Been feeling a bit ill and frustrated by some sort of persistent low grade coldvid. At some point I check the mail and a couple Kismet blades for my Weck from @djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social were there! Thanks again. Wasn’t quite feeling up to it until last shave a couple days ago I used the blade that was in there, a Fromm according to the spine (but perhaps a decade or more older as it came with the Weck in a lot). And today I tried the Kismet.

Fromm

Really enjoyed that shave. Been a while since I’d used one of my shavettes or a pasted blade and I do enjoy the extra bump in sharpness, help me be really present with it and use a tight angle with a vanishingly light touch. However it came with a tiny weeper that sort of highlighted two pores, easly dealt with by alum but still, tsk, thats unusual with my less lasery natural edges, especially WtG. Managed AtG without adding to that and overally pretty happy with this blade. And the Weck generally, glad I didn’t let it go when I was thinking pfff I have straights. It’s a good benchmark and something to strive for with pasted edges.

…though I also saw why I haven’t been back to this much since getting a few JNATs, definitely ended up with a bit more in the way of ingrowns.

Kismet

Today I gave the Kismet a try and had a similar result (weeper moved though and had a twin this time). Also WtG because I decided I’d leave off AtG for fewer ingrowns although the extra sharpness is definitely appreciated there so it was tempting. Overall I really enjoyed it and consider it a resounding success because that was a fresh blade with nearly the comfort of one with 3 shaves on it and I didn’t even palm strop it (On that note: @DaveWave94@sub.wetshaving.social you might consider palm stropping for fresh GEM blades, I find it helps those in particular quite a bit for me).

Overall though I think I mainly like the Weck: it wasn’t hugely better than the vintage(ish) Fromm so I might try the current ones when I eventually use these up as I think there are more options for me to source those. Kismet was probably my favourite new-blade-in-a-shavette though I think the Captain Titan Mild AC comes close.

Er, to make this more SoTD I guess I should point out I was using DG Darkfall and a 23mm Muhle STF.