I’ve been bouncing around lately between continents, razors, and assorted shaving poultices. I’ve been to Japan and back, been messing with DE razors again after a long period with the Injector, and I’ve also been trying a bunch of different shaving products, trying to find the best mate for each of the various razors I’ve been shaving with.

The Featherjector — the mutant combo of an old bakelite-handled Schick/Eversharp Injector razor and a clipped-down Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade — goes best with thick, protective shaving creams like Taylor’s Avocado. The Featherjector shaves too close for me to get by with a thinner cream, or especially a hard shaving soap — that’s a guaranteed bloody nick on the tip of the mole on my upper lip. Lovely image, isn’t it? The truth hurts, as does my mile if I go to close with a thin lather and a scary-sharp blade.

Still, the soaps beckon. I love the way the best of them smell, and the idea of a cake of hard soap you lather up with harkens back to the very earliest days of post-clamshell shaving. Also, creams are for sissies, or so the He-Man straight razor boys taunt. These guys barely want it known they use any pusslube whatsoever, much less a floral-scented English shaving soap. Creams are beyond the pale. Anything that smooth and luxurious belongs on a dame, not a guy who brings a naked blade to his face.

I haven’t had such good luck with the hard soaps, to be honest. A few have stood out as being clearly ahead of the pack — the Classic Shaving house brand soaps, and the German Tabac soap — but the rest, while giving good shave, aren’t protective enough to keep my mole from getting nicked.

The thing is, lately, even my go-to creams aren’t doing the job either when I shave with the Featherjector. Sometimes the rig I know and love suddenly starts acting up, or maybe it’s me acting up, I don’t know. But I needed a change to settle things down.

So I took out the Feather blades and started using the standard Schick Injector blades again, and the nicks stopped immediately. The shaves weren’t quite as close, but I’m okay with that so long as I don’t bleed any.

Then my friend Gordon starts in on the hard soaps, talking about how D. R. Harris hard soaps are the best of the best, and how he flipped a Trumper cake over to lather the dome side rather than the flat side and the improvement in the lather was amazing, and how hard soaps shave just that much closer than creams do.

I hate when he does this. I really do. I get all comfy and secure in my routine, and then Gordon pipes up with something new he’s tried, and how great it is. He’s such an excitable young lad, and I’m just a tired old man trying to enjoy a simple, traditional shave. But his youthful enthusiasm is infectious, and before I knew it I’d hauled out some Classic Shaving hard soap for yesterday’s shave.

Actually, it was a mutant concoction — a cake of unscented Classic Shaving soap melted down into a ceramic mug and mixed with some drops of violet perfume oil, for a DIY version of Ray’s new pre-scented Violet hard soap. So far, the Classic Shaving is my favorite hard soap of all that I’ve tried (I haven’t tried the Harris soaps Gordon recommends yet, but I’ve tried Trumper, Taylor, Tabac, QED, Creed, Art of Shaving, and Williams). It lathers like a cream, thick and meaty, and seems to both slick up and protect my skin better than the other hard soaps.

Lathering this soap up with a Vulfix #2235 badger brush, I got an amazingly perfect shave with a standard Schick blade in my 1940′s E3 Injector. The Classic Shaving soap and a Schick Injector blade seem to be a match made in heaven. The blade is just this shy of scary-sharp, so it doesn’t nick me at all, and the closer cut of the soap lets the blade get in closer for a better shave than I usually get from this razor and blade. If it wasn’t quite as skin-peeling as the Featherjector, it was pretty damn close. If every shave was like this, I could stop searching right now.

I shaved with the Classic soap and Injector again today and got the same excellent shave. Not a hint of irritation and my skin still feels smooth at bedtime. Were Beloved Wife to pounce from the rafters and demand some conjuggling, my chin would not feel itchy against hers.