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So I've been shaving with this D-type Injector I won on eBay for three days now, and it's really blowing my mind. Even with a stock Schick Injector blade, this mutha wins the Shavegeek Cup for closest shaving Injector in my harem.

By the way, can I just say something here? I see shavegeeks on the forums talking about shaving with old razor blades they won on eBay, or old blades that came along with some vintage razor they scored -- sometimes it's even the ancient, used blade that was left in the razor = involuntary shudder =

Are you guys INSANE?!

Boys, the sharpened edge of a razor blade oxidizes over time -- every day, in fact, no matter what "chromium" or "platinum" coating it may trumpet. Putting a year-old blade to your face is dicey, much less a vintage Gillette Blue Blade or Schick Krona Injector blade that's been oxidizing for half a century. This is beyond dumb. Collect 'em if you will, but please don't shave with them. Modern blades like the Merkurs, Feathers, and Personnas are excellent, cheap, and easy to score anywhere in the world.
Back to the D-type. This all-metal Injector, the first ever Injector razor, has been shaving me to within an inch of my life. Honestly, I think I'm getting just as good a shave with a standard Schick blade as I have been with clipped Feather disposable straight razor blades in my later Injectors. I'm getting that same ultra-close, totally glass-smooth shave that I do from a straight razor, and from blades I can buy cheap on Amazon.

Today I shaved with Taylor's Rose shaving cream, lathered up with my Vulfix #2235 silvertip badger brush. One thing I've been doing differently for the past few days is washing my face with a QED shave stick I pulled out of the push-up tube and just handle like any other bar of soap, albeit one that's uncircumcized. This one's an Anise & Lavender soap that smells like Good'n'Plenty candy, and it's an excellent facial soap for my oily skin. I like it even better as a face soap than as a shave soap -- I'm going to melt'n'pour all of my QED shave soaps out of their containers and into some kind of mold I can pop the hardened soaps out of, because they make great face soaps.

It's really weird about these old Injectors. With double-edge safety razors, you can usually predict just how aggressive or mild a given razor is by eyeballing its blade exposure -- the more blade edge is exposed and the farther away it juts out from the safety bar below it, the more aggressive it's going to be.

But with these old Injectors, all bets are off. Razors that look hellacious are safe as kittens, while ones that look mild will flay your skin off. That B-1 Repeating Magazine razor I got on eBay, the precursor to the Injector, looks for all the world like it'll skin you alive -- the blade juts out from the razor and hangs in midair, daring you to bring your trembling hand to your face. But I shaved with that thing every which way but loose and didn't so much as tag a whisker.

This all-metal D-type Injector, Schick's very first razor that carried the Injector name and fed its blades with the same kind of blade Injector you can buy today, looks like it has exactly the same blade exposure and head geometry of the later bakelite-handled Injectors from the 1940s. But it shaves like a bat out of hell, and makes a ho-hum Schick blade cut like a scary-sharp Feather disposable straight razor blade.

Dare I feed this thing a Feather, when the Schick blade's spent? I'm not sure I can take a closer shave than this without showing bone.