Proguard blades are really designed for artist club straight razors, to take away the risk of a bad slice or cut. For SE safety razors like the Claymore I don’t see any need to use a guarded blade - the blade is guarded by the safety bar. I don’t know if a Proguard blade would cause irritation, but it surely must reduce the efficiency a little.Tried out my Claymore today for the first time and wow what a shave it was.
For me it felt very efficent as it gave a close shave on the WTG pass compared to my other razors. At certain points on my face I could jump straight to the ATG pass after. It really shined on my chin, which is a hard spot for me to shave often, the razor just removed the growth there without any effort.
I have to learn to dial it in a bit more, but the design made it simple to find a good angle. An interesting obersvation for me was that it had a bit more blade feel compared to what I'm used too, even with the feather proguard blade. But this could also be due to the fact that I'm trying to dial it in. On the right and left side of my face I got a little red from it, but this disappeared almost instantly after I was done shaving.
I'm uncertain if this was due to the blade or the angle, since the proguard felt perhaps a little rough due to the protection they got by design. I'm curious to see how a feather professional or a kai functions in the razor.
I noticed 3 spots that started to bleed. Two of these was close to my chin, and one particular issue for me here is that I often get a pimple from that. But this wasn't the case with the Claymore. I ended up using my Shick L1 for some light touch up here and there and I felt nothing from the shave with the Claymore at those spots.
My neck, as usual however, is the main challenge as it is with all my razors. So I hope that an adjustment of the angle here will give me a much closer shave the next time.
For me the razor felt like a more efficent Shick L1, in the sense that it was efficent yet smooth. And it certainly shaved different than my Supply V2 with a 3 dots plate. Just to compare it a bit to other razors that I have.
The design of the handle felt like it had purpose when I had to switch from pointing the razor up or down. The weight was very ideal and helped to prevent me from using pressure. Which always is a benefit in my book. The only challenge at times was to get more used to only using parts of the blade on certain points of my face. Due to AC blade size. But I'm certain this will come with time.
The extra fees related to customs was certainly worth it when the razor functions this way. And I sort of wonder why I didnt get this sooner. To each their own of course, but the extra cost for the AC blades are certainly worth it for me, if the razor keeps delivering the same results as now. With the added benefits that I can buy feather AC blades from webstores in Norway, rather than buying and getting them shipped from other countries. Which I have to do with GEM and injector razor blades.
Just a guess but I wonder if the small amount of irritation you got was due to too much pressure. The Claymore is a good deal heavier than the other razors you referenced, so maybe you just need to concentrate on using a lighter touch, as well as getting used to the angle.