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Day two of shaving with the Schick Injector and I'm on top of the world, ma. Once again, it's more than nine hours after I shaved today, and my face still looks and feels freshly-shaven. This is a feat I never accomplished in all the time I shaved with the Mach3. Only on my best days with a DE, when all the planets are in alignment and I truly bring my A-game, do I get a shave like this.

And the crazy part is, it was as easy as falling off a log. I even avoided doing the two things before a shave that I know will make the magic happen -- work up a sweat by exercising, and applying hair conditioner to my face and neck while I'm still in the shower. I wanted to see what the Injector could do if I just jumped out of the shower, lathered up, and shaved with no special prep.

Being Sunday, I went with my deep pleasure shaving cream -- Trumper's violet. Soaked it in a sink of hot water, worked up some lather with it in my palm, and I was ready for a bog-standard Injector shave.

Except it turns out that a bog-standard Injector shave is the same as a special prep Injector shave. Meaning I got the same extraordinarily close and comfortable shave today that I did yesterday with the Nioxin conditioner slathered all over my face in the shower to help soften my beard and make things easier for the blade.

So what's next? Do I try shaving without cream to see if the Injector can shave as well without it? How about a perfectly dry shave, with no shower beforehand and no water on my face during the ordeal? What if I lay the Injector on the floor and fall on it face-first with my eyes closed?

I kept feeling my face today and marveling, which is always the sign of a superlative shave. My skin felt like that time at the Truefitt & Hill barbershop in Vegas when I got the straight razor shave of my life -- like a mask of my face had been peeled off, leaving behind perfectly smooth, virgin skin. But unlike the T&H shave, I had no irritation or red marks afterward.

One thing I did notice today, though. That even as it feels milder on my skin than the fixed-head Merkur DEs and the Gillette adjustable DEs at their higher settings, this vintage Eversharp/Schick Injector is still a fairly aggressive razor, with a healthy amount of blade exposure. Toward the end of my shave, I could feel that I'd better ease up with this thing if I want to use it every day. Gordon says the latter-day Injectors from the 1980s and 90s like his are less aggressive than the really old ones like mine, so I'm going to try to score one of those to compare mine with.

The later ones are really boring looking, though -- I know I'm not supposed to care about what a razor looks like, but I do. My 1940s Injector, with its butterscotch bakelite handle and gold-plated brass shave head, looks cool beyond belief, like something decadent Parisians used to sniff ether with when the absinthe ran out. I don't want a razor that looks like an ice scraper for your windshield. Even a wetshaving pragmatist has his limits.