Derby Extra 2: Electric Boogaloo

Just a quick note on returning to a blade you've tried before:

I hated my first time with Derby Extra blades. Hated them. They mauled my face and left me in pain. Horrible things. Pish. 

But that was months and months ago when I was just learning to wet shave and I was no doubt wielding my Mühle around like a cartridge razor. Surely I must have perfected my technique by now eh? Look at the results I've had lately with those Wilkies. That can't be all down to the blade, I must be learning. 

I stuck another Derby blade in my R89 and set about a two day growth. FFS. More pain, more tugging, more rash. I abandoned the shave after the first WTG pass. My face was chewed up so badly that I couldn't even finish my shave with another blade. Night ruined, might as well just go to bed. 

So my second attempt at a Derby blade went much the same as my first. I hated my second time with Derby Extra blades. Hated them. They mauled my face and left me in pain. Horrible things. Pish. 

I may be learning how to shave, but sometimes I never learn...

The New Standard - Wilkinson Sword Classic

* I wrote this post about 6 weeks ago but on the notes app on my phone. So here we are, posted in its entirety even if my opinions have changed slightly since.*

Hello again folks, it's been a long time since I've written a post for this blog but there has been good reason. I think I've found 'my' blade! Well, I've found a blade in very happy with and I decided to stick with it for a few months.

That blade was the German made Wilkinson Sword Classic. The one in the black plastic dispenser. I bought some from the local village pharmacy one day (50p for 10 blades incidentally - think they had stickered them wrong but whatever) and had planned on just taking them offshore with me the next time I was in the North Sea. 

That was what, March or something? Yeah, must've been March. I didn't look back. From the first use these blades performed just as well as my favoured Israeli Personnas, but with less tugging on a 3 day growth. 

I need a three pass shave with the Wilkies though, as after my XTG pass I do notice a little bit of roughness around the edge of my chin that I hadn't noticed before. This turned out to be a common trait even through half a dozen blades and over 30 shaves. I put this down to how mild the blades seem in my R89 - itself known to be a mild razor. This is evident in the fact that not once while using the Wilkies did I ever have any sort of razor burn or even the smallest of cuts. Just a comfortable shave time and again. Towards the end there I barely noticed any tingle from my alum block, such was the silkiness of my shave. 

This is the kind of result I would have expected from a 'fancy' blade. You know, a feather or kai or something exotic. Not your run of the mill village shop kinda blade. And not at 5p per blade... a whopping 1.75p per shave. That's right, once again I'm averaging 4 shaves per blade. I think that's just what my hair does to blades. The second shave is usually the smoothest for me. 

So, onto the overview I guess, but you can tell I have a new favourite and a new go-to blade. I'll stock up on these bad boys when I'm next in the village. 

• Wilkinson Sword Classic
• Cost per blade: 5p
• Cost per shave: 1.75p
• Place of manufacture: Germany
• Material: 
• Average Shaves/Blade: 4
• Aggressiveness: Minimal. Smooth as you like. 
• Safety Razor Used: Muhle R89 Closed Comb
• Soap Used: Palmolive Classic Shave Stick. 

Sainsbury's Dorco ST301 Double Edged Blades

After my unexpected success with the Tesco Israeli Personna blades I've been keen to find out what other rebranded things are available on the British high street. Our local Asda don't seem to sell anything other than carts and canned goo, while the Morrisons stock even less than that. I noticed that Boots sell the exact same Personnas as Tesco, albeit in their own brand packaging and at a 25% markup over the supermarket. Still, they sell their own very well regarded shave creams and sticks (resplendent in their very 80s packaging) so I'll let them off.

And that leaves us with the other big supermarket: Sainsburys. The 'orange shop' as my 3 year old calls it, had a nice surprise in store when I noticed a very similarly priced pack of 10 blades with a slightly different cover card and which is marked "Produced and packed in Vietnam"

Sainsbury's Packaging and Vietnam origin claim.

Mapping my own growth direction

Good afternoon gents, a bit of a different direction with today's post as I'm not yet ready to write up the next blade review.

There has been something bothering me since I started wet shaving again and I see it come up regularly on forums such as badgerandblade and Reddit's own r/wicked_edge. The direction of hair growth in my beard is something which I've always assumed was very straight forward. In fact, I remember my dad telling me " you shave with the grain, so downwards on your face and upwards on your neck" when I started shaving in the mid 90s. Maybe that's how his growth comes in, but as I've recently found out... that trait was not passed down to me.