Originally Posted by
UtopianShaver
As a daily shaver, this post has really had me thinking, because to me it seems it is the best test of the sharpness of your blade if you can get a close and comfortable shave with 24 hours growth, and you're having issues with 3 days growth so something dramatic must be going wrong with your shaves. First, considering you've had this experience with professionally honed blades, are your blades passing sharpness tests after you strop? This seems to be the one thing that could've affected the sharpness between honing and shaving. Try some different strops, make sure stropping technique is right?
I would think the next thing to try is to use more passes, but to do this with a lighter touch since you are describing razor burn in your problem areas.
With three days growth, for me, the major length of every hair is gone after a single careful downwards pass, except the curved area of my chin, which requires a few more downwards passes. This occurs even if I use a blade that isn't optimally sharp. I'll feel the lack of super-sharpness on the against the grain passes, especially on my upper lip and on my neck, but I won't feel it as much with the grain. If you're not clearing the longest part of the hairs on your first downwards pass in most places, I can only think of 3 possible reasons: blade super dull (unlikely), technique (with all due respect, maybe even though you've been doing this for a while you've developed some bad habits?), or super-duper tough beard. I know from reading other threads that user Disburden seems to have a tough beard, perhaps he can give you good advice for ways to deal with this comfortably.
Can anyone think of a different explanation than the above three?