how wto make a scary close shave closer and ever scarier

my pops sent me this link, a straight razor shaving tutorial written by vegans, which i had read previously but mostly ignored because, well... you know. vegans.

i read it fully last night and followed the links and learned a couple things. this morning i applied these things with mixed results.

1 - pull the skin really really tight. i'm still not pulling tight enough i found out. better luck next time.
2 - here's the scary part: do a second pass against the grain, no lather. supposedly, if i'm not doing this, i'm not shaving, i'm just scraping.

well, #2 was just as scary initially as shaving with a cutthroat was in the beginning. the first stroke was hard to get around to, but once done it was done. in the spots where i did a good job there is no hair at all in any direction -- perfectly smooth skin. that's new.

in the spots where i did a poor job there's minor irritation -- still not as bad as the NORMAL irritation from an electric. practice will make perfect, unless i accidentally kill myself.