WetShaving
This is a community of enthusiasts, hobbyists and artisans who enjoy a traditional wet shave: brush, soap, and safety or straight razor. We are a part of the WetShaving community found on Reddit, Discord, and IRC.
New subscribers welcome!
Please visit our wiki, which is always and forever a work in progress.
While this server is funded by personal contributions, we'd like to thank Zulip for giving us a Community subscription to their chat software (available at https://chat.wetshav.ing/).
🪒 Check out these alternative front-ends for this server:
https://gem.wetshaving.social/ - a nice modern interface
Our sister Mastodon instance is https://wetshaving.social/.
🪒 Track the uptime of our various services here:
https://uptime.selfhost.ing/status/wetshaving
🪒 Community Rules
Rule 1 - Behaviour and Etiquette
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Be Respectful. Do not bully, flame, or harass others.
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Malicious comments are not allowed but heated discussion and salty banter is okay.
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Low effort replies and complaints about content will be removed.
Rule 2 - Content Guidelines
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Mail Calls, Simple Questions, and SOTD posts belong in the recurring weekly threads.
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Posts must have sufficient content to generate a meaningful discussion.
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Images, links, or videos must include additional text that summarizes the topic.
Rule 3 - Reviews and Disclosure
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Use [First Impressions] in the title if your experience with the product is limited.
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Use the [Review] in the title if you can provide comprehensive details with enough familiarity to answer follow-up questions.
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Disclose how the product being reviewed was acquired (e.g., PIF, loan, or purchase). If the product was provided to you directly by the maker or vendor free of charge or at a discount, you must disclose this fact even if the item will later be returned to the maker or vendor.
Rule 4 - Advertising
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Vendors are to keep marketing within the biweekly Deals/New Products threads.
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Non-vendors may post topics about products if it will foster a compelling discussion.
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Do not solicit donations or share fundraisers without mod approval.
Rule 5 - Inappropriate Content
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All NSFW/L content must request mod approval and be flaired appropriately.
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Non-shaving related NSFW/L content is not allowed.
Rule 10 - Moderator Discretion
- The rules may not apply perfectly to every situation. The mods have final discretion.
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November 20th, 2025: Nice
Incredible turn-around. The first pass sort of stunk -- the razor didn't feel sharp at all. Sort of a tuggy mess. I added more water for the subsequent passes and it made all the difference. The razor cut much better with no irritation. Nice and smooth! Just what we like.
Zing aftershave serum is great stuff. Maybe even better than Nivea Sensitive Balm!
This great shave was topped off with Minneapolis 5.3. Such a wonderful, rich scent.
If the new "aftershave serum" is like the "recovery splash", it should be leagues ahead of Nivea balms. Together with a few other aftershave toners, the Zingari post-shave products are the cream of the crop for skincare after shaving. At least in my experience. I never understood the hype for Nivea, probably just Beiersdorf being good at marketing. Even for german options available in our supermarkets or drugstores, it doesn't hold a candle to Sebamed ASB or Speick products.
Nivea works great with my skin. We don't have many commercial products to pick from here in the US. I've never tried Speick balm, but it's available on Amazon for $17USD... Nivea is $10 cheaper.
Still, I'm a hobbyist so I should try more things. A bottle of balm lasts so long it's hard to work my way through them!
Apologies, I tend to forget that you're rather limited with commercial products in the US. Even though my original reply came off rather snobbish towards Nivea balms, I want to say that IMHO the Men sensitive ASB is indeed their best product. Since skincare is one of my hyperfixations, I just found the comparison to ZM artisan products a bit weird. But no ill intent on my side, honestly.
I can relate to that though. A lot of artisan balms smell great, but - well - they go bad very fast and that's just not justifying the high price for me personally. I mostly go for alcohol-free toners nowadays, as both lower face and my scalp are very dry skin areas for me and combine them with more commercial/readily available balms. Unfortunately, artisan balms in big 100 ml bottles will go bad for me; case in point, I probably need to pour most of my old artisan balms/lotions down the gutter and that's not really appreciative of the great quality they have.
I do wish we had more commercial products here, but oh well. Between Nivea, Stirling, and Zing, there are certainly plenty of options that work well for me.