Is this how it's going to be?
I had an interesting experience this morning. I'm a real beginner, five shaves in, and have been using only my straight this week to get the practice time in. This morning, I was feeling lazy and decided to use my safety razor.
I have three safetys with variously-used blades in them. I took one, cut, and it was so rough and pulling, I figured the blade was dead, and moved to another razor. That one, too, was awful. I went to a razor that had just one previous use, and that sucked, too. So I put a new Gillette Yellow in and that was fine. Previously, I'd have used any of them, and it would have been fine for me. This morning all of the used ones were intolerable
Here's my question: I'd heard that straights aren't quite as sharp as DE blades, but I thought it was maybe a larger difference. Today, it seemed that an unused DE was sharper, but any of the used blades duller. That puts the straight's sharpness at about 1.5 shaves on a DE.
Part of my indecision on all of this is that I have a couple of straights, cheap from Ebay, that I honed up myself. I do a lot of critical sharpening in my work, so it didn't really feel too esoteric to me (though I did need some new equipment), but I had no idea where the job I did had fit in. I had been thinking that after the holidays I'd find someone experienced in my area, and have them check my sharpening. In today's context, it seems like I'm OK on that, maybe
My question is, does that sound about right? My face is feeling sort of raw now from the first three used blades, and that's something that hasn't happened all week with the straight. I nicked myself once or twice, but had no razor burn at all. If this is the way it is for everyone, I think I'm going to be locked in to using a fresh blade every time I use the safety razor, if I use a safety razor at all, which I might be deciding I don't want to do.
Is this how it's going to be?
Could have been too much pressure...
I noticed when going from my DE to Str8 and back to DE, that I had to be very careful with my DE.
If I wasn't careful it felt like I was trying to perform a self inflicted skin graft.