Hey all,

I had my very first shave with a 'shave ready' razor, made shave ready by Bart :-)

First of all, I want to express my gratitude towards Bart again for inviting me in his home and showing me how to hone a razor, and honing my razor! All the reading in the world could not have taught me what you taught me today, and I can not thank you enough for this and your hospitality!

Second, I'm not going to write about the entire honing process my razor went through at Bart's, because I'm sure he can explain it far better then I can (I hope he will actually :-)). What I can say is that my razor was honed only two weeks ago by a 'specialist shop' and he quickly showed me it was not done properly, and he took over three hours to show me how to properly hone a razor, truly fantastic. We looked at the edge under a microscope, when switching stones he showed me the differences this made to the edge, showed me how the water runs up the edge, how each stone's made up etc... it was like the perfect episode of 'how it's made' on discovery channel :-D Bart, thank you very much!

On to the shave!

WTG was very very easy this time, with the razor being... sharp XTG was also trouble free, except under the chin area, I didn't cut myself but I did 'skip' the razor there once. Then came ATG, no problem in the neck area and for the cheeks. However, the under-the-chin area was nearly impossible to go ATG. I'm not quite sure if I should lower the angle or increase the angle how I'm shaving there, but what happens is just that the razor seems to get 'stuck' a little bit under there. I think I'm holding the razor a little bit too loose, I will practice some more tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and.... For now some parts are very smooth on my face (the neck is amazing, and zero irritation, that never happens!), and then the chin area feels more or less like any shave with a mach3.

I used TOBS (Almond) shaving cream and just rubbed the alu stone on my face after the shave. I nicked myself just a tiny bit directly under my nose when I made my first pass there, the razor never cut me there, but it was never sharp either :-)

The shave took me about 20 minutes I think

Thanks again Bart!!