Printables
Things worth printing
Two tools that work better on paper, because you use them at a sink.
Both of these exist because the advice they contain is hard to follow from memory in the moment. A checklist by the mirror stops you skipping the preparation; a tracker on the wall stops you quitting a beard in week five because it looks worse than it did in week two.
They are free, there is no mailing list behind them, and both are also linked directly below the form if you would rather not hand over an email at all.
Free download
Your first safety razor shave — checklist (PDF)
Two pages: preparation, the three passes, the angle, and a troubleshooting section for weepers, burn and bumps. Print it and keep it by the sink for a fortnight.
One email with the file. No list, no follow-ups.
Free download
30-day beard tracker (CSV)
A row a day for length, products used, itch and flaking. Opens in Excel, Numbers or Sheets. The point is to see itch falling during the weeks when the beard itself looks worst.
One email with the file. No list, no follow-ups.
Why the checklist exists
The safety razor learning curve is roughly a fortnight, and almost all of it is unlearning cartridge habits rather than learning anything new. Cartridges are engineered to tolerate pressure, speed and long sweeping strokes; a single blade at a fixed angle tolerates none of the three. The failure mode is predictable — someone buys a good razor, shaves it like a Mach 3 on the first morning, draws blood, and concludes that safety razors are dangerous.
Everything on the checklist is on this site somewhere, in the technique guide and the razor guide. The point of the printed version is that you cannot read either of those with wet hands and a face full of lather. Two pages by the mirror for two weeks, and then you will not need it.
Why the tracker exists
Growing a beard fails on morale, not on genetics. Between roughly weeks three and eight a beard genuinely looks worse than it did at week two — long enough to be untidy, too short to have shape — and that window is where almost everyone quits. What the tracker shows you is that while the beard is at its most awkward, the two things that were actually bothering you, itch and flaking, are steadily falling as the skin underneath adapts and you start conditioning it properly.
Seeing those two columns drop from four to one while the beard still looks scruffy is the thing that gets people through to week nine. Pair it with the explanation of what is actually happening to your skin under a new beard.
What we do with your email
We send you the file and nothing else. There is no drip sequence behind these, no newsletter you are quietly enrolled in, and no third party the address is passed to. We keep the address so we can tell which of these two files people actually want, which is the only thing it is used for.
If that is still more than you want to hand over, the direct links below skip the form entirely and download the same files. They are not gated — the form exists because some people prefer having the file emailed to a device they will actually print from, not because we are withholding anything.
More printables are coming
These two cover the moments where paper genuinely beats a screen. If there is a third — a blade sampler comparison sheet, a neckline diagram, a pass-order card for the grain map — it will appear here. Anything we add will be a real file that does a real job, not a repackaged blog post.
Direct links
No email required: the shave checklist (PDF) and the beard tracker (CSV).
Shaving School is independent. We accept no payment for placement or ranking, and no brand reviews our copy before it is published.