What a Difference a Blade Makes...

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday I had my 21st shave with the Gillette Silver Blue blade. Its later shaves weren't bad, although they were still a bit irritating and prone to wound. However, as the days went by, the blade continued to improve, eventually becoming light years ahead of the first four shaves with it.

After the 21st shave with the Silver Blue, there were still plenty more left. This and the improved comfort of the blade over time is owing, I believe, in part to my daily post-shave blade care, which includes pat or press drying followed by stropping the edges of the blade on my oiled palm.

Yet after three weeks with this blade, it was clear that it wasn't going to see further shave improvement. If anything, the blade was just going to become noticeably more dull. So I put the blade into my blade-recycling bank (for future delivery to the recycling company), and pulled out the next blade in my pre-determined blade rotation.

This next blade was the Teflon-coated Voskhod blade. So I put it into my trusty open-comb Merkur 15C razor, which is becoming one of my favorites. I took a with-grain, all-oblique-buffing first pass using an anti-raking pattern.

Then I transferred the Voskhod blade into my Weishi 9306-F razor, my preferred finishing razor for that against-grain second pass as part of my two-pass two-riffic shave.

The result was a close, reasonably comfortable shave. I had some lingering irritation on my neck, but in all it was a pretty good shave.

Despite the do-not-wipe warnings from Voskhod, I finished my clean up chores with the usual oiled-palm stropping of the blade. Then I put it back into the Merkur 15C for tomorrow's shave.

What a difference a blade makes! I can hardly wait until my rotation brings me around again to my favorite of all blades, the Personna Platinum Chrome blade -- the red-label blade made in Israel.

Happy shaving!