What I've Learned

I used to be a three-pass shaver, first moving the razor downward, lather again and shave sideways, lather again and shave upward, resulting in as clean and close a shave possible.

This was my morning routine for many years, particularly when in the Army. In the early 1990s, after the Army, I became a two-pass shaver – down, then up.

Eventually, perhaps through laziness, I adopted a simple one-pass maneuver, downward only. It's fashionable these days to walk around, even to go to job interviews and weddings, with two-day stubble, so a single-direction shave makes me look smooth faced enough.

A rash on my neck has forced me to change razors. It took a while to figure out, but the rash, it now seems, was caused by the lubricating strip on the cheap razors I used.

When I say cheap razors, I mean made in China, disposable, six for a dollar cheap.

Each of these plastic-handled razors would give me 10 shaves. Doing the math – one dollar divided by 60 shaves – works out to about a penny and a half a shave.

When I suspected the lubricating strip on the razors was the source of my neck rash, an easy experiment confirmed it. I got out an old Gillette double edge razor, put a fresh blade in it, and used it to see if the rash went away.

It did.

This left me with several choices: Stop shaving and grow a beard (no), pay real money for name brand multi-blade razors (no), attempt to peel the lubricating strip from each cheap razor (tempting, but no), continue to use my old double edge razor (yes).

To shave comfortably with a double edge – referred to by aficionados as DE – requires a good razor, a good blade, and suitable face prep.

The razor I prefer is a WWI era, non-adjustable model. To install a blade, the head screws off and the razor disassembles into three pieces: the handle, the lower part of the head that the blade sits on, and the upper part of the head that covers the blade, leaving just the sharp edges exposed.

Blades would have to be ordered, since it's difficult to find them in stores and they cost too much if you do find them. As a young man, I was partial to Wilkinson Sword blades from England, but that company has been sold several times and their DE blades are now made in Germany. After some research on the internet, two blades caught my attention.

The first, a brand called Feather, is from Japan and said to be the sharpest blades available. They are scary sharp, but also pricy. I decided to go with Astra blades, made in Russia.

Three hundred blades cost $27. Figuring on three shaves per blade, the math works out nicely. Three hundred blades times three shaves equals 900 shaves. Divide $27 by 900 and it comes to exactly three cents a shave. This is twice what I was paying, but still pretty darn cheap.

Instead of canned shaving cream, a badger-bristle shaving brush and a regular bar of soap have long served me well.

Face prep goes like this. Wet the brush and stir it around on the soap to create lather. Lather my face, let it sit for a minute or two, wipe off with a hot, wet wash cloth, then re-lather, touching up the lather as needed while shaving.

Mark Twain said that as a young man he was so handsome, he was often mistaken for fair weather. No one is going to put away their umbrella on seeing me, but with my new shaving setup, perhaps they won't put on galoshes, either.