A Little Help from My Friends....

Yesterday I wrote about my second bad shave with a Derby Extra blade.

A couple of kind souls offered some advice, which I took seriously.

First, Stephen suggested he's had similar experiences with Derby blades, and rather than suffering with them, chucked them for more desirable brand. I thought about this and figured that tomorrow, after a third shave with an irritating blade, what if I were hit in the head by a meteorite? Would I want my last shave to be pretty bad? No, of course not, so I slipped the twice-used Derby blade into my recycle bank, and started to load a Rapira Platinum.

Help from a friend

Something interrupted my re-load, however, and before I got back to it, I noticed that another reader, Anonymous (a common name ;-), had suggested having similar issues with the Derby Extra, but found that palm stropping or corking the blade solved the problem for him.

Now as you may know, I'm not a huge proponent of stropping or corking of coated blades because they likely degrade coatings present on the blade edge from the factory. But, I figured, what the hell, I hate the Derby Extra blades anyway, so why not take out a fresh one, palm strop the thing, and give it a go?

And so I did. I loaded a new and freshly palm-stropped Derby Extra into my Travel Tech with the shorty travel handle.

Then this morning I took my normal work-day shave: a two pass (with grain, then against) and then a bit of fussing under the jaw line and on my upper neck. The outcome wasn't bad, was completely acceptable.

And so I got by. Stephen was completely right in saying that I needn't suffer with a blade poorly matched to my skin, and Anonymous was on track saying that palm stropping a Derby Extra blade can render it usable, when it would have been otherwise.

So sing it with me: "Oooo, I get by..."

Happy shaving and helping!