I've been shaving with a straight razor for a few weeks now, and I mentioned the unfortunate results of a little inattentiveness in an earlier post.

While my shaves improved significantly with experience, they were still not anywhere near as close as my shaves with a DE (though considerably better than my shaves with an electric). One of the real problems I was having was shaving against the grain. This was partly because I just hadn't worked out how to effectively do ATG passes, and it was partly because I have coarse, thick hair. It didn't seem to matter how sharp the razor was, it would skip occasionally. I got one of them honed by a pro, and still had the same problems.

Anyway, on advice from here, I got a wedge. This seems to have been the silver bullet. The shaves improved considerably immediately. Not yet BBS, but certainly DFS. The main change is that the shave is so much more comfortable, even ATG. There are still a couple of spots where I haven't figured out how to hold the razor for an optimum attack angle (under the jaw, near the joint -- ATG would be up and out).

Anyway, the pointers I received on this forum have helped a lot.

Thanks a lot, guys.