenting with vitamin supplements such as Relief Factor, Balance of Nature, and natural Inflationary supplements. I also ate less food, but more of it was protein. The end result was that my beard grew tougher and had to be assaulted daily.
My shaving instrument of choice has always been the electric variety because to shave with shaving cream and hot water leaning over a sink has always appeared sloppy and messy, even though the result was a very close, clean shave. Through most of those years, I would use the electric version for three or four days in a row, followed by a wet, safety razor version the other days. This combination worked pretty well.
The difficulty an electric razor has in competing with a safety razor is that, with the former, your tiny facial hair has to find a hole in the shaving “head” to enable it to be chopped off by the circulating or rotating steel blades. By contrast, with a safety razor the hairs are right there to be chopped without having to fight for time on the head full of holes but, by definition, which also needs steel plate to hold everything together and hair cannot penetrate the surface that is steel plate.
I began experimenting with the electric tool to determine if there was a better, more efficient way to shave with it. First, I realized that the hair on most faces does not just grow in one direction, even though men tend to shave up and down. I followed that lead, but also moved the razor over my face going from left to right, and vice versa, to catch those rebel hairs that wanted to revolt and grow differently. The resulting shave was a little better, but nowhere near the smoothness of a safety razor shave.
So, I tried one more experiment. I used the electric shaver to thin out my facial hair, up and down and from side to side. And then – grit your teeth before you read the next step because it is unconventional – I used a disposable safety razor with no shaving cream and with or without moistening my face with water to re-shave the same area, making sure to shave up and down and from side to side. The initial reaction from most men when they hear this routine is to grimace and exclaim how rough it must be on the facial skin. That was my first reaction too, but it really is not that bad, and it gets better the more you use this system, especially if you splash your face with water when finished. It’s worth a try.
Excuse me a minute while I change my tourniquet!