I am about to tell the brutal truth about the bloodiest shave I have ever experienced.
I had just shaved a beard that had been growing for over a month two days prior. When I did so, I used my open comb Lincoln double edge safety razor so as to be able to chop quickly through the long facial growth.
I also made sure to swap out the old blade for a brand new blade. The shave was fantastic: not a single weeper at all and as smooth as a baby’s rump.
It was the shave two days later that was epic in its failure.
My epic failure was the result of ignoring two critical components of my shave, but before I get into the “whys”, I want to first discuss what happened.
Post-shower, I lathered-up my face and expected to quickly trim through the hair, using my anodized doubled-edge safety razor, but two things happened:
- Into my second pass, I noticed blood in wide swath areas across my face.
- I nicked myself on the chin as I was doing my ATG (against the grain pass)
The face-wide blood was not as big of an issue. It would heal within a day. It was the nick that was a brutal as ever.
When it occurred, the blade stopped abruptly mid-swipe and took a half-dime-sized chunk out of my chin. When I removed the razor to assess the damage, I noticed a matching chunk of flesh in the blade gap on the razor head.
That’s when the bleeding started and it continued for nearly three hours. I finally had to put a band-aid on my face to quell the seepage. It was one of those unforgiving cuts that bled forever.
When I finally performed the postmortem on what I have affectionately dubbed “my worst shave ever,” I realized I had botched my shave in two ways.
First, I had failed to replace the old razor blade in the razor. It had not only been more than a month since my previous shave, I also must have used the old blade in there at least a half a dozen times or more. That meant the blade was likely very dull.
Second, I had failed to properly prepare. Yes, I had showered, but I had been overly impatient in my preparation that morning and not spent the added time required to truly soften my whiskers with additional hot water and take the time to really rub in my shaving soap. I had skipped the pre-shave preparation which we know is the most important component of the perfect shave. Essentially what had occurred was something that could be likened to dry shaving with a dull blade. Believe me, it feels as bad as it sounds.
Luckily, within four hours I had removed my bandage and within three days, the scabbing on my chin “hole” had healed enough to allow me to shave again–this time with an entirely new blade. The experience was wholly different than my shave two days prior.
What was your worst shave experience? We would love hear about it.