Discovery! Which made the greatest difference?

[eezee]

I have had my new Merkur slant bar for almost a week and I have enjoyed it, however, to be truthful it wasn't too far ahead of my DE-89L. I figured it was the learning curve.

Today was the "AHA!" moment.

I ran across a YouTube video where this English guy was talking about how he had been putting his blades in his slant bar with the razor upside down. I have been doing this very thing because on all of ny other DE razors it seems to be a better way to get even blade exposure on both sides. I noticed though that I was having difficulty is getting that "uneven" blade exposure that I have seen in so many pictures of the slant.

This morning I put the blade in the blade holder, put the handle/safety bar on and flipped it right side up, then screwed the handle and it seemed that I got a much better "slant" on my blade exposure.

I also tried a new (and new to me) Gillette 7:00 O'clock yellow package blade. Between the two changes I received my closest shave ever!!

Now I'm not going to discount the effect of a new and different blade, bit I have to think that just changing the procedure of how I put the blade on my slant made all the difference in the world.

Anybody else out there go through something similar?

Thanks,

EZ

 

[engblom]

One of my biggest AHA was when I realized you do not need an aggressive razor if you have coarse beard. The most mild will fit the same well. The sharpness of the blade is the most important thing when it comes to coarse beard. After all, it is not the razor slicing the the whiskers, it is the blade!

As a matter of fact, a mild razor is even slightly better than an aggressive for coarse beard as it reduces the beard in a such way that you have less whiskers at the first pass to push the blade through (beard reduction with each pass). An aggressive razor will cut closer to the root and thus more whiskers will be cut in the first pass. Less resistance means less jumping and less chance of nicking or involuntary using pressure.