Thread: Help with Chin and Mustache Areas

Hi folks,

I have been shaving with a new professionally honed razor for a couple of weeks now. I do very well with my cheeks and neck both WTG and XTG. I also do OK with the chin and mustache areas when I am shaving WTG; however, when I try to go across, I manage to cut myself every time. I have attached a picture so you can see my cuts and the contours of my face.

Any suggestions how I can avoid this? I thank you in advance.

Nice photo

My best advice would be to build your technique a bit more before doing XTG or ATG on problem areas like that.
The things you will have to try to improve when shaving them is your stretching and your prep work.
A lower angle in those sensible areas works good for me! Especially when going ATG and XTG
It took me a a few months or more to get good XTG/ATG in those areas without cutting myself.

Many experienced shavers use advanced techniques like Scything and the Guillotine strokes.
I would stay away from them for a good while longer, and instead build confidence and tech for a while.

You can read a lot about those techniques in the WIKI, but I did not recommend you to use them

There is a reason why some guys wear goatees. The chin and upper lip, and below the lower lip as well, are tough areas. The whiskers there, at least on my face, seem hardier than on the cheek, for example. Some ideas that have worked for me:

Anytime you are getting cuts, that means that you are using too much pressure for the angle you're using. So the first recommedation would be to keep your angle but back off on pressure. I've had good results in the upper lip area by holding the razor with both hands and slowly and carefully going against the grain,
keeping the blade parallel to the skin and skating the razor above the skin, not touching the skin actually. I go ATG here because I don't get very good results XTG. On my initial WTG pass, I'll increase the blade angle but use no pressure.

The chin area can be treated by imagining it not as a curved area but as a multitude of little flat planes and shaving each one carefully. It is possible to shave the chin by going across its curve. The angle can be brought up a bit but only if no pressure is applied. You already are aware of what happens when the pressure is great enough to cut into your skin. You can only avoid that by diminishing pressure to the point where that can't happen. You can also improve your results by stretching the skin on the chin, both to make it tighter (and less easy to cut it) and moving the skin and whiskers to a place where they are easier to cut.

Nothing makes these areas easy, but I hope these ideas make them easier for you. I found it took a few months before I was able to get real progress in these areas. You'll be discovering things as you go. Keep at it, but lighten the pressure.

As stated by Birnando, watch your angle and stretch your skin as well as you can. It does take some time to learn you own face so go slow. I cannot stress how important the angle of the blade is. Go slow and soon enough you'll get a close shave.