My First Impressions

I had done a lot of reading online and watched a lot of mantic's videos during the first couple of weeks before I ordered my kit and got it all together. The first thing that struck me was the size of the equipment I got. I don't know why, but somehow I pictured everything to be ... bigger.

The C&E brush that I got certainly felt nice, but the pictures I'd seen on some of the boards made it look larger than it is. I understood this, because I figured that to get quality at that low price, its just smaller. Less of a good thing, you know?

Then I got the box with the Merkur HD in it. Actually, first my wife got it, since she's home with the kids and I'm at work. She opens it up and called me. "I think there's a piece missing," she said, "why is it so small?" I got home and opened it up. Yep, it looks like the ones in the pictures only smaller. Maybe I should have gotten the long handle model. Hmm, well, I'm not one to judge before i tried, so I used it anyway.

So the next morning I got up early for my first "real" wet shave. i'd been using some of the prep techniques with my Mach3 earlier in the week to practice, but this was going to be the real deal. I'll go through all my steps in a separate post, but once I got started I realized that I liked the "small" razor. It allowed me to use a gentler touch on the handle and I think helps me use less pressure on my face.

Et Voila, I lathered up and finished my first pass. The next surprise... even though I read about the multi-pass beard reduction method, I was shocked at how much stubble was still left on my face. Now, the sink had plenty of little hairs in it, so I know the razor was working, but still it caught me off guard. Second pass, much better. I went for a third pass, started thinking about going against the grain, but then thought better of it and just did another across.

I rinsed and then rubbed some after shave balm on my face. I was pleased, there wasn't any redness, no irritation. It wasn't a perfect shave, especially around my neck and chin, but my cheeks felt fantastic. And the last thing I felt was, man this smells good. I remember sitting at my desk later that day enjoying the scent and feeling excited about the adventure.

In the end, I was glad I did the research before trying to shave this way, because I either would have been very disappointed with the immediate result, or I would have hacked my face to death pressing the razor hard on my face to get the last bit of stubble. I've since gotten better, but that is more for another day.