SOTD OCtober 22nd
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Stirling Mentholated Pre-Shave Soap
Blackland Blackbird OC
Blackland Dart
Gillette Silver Blue
Simpson's CH2 "The Soap Destroyer"(27mm, Destroyer Class)
Stirling Vanilla Sandalwood
Nivea Sensitive PSB
On this fine Monday morning let us observe a moment of silence for the sample of Stirling Vanilla Sandalwood that has departed us. I got eight great shaves from it, thus using up a whopping 3.75 grams of soap per shave.
@Drygulch
My shave this morning featured the Blackland Blackbird on loan from Jim
@jluc to which I am going to compare it to the Dart and maybe a few of my other SS razors over the next couple of weeks. To make the comparison fair I loaded up a brand new GSB in both razors. I set to loading up the last few grams of my Stirling Vanilla Sandalwood soap into The Soap Destroyer into which I made a silky smooth, creamy, goopy, slick lather. The stage was set for this epic duel.I shaved the left side of my face and neck with the Blackbird and the right side with the Dart. First few strokes with the Blackbird were taken to find the optimum angle which was very intuitive because you can basically use the flat of the cap as a guide. Reduction was good and audible feedback was moderate. On to the Dart. The Dart requires a slightly steeper angle and has you coming off the cap and into a more of a neutral-guard riding angle. Audible feedback on the Dart is much louder then the Blackbird and it has slightly more blade feel as well. After the second pass (ATG) on the third pass (XTG touchups) I could hear more whiskers still being cut by the Blackbird, On the Dart side the pass was nearly silent. After the shave there was no irritation to speak of and the finish was identical on the face, BBS. On the neck where I only do one pass WTG the Dart was slightly closer. Round one efficiency goes to the Dart. Where the Blackbird excels over the Dart is smoothness. You get the distinct feeling with the Dart that if you aren't paying attention it will bite you, the Blackbird feels much more forgiving. I think this is primarily due to the Dart having slightly more blade exposure while having very minimal blade reveal, this makes for a very rigid blade clamping. Happy Monday my friends!
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