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Lately I've been experimenting with modifying the Japanese company Feather's disposable straight razor blades to fit into my 1940s Injector razor, an excellent idea I got from fellow wetshaver Andy Samuel (AndySam on the shavegeek boards). When I read about his discovery that these scary-sharp Feather blades work wonders in old Injector razors, I tried it for myself and have been happily shaving with a Feather/Injector rig ever since. It's the first safety razor I've experienced that really delivers a shave on a par with a professional straight razor shave like you'd get from a master barber. And it's even easier than using a regular DE. Sure, you have to dick around a bit with cutting the Feather blades down a bit so they fit into the Injector, but the reward is a shave the likes of which you've probably never experienced unless you've ever had a straight razor shave. After I finish with this setup, my face feels like it did when I was twelve.

The Feather blades are designed to fit into Feather's Artist Club disposable blade straight razor, which looks like a traditional cut throat but takes these blades instead of having a permanent blade you need to hone, strop, and otherwise maintain like some demented village smithy all the time. Honestly, I don't know how those He-Men at straightrazorplace do it. I've had living animals that required less maintenance than a straight razor. Anyway, the beauty of the Feather straight is that you never have to worry about maintaining the blade -- when it starts to pull on your skin during a shave, you toss it and load a fresh Feather blade in its place. And even the most hair-shirted He-Men concede that these Feather blades are sharper than any hone job they can do on any conventional straight they own.

The disposable straight razor blades come in three grades -- Pro Guard, Professional, and Professional Super. The Pro Guard is the entry-level "beginner's" blade, owing to its polymer wrap on the blade which keeps the cutting edge just slightly off the plane of your skin, so it'll cut whiskers but avoid nicks and cuts. Up a level are the Professional blades, which are designed to mimic the feel and cut of a conventional 4/8 or 5/8 size straight razor, and then at the top of the heap are the Professional Super blades, the thickest and sharpest of the trio. These top-of-the-line blades are designed with more aggression, to cut the toughest beards.

Back when I was an idiot and thinking I was man enough to handle a straight razor, I tried the Feather Artist Club razor with all three versions of the Feather disposable blade. The Pro Guard let me get away with a lot of sloppy handiwork, and shaved extremely well, though I could only shave with the grain, never against it. Going against the grain was difficult and painful, not nearly as easy as with a DE razor.

As for shaving with the "unguarded" Professional and Professional Super blades, well, let's just say the less said the better. I cut myself willy nilly with these ungodly sharp blades, and they beat me up so badly I scurried back to my DE, tail between my legs.

Honestly, I just didn't have the skill to shave with such surgically sharp blades against my skin. Maybe when I give up the coffee and get on the Vicodin I'll have a steady enough hand and nerve to pick up the Feather Artist Club razor again. Since that day, the Feather razor and blades have sat in my shaving crap drawer, a memorial to my cowardice.

But that was before Andy hipped me to this excellent idea of using the Feather blades in an Injector razor. Huzzah, I thought! I can finally put those Feathers to some use. All's you got to do is clip a few millimeters off one end to size it down to Injector size, and then it's a simple matter of loading the blade into a standard Injector blade magazine and then injecting it into your razor. Really, if you're already familiar with the whole Injector trip, it's easy as pie. And if you're not, it's dead simple to grok.

A few days ago I did what Andy did and tried the Pro Guard blade, and it floored me -- easily the best shave I've gotten from this Injector. I thought the standard Schick Injector blades gave good shave, but the Feather Pro Guard was a revelation. Andy really knocked one out of the park with this excellent idea.

But why stop there? So today, I tried shaving with......a Professional Super blade!

Yeah, that's right -- I said the Professional Super. The sharpest, scariest Feather blade of them all. The Top Dog. The Big Man. El Jefe. ESPN 8, "The Ocho".

I admit, I was a little scared when I first raised blade to face today. I was in the locker room at my Y, getting ready to shave after a workout and a shower, so all the pieces were in place for a perfect shave. There was even an old guy a few sinks down, shaving with a disposable razor and a can of Edge. So I couldn't cry like a woman when the Professional Super blade cut me like a stuck pig. I had to be a man.

So I raised the Injector to the bottom of my sideburn and guided it down my cheek with the lightest, airiest, barely-there touch possible. Hmm, not bad! I could just feel the blade on my skin, but it cleaned a nice path of face right down to the pink.

So I did another pass. And another. Each time putting as little pressure as possible on the Injector as it skimmed over my face. I remembered how ungodly sharp and unforgiving that Pro Super blade was in the Feather straight razor, so fast strokes and cavalier shaving were out. But much to my surprise, I didn't get a single nick or even a patch of irritated skin. The Injector barely felt like it was shaving anything, yet every time I did a pass it left nothing but pink.

Rinsed, relathered (Taylor's avocado today, with a Vulfix #2234 brush), and took a deep breath. I've never been able to shave against the grain with the Feather disposable straight razor, with any of the three blade versions. Even Feather's DE blades aren't as nice shaving against-grain as the Merkurs and Personnas I have better luck with. So before I shaved against-grain with the Feather-loaded Injector, I paused, made sure I was focused, and went very, very slowly...

Wow! What was I worried about? In the Injector, the Feather Pro Super swims upstream without any of the difficulties I faced when using this same blade in the Feather straight razor. I did a complete upward pass, relathered, and then did yet another pass, diagonally this time, on my neck and underchin, to really get them tushy-smooth.

I exhaled a huge sigh of relief as I rinsed with cold water at the end. It was so not a big deal shaving with this sharpest-of-sharpy-sharp Feather blades in the Injector. In fact, it was glorious and easy and wonderful. The shave I got was just unbelievable -- as close or closer than the fabled barbershop straight razor shave, but without a hint of irritation. I slapped some Trumper Lime Skin Food on my face and neck and they tingled like I'd just peeled off an old face and was breaking in a virgin one. I've had facials at high-end spas by large Eastern European women that didn't feel this good.

There's nowhere to go from here. The Pro Super is Feather's best blade (that I know of -- Feather's main bread and wasabi is medical blade manufacturing, everything from scalpels to those tiny super-sharp blades that cut a flap in your cornea for lasik surgery, so the company might make even ungodlier blades which happen to fit in an Injector with a bit of modification), and I don't know of any other manufacturer making consumer shaving blades, DE or otherwise, which come within shouting distance of the Feather's extreme, almost cruel sharpness.

Likewise the Injector. This was the last of the Mohicans for me -- the only traditional type razor I hadn't tried until very recently. I've become adept at the DE -- I've tried (oh LORD how I've tried) to master the straight razor -- and now I've finally rounded the bases and become familiar with the Injector. That's all of them (those medieval looking olde-timey GEM single-edge razors that take box-cutter blades don't count --- no way I'm letting one near my puss).

Is this really it? Is the Injector, loaded with a trimmed-to-size Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade, really the end of the line for extreme wetshaving? Um, I was actually planning on getting to this point years from now, long after I'd turned ShaveBlog into a live sex site and cashed out to a Tuscan villa outside Colle di Val D'Elsa close enough to stroll down to Arnolfo every day for lunch and a Di Nobili at my table on the terrace.

Well, if this is the end of the line, so be it. I'm always open to new ideas, but ye gods, this Feather Pro Super/olde-timey Injector rig is some kind of miracle. Easy as a DE but shaves as close as a straight. Phineas J. AndySam, you're a genius!