Material: It looks like it is difficult to flex this material, which is partly good. Nobody wants the cap to flex and occasionally give more gap than the razor was designed to have. The downside is that it is very brittle. Before the first shave, I accidentally dropped the cap and the base plate into the floor. One corner of the cap broke away by that accident. After this accident I somehow understand why there are not so many bakelites for sale at the bay. The razor: The razor itself is shiny and good looking. The blade alignment pins are over dimensioned, as some have noticed in other threads. The first tightening down with a blade removed a bit of the bakelite from the pins. The blade alignment was uneven, maybe because it removed unevenly the excess from the pins. Shaving: I have done 3 shaves with this razor. First shave was with Feather blades, second shave with KAI and third shave again with Feather. All three times I went first WTG and then ATG. This razor gives plenty of feedback, the sound is very loud. Even when shaving under the shower, the sound is noticeable. The WTG pass is maybe the smoothest WTG pass I have ever experienced. I am simply amazed. On the ATG pass, it was more trouble. Feathers gave an OK shave, but KAI was really terrible. This razor got a very narrow cap causing the blade to stick out, without a support, more than most other razors would allow it. This is what I guess caused the problem on the ATG pass. The razor was behaving like the blade was flexing and with the slightly less sharp KAI blades, it really wanted to bite. With Feather blades, having less resistance against the whiskers, the flexing was hardly noticeable. Conculsions: This razor might require more sharp blades than what you normally use. Be prepared to have to jump up one notch in sharpness. I have seen other commenting that this razor is picky when it comes to blades. I can just agree. If you are a one pass shaver, this razor might be the most perfect razor you could find as the WTG pass is really comfortable. Depending on your beard, ATG might be a trouble.
@Engblom can you try shaving with these blades below and let us know how it does preform with the PAA Bakelite Open Comb Slant, thank you. Astra Superior Platinum Gillette Platinum Gillette Silver Blue Perma-Sharp Super Polsilver Super Iridium
If it would be summer, I would be able to try some of them. During the summer, most blades works for me. During the winter all blades normally tug with exception of Feather and KAI. There is a huge difference in the coarseness of my beard between summer and winter. Now as I already know that Astra, GSB, and PolSilver (I am not having the rest of those mentioned blades) would not work in any other razor I have, I do not dare to risk bad shaves by trying them in this razor that even preferred Feather over KAI for me.
I forgot to mention in the review that this razor is picky with angle. One of my favorite razor is R41, which got a really broad range of working angles. With this PAA Slant I had to focus more on keeping the angle than what I would do with R41.
