Broke down and placed my order for a handle and 4 blades from https://www.harrys.com
Since I have a Gillette fusion cartridge left, I will be doing an alternating strategy so that I can get a pretty good comparison between the two. I normally shave 3 times a week (who can forget the Don Johnson look): Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. After 2 weeks and every 2 weeks the blades will have the same wear on them. I will update the results here along with my observations. I certainly appreciate the reduced expense these will exert on my finances.
So I received my handle and 8 blades, even though I ordered only 4 blades. I am sure I will figure out what to do with the blades. I wonder if this is a typical mistake made since their website defaults to an 8 blade order.
I will start my shaving plan next month as mentioned above.
Update:
Beginning of first week:
As described above, I have started alternately using a fresh Gillette blade and a Harry’s blade.
Some of the characteristics of the Gillette are that the angle of attack on my whiskers has always been a little steep. What I mean by this is that I have always felt a bit of a tug on them. This give a pretty good first pass, but I feel it. Love the trim blade for under my nose.
What I notice up front with the Harry’s is that the angle of attach on the whiskers is much less pronounced. I don’t feel the blade yanking on the whiskers at all. Correspondingly it is not as good a first pass as the Gillette. I was somewhat concerned by this at first. From other reviews I was concerned that maybe there was not enough room between the blades for whiskers to pass through and would get clogged. I did not experience this at all. I did miss the trim blade, but I was able to manage just fine.
I always go against the grain anyway to get a really close shave since I go 2 and sometimes 3 days between shaves this was completely acceptable.
Not much to tell about durability after only 1 shave each.
Update: 4/29
Close to a conclusion:
After a full month of use of both blades with 50% duty each I see that the more aggressive angle of the Gillette razor is much kinder on my face. Might have something to do with the patented lifting or slight yanking of the stubble before it is cut.
It appears that since I have to press down on the Harry’s blade a bit more to get it to grab whiskers I suffer from a bit of razor burn. This might be caused by the shallower angle that the blades have against the whiskers.
I will continue to use them both for the rest of the month so that I can arrive at a final conclusion.
9/12/2016 – Long overdue update.
I absolutely love the Harry’s blades. My initial discontent about a rougher shave has to do that they are a different angle and my face not used to the blades. The experiment I was doing was not helping me judge the blades appropriately. Given 2-3 weeks of using only a Harry’s blade was the trick!
Could not recommend them more. I have actually bought some for friends.
