My first question to you would be have you read Lynn's post in the beginners section regarding your first shave? I only mention this because I finally got around to reading it around "shave" attempt 4 or 5, those first few shaves were more like let's see how much razor burn my face can endure. Lots of benefical info to learn in his post and my results improved dramatically. Besides the importance of beard prep and blade angle, some where in a post is this tidbit of information that I'll paraphrase, each pass is about "hair reduction." In my experience, rarely with the WTG pass did I achieve a BBS result, but with the combination of the other passes I get a close and comfortable shave. I hope this helps.