Your story about your first steps in wet shaving

Manumik

Manumik

Forum GOD!
Hey guys,

I'm wondering about your stories about how you first got in touch with wet shaving?
Did the desire came up by yourself or did somebody proposed it to you?
I personally was always fascinated about straight razors because they come in so many different shapes and sized. I just love everything with great design... It was not even the shaving aspect that made me buy my first razor. The love for shaving itself came later when I actually started shaving for the first time.
But in the beginning, I was just drawn to the looks of the razors itself...
That was what made me buy my first razor.
Excited to hear your stories.
 
R

R181

Grumpy old man
IIRC at about 16 or so I decided it was time to try shaving with my Dad's adjustable Gillette Fat Boy. He said OK but be careful and don't cut yourself. That was a miserable start but here we are 50 years on and I think I have almost got it now.

Bob
 
vartik

vartik

Head shaver
I'm 36 and started balding more than 10 years ago. I started cutting my hair shorter and shorter over the years, to the point of buzzing it all off last year. It was last year's summer, when I was at something like marionette theatre festival with my wife and daughters and I saw this guy with cleanly shaven head. He did really good job with that shave :D Picture of his shaven head somehow burned in my mind and I started thinking about doing it myself. Then, about 2 weeks after that festival, I typed "how to shave your head" to google and that started it all. Here I am, with hudreds of € worth shaving gear waiting for me in my bathroom :D
 
les24preludes

les24preludes

Forum GOD!
Ugh.... horrible memories. Wrong razor, wrong blades, wrong soap, cheap and awful badger brush. Definitely don't want to go back there.

I read the standard online tutorials for beginners and it was all rubbish. What I have now is totally different from anything I read. Goodbye Tabac, mild razors and all the rest of it. Hello Clog-Pruf, PTFE blades, artisan soaps and a Sagrada Familia brush. Phew.... nightmare over.
 
Tortuga

Tortuga

The Spangle Maker
vartik said:
I'm 36 and started balding more than 10 years ago. I started cutting my hair shorter and shorter over the years, to the point of buzzing it all off last year. It was last year's summer, when I was at something like marionette theatre festival with my wife and daughters and I saw this guy with cleanly shaven head. He did really good job with that shave :D Picture of his shaven head somehow burned in my mind and I started thinking about doing it myself. Then, about 2 weeks after that festival, I typed "how to shave your head" to google and that started it all. Here I am, with hudreds of € worth shaving gear waiting for me in my bathroom :D
Click to expand...
Head shaver here too👍
 
TheChrisC

TheChrisC

Forum GOD!
I started in 2017 and it was from seeing an advert for a Muhle razor on Facebook. I’d heard of safety razors before but didn’t love the idea of learning a technique to use them. However, I’d had a lifetime of terrible, irritated shaves and razor burn because of using carts. Shaving was a chore I despised. So I decided to follow that advert link and got the razor. It came with shaving cream and blades. The rest is history.

Btw, I also got into it because i would save loads of money. Ahem.
 
Burgundy

Burgundy

Forum GOD!
An ex was into skincare and blogs. She came across traditional shaving for men and bought me a starter kit for Christmas in 2010: a Merkur 34c, a nondescript black badger, a pot of Taylor’s Sandalwood cream, Derby blades and a few The Bluebeard’s Revenge samples. She and I didn’t last the year but the shaving stuck. In time, I replaced the TOBS and Derbys with whatever I found in the high street - namely Palmolive cream and Israeli Personnas from Superdrug - and it was at this point that I turned to Google...
 
Tyke121

Tyke121

Forum GOD!
My dad gave me an old rolls razor ,You couldn't shave with it be I promised myself one day I would shave with one ,Wet shaved now for 40 plus years and can say weve never had it so good as we have these days ,I bought a Rolls from Blademonkey here and finally got to shave with one ,Surprisingly good too
 
SeanC

SeanC

Forum GOD!
Macca root cream and Bodyshop brush bought when they had a sale which piqued my curiosity, then I relegated the cartridges to travel use only and bought dived in and bought an EJ DE89, an EJ 23mm synthetic brush and a tub of TOBS St James's cream.

I also kidded myself that I would save money :D
 
Paper Plane

Paper Plane

Forum GOD!
Read an article in The Guardian a couple of years ago and thought it looked interesting. Mrs Plane bought me a cheap Wilkinson, the black plastic one, it came with blades and I tried it. Actually enjoyed shaving for once and began to look at other blades, soaps and such.

Then I found ATG...

steve
 
Chris

Chris

Forum DOG!
Staff member
I've always wet shaved although it was cartridges and canned goo for most of it, I did try an electric a few times but didn't like it. I was getting frustrated with cartridge shaving, if I shaved every day my skin got irritated, if I skipped a day or two the cartridge would choke on the stubble and I'd have to keep unclogging it. I took to the internet to see if there was an answer to the clogging problem and saw mention that fewer blades helped so I then decided to see if I could find a razor with a single blade and found a site selling traditional shaving equipment and discovered the DE. Having placed an order for a Merkur 34c, TOBS sandalwood cream and a cheap badger brush I took to YouTube to look for tips and found Mantic and Geofatboy. My first couple of goes convinced me that this was an improvement and I've stuck with it.

Since then I've been through the acquisition phase and an aggressive razors phase and have now settled on what I like.
 
Randomangle

Randomangle

Über Bum
I have pondered what got me into this nightmare and cannot for the life of me put my finger on it. All I know was my 'interest' at the time which led to it was fragrances ... I can only think it was something I read connected with that. Also I fell for the 'cheaper' than carts propaganda. :oops:
 
The Gentleman

The Gentleman

Forum GOD!
I've always loved the look of old shaving gear and 1990 or 1991 (I'm 51 now) my mother bought me a noname boar brush and a Palmolive cream. I used that for about a year with a Gillette cartridge razor but got tired of it and went back to canned goo. Fast forward to 2012 and I saw an ad with a 34c and started google about shaving and shaving gear. I bought a 34c (that I still use as a travel razor) a Muhle Pure Badger (terrible brush) and a Proraso soap. From that moment I have spent way too much money on shaving gear, but I've really enjoyed it. And my skin feels better than ever. Now I'm a daily shaver, before I couldn't shave two days in a row. This hobby has also given me friends all over the world :)
 
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