Thanks so much! This razor used to reside in Seoul Korea, but
@Keithmax shipped it to the prairie when he heard me muse about taking up straights. He wanted my face to get wrecked by the finest...and it's been a great razor!
Ok, this is how I break it down, I know you know most of this, but will write it out for newer converts:
I get equal results with either razor style
now. The saving grace was totally mastering real SR first. Shavettes, with thin blades, low mass and resulting low inertia, require the user to be simultaneously more delicate and deliberate than with traditional carbon steel. Shavettes punish bad angles, and are capable of making a completely painless cut, unlike an SR which screams at me for a few milliseconds before it digs in too badly. When I have time for a leisurely shave, including stropping and oiling and all that, real straights are kind of fun.
The dividing line for me is honing! I have no desire to buy stones right now, and since the shavettes I like are all DE based, blades shouldn't ever be a real issue. And while I am on blades, they don't matter that much in a shavette. I've gotten pretty much everything except Indian Wilkie to shine. Lather, on the other hand, matters more--way more than in DE shaving, and probably more than traditional straights at the margin.
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