How I hold the razor varies when I'm on the neck. Sometimes I hold the scales straight out as if the razor was a Japanese kamisori . Depends. Same with stretching, there are some areas where I have to pull the skin in opposite directions, from what seemed 'correct,' to flatten the area to get a good pass. Playing around with stretching, blade angle and direction of attack has helped me get it in a 2 pass shave most of the time. Also depends on the whiskers, we all aren't playing with the same deck of cards.