Too many people read forums like this, or other articles etc. and get excited about the wetshaving process. They throw away their their electric buzzsaws or their 5-bladed monstrosities and their cans of foam and in their excitement to finally get a decent shave they buy themselves a new DE (or two, or more), a shaving brush and an array of new, quality soaps and creams, and then they dive in headfirst. And although all of new gear is an undeniable upgrade, they now face a very steep learning curve, and--for many--a few weeks (or more) of uncomfortable shaves as they get used to using all these different new products.
Why not slow down and introduce a few less variables all at once? There are a number of very good shaving creams available today that do not require a brush -- cremo cream is perhaps the most well-known, but there are plenty of others that work fine without a brush, including this stuff, orthis stuff, or palmolive "brushless" or even just proraso.
Don't get me wrong I love my brush, and none of the creams listed above is among my very favorites. But they're all quite good, and I think it would a very good idea for a new DE shaver to use one of the above for a while until he gets the basic technique down with his new razor. (I'm not talking very long--a few weeks? Maybe more if things are going poorly, maybe less if things are going well.) Too many new converts have trouble making proper cream every day, and often shave with lather that is either too runny and watery or too dry, in either case resulting in bad shaves. And when you're new it can be very difficult to figure out whether the problem is that you're doing something wrong with the lather, doing something wrong with the razor, or maybe most likely, doing something wrong with both.
So my advice to any convert is to get a DE and some good blades (not Merkurs!
), and a tube of some high-quality brushless shaving cream. These creams are foolproof--there's no way to get the lather wrong. So you can spend a few weeks focused on learning the basic mechanics of the DE shave. Your shaves should improve rapidly, and after a few weeks or so, when you are getting consistently good shaves (your technique will likely continue to improve for some time, but most people should get the basics pretty quickly), then and only then should you pick up a brush and some traditional soaps and creams and start learning to build your own lather. This shouldn't take you very long either, but I think both learning curves will be shorter (and your face will likely be much less irritated and nicked in the process) if you separate the learning curves from one another, and tackle them sequentially.So, if you're new, don't use a shaving brush.
