The story so far...
I switched to DE shaving quite young, and started with my dad's Super Adjustable 109 (if I had to guess), which I'll now sometimes borrow for a shave or two when visiting. Whenever I've returned to it, I've found it nick-prone, because lower number settings seem to have more blade exposure (but less blade gap), where higher number settings seem to have less blade exposure (but more blade gap). The only thing that helped was shaving oil, but shaves always felt unusually risky with this razor. Maybe the specific example of one that I had access to is a weirdly aggressive outlier, because aren't these supposed to be mild razors?
Then I got a Merkur 15c, and stuck with that exclusively for over a decade--many years of great shaves. During this same period of time, I once had the chance to borrow a Merkur HD, and I remember enjoying how easy it was to get a DFS+ with it.
Then, during a period of time when I had to shave every day, I noticed that to get the degree of smoothness needed for my work, my 15c ended up removing enough skin that the whiskers became visible. No weepers though. So, too many passes, every day, for five days was too much? Yes, I sometimes need two weeks or more of daily BBS for work. So I devised an experiment, and tried Razorock's Old, SLOC, the DE89 clone one, and German 37, as well as Rockwell's 6c. Spoiler: the Old ended up being the second best
It took five years to try out blade+razor combos, and to give each combo a fair chance (accounting for how it takes time to adapt when switching between razors) Finally, the Rockwell 6C's plate #2 with a Nacette emerged as the winner for consistency. There's only one problem: the head is too bulky for the size of my face, and as a consequence it also consistently misses single whiskers in horrifying spots like right next to the septum, which ends up looking like a migrating nose hair. Sure, it's possible to work around this, but that results in shaves with symptoms of overstretched skin (weepers, irritation, red patches that last for days). I have genuinely reactive and/or sensitive skin.
So I'm looking for something that shaves like a Rockwell #2 plate (or up to an imaginary #2.5 plate) with Nacettes, and it has to not be a boutique razor. In terms of price point, that means a limit of ~75USD. Given then problem areas, I also suspect that a super wide head razor that covers the tabs wouldn't work either, but I'm not sure.
Given all of this, what do you recommend?
P.S. I retained a small assortment of blades from my experiments, so am able to do try razor+blade combos that might approximate what another razor would shave like.
I switched to DE shaving quite young, and started with my dad's Super Adjustable 109 (if I had to guess), which I'll now sometimes borrow for a shave or two when visiting. Whenever I've returned to it, I've found it nick-prone, because lower number settings seem to have more blade exposure (but less blade gap), where higher number settings seem to have less blade exposure (but more blade gap). The only thing that helped was shaving oil, but shaves always felt unusually risky with this razor. Maybe the specific example of one that I had access to is a weirdly aggressive outlier, because aren't these supposed to be mild razors?
Then I got a Merkur 15c, and stuck with that exclusively for over a decade--many years of great shaves. During this same period of time, I once had the chance to borrow a Merkur HD, and I remember enjoying how easy it was to get a DFS+ with it.
Then, during a period of time when I had to shave every day, I noticed that to get the degree of smoothness needed for my work, my 15c ended up removing enough skin that the whiskers became visible. No weepers though. So, too many passes, every day, for five days was too much? Yes, I sometimes need two weeks or more of daily BBS for work. So I devised an experiment, and tried Razorock's Old, SLOC, the DE89 clone one, and German 37, as well as Rockwell's 6c. Spoiler: the Old ended up being the second best
It took five years to try out blade+razor combos, and to give each combo a fair chance (accounting for how it takes time to adapt when switching between razors) Finally, the Rockwell 6C's plate #2 with a Nacette emerged as the winner for consistency. There's only one problem: the head is too bulky for the size of my face, and as a consequence it also consistently misses single whiskers in horrifying spots like right next to the septum, which ends up looking like a migrating nose hair. Sure, it's possible to work around this, but that results in shaves with symptoms of overstretched skin (weepers, irritation, red patches that last for days). I have genuinely reactive and/or sensitive skin.
So I'm looking for something that shaves like a Rockwell #2 plate (or up to an imaginary #2.5 plate) with Nacettes, and it has to not be a boutique razor. In terms of price point, that means a limit of ~75USD. Given then problem areas, I also suspect that a super wide head razor that covers the tabs wouldn't work either, but I'm not sure.
Given all of this, what do you recommend?
P.S. I retained a small assortment of blades from my experiments, so am able to do try razor+blade combos that might approximate what another razor would shave like.
) and put a Kai blade in it. That will beef up the aggression and efficiency a bit.
