I've been shaving with a straight for a few weeks now and every shave but the last one has been great. Before the last shave I did a particularly bad job of stropping and the shave reflected it. I knew at the time that I wasn't keeping the blade flat on the strop and putting pressure on the blade but couldn't seem to get out of my own way. So tonight I resolved to fix that.
First I decided use the pasted sides of the strop to try to get it back to where it was when I received it from joshearl. The first shave I had with my straight was remarkable and a testament to joshearl's honing ability so that was my reference. It didn't feel like I had screwed the edge up too bad so I did a pass on the 1.0 side and then 5 on the 0.5 side. Still didn't seem quite there so I did another on the 1.0 side and 3 more on the 0.5 side. After that it felt pretty close so I moved to stropping it, paying careful attention to keeping the blade nice and flat and no more pressure than the weight of the blade. After about 20 passes on the strop it seemed to be in the ballpark so I proceeded to the shave test.
I also shave my head and it was due so I figured this would be a nice time to compare cartridge shaving (using a Fusion/HeadBlade for head) to straight (face) since this would be the first time I did both at the same time. Now, there's obviously some differences so it's not exactly an even comparison but I figured that it wouldn't be totally unfair since a) generally my head is more taut and I was only going to focus on the top-front for comparison, b) I've got a lot more experience shaving my head and c) I prepped the head first with clippers so that it was a little shorter than facial hair (which helps a lot with a Fusion and clogging).
Sooo.... after about an hour of shaving, trying to take equal care on each, the results were that my face feels great and my head feels like :cen. While this wasn't totally unexpected normally the difference hasn't been as apparent since my face usually felt like :cen too. Both shaves ended up about equally close, slight edge to the face, with passes with/across the grain on the face and with/against on the head. Even on the with the grain pass on the head I ended up with a nick though. I only used light pressure but there was a new blade in the Fusion and HeadBlade which always seem to result in a few. Two more nicks on the head on the against pass but no nicks on the face at all. I also realized how much time I spend/spent during a shave trying to unclog multi-blade cartridges... :td
Anyway, sorry for the long rambling but I found the difference interesting since the Fusion hasn't been used in a couple weeks and I really wanted to get a somewhat relative comparison. I haven't enjoyed shaving this much in... well.... ever.
Oh and a big thanks to joshearl (razor and honing), Tony Miller (4-sided paddle strop) and Colleen (lather and scent) for all the great components of a wonderful shave.
Ant
