ow

through a series of events stemming from my inability to read a product description, i shaved today with a feather disposable blade straight razor.

it offers all the terror, inconvenience, and slowness of a real straight razor shave, without the foreplay of stropping or the tedium of honing and sharpening.

right off the bat i cut myself under the nose. score one for the feather disposable.

my normal second pass includes ear-to-nose, but that frightened me too much and i couldn't get the angle right to avoid skipping (real bad idea with a straight) so i did nose-to-ear which is also scary because although it eliminated the danger of skipping-induced face lacerations, it introduced the real danger of hearing loss by way of ear amputation.

i survived with both ears intact. it was clear from the beginning that the blade was far, far, far sharper than any of my previous straight razors. now, because of the aforementioned reading failure, i have a pack of feather blades that are slightly less sharp than the ones i used today, but really, there is no such thing that i am aware of as a dull feather.

i sliced open a helmet pimple, score two for the feather. and i missed a patch under my chin and patches near both of my ears (see above, re: fears of ear amputation). this is common with straights, in my experience. the shave feels about the same as i'd get in 2 passes from my DE feather, but the real test comes when i check myself out in the car mirror (usually while merging on to 92).

in all, i'll surely use up the 20 blades that i managed to stick myself with. at this point, i'm somewhat amenable to putting the razor up in my case after (or even before) that, but that might just be on account of i've gotten outta practice with the cutthroat.