I started shaving over 40 years ago…(ulp!) and with the exception of a deployment to the Mediterranean 
aboard USS Sturgeon (SSN-637) in late 1980, now itself razor blades, I’ve been clean shaven nearly all of my life. I started shaving with a Gillette Techmatic. Before that, I remember watching my dad shave with a Double Edge razor (also known as a “Safety Razor”) and watching him put the used blades into the slot of medicine cabinet. I so wanted to crawl under the house and see the pile of blades from my dad and the previous homeowner. How many would there be?, would it someday lift the house off it’s foundation?
I converted to a Double Edge razor, also known as a safety razor, about a year ago and have never looked back. I bought the razor and an assortment of different blades. I took lots of notes and even did comparison shaving. I would shave one side of my face with a modern multi-blade razor and the other side with my new found friend, my “big iron”. Immediately after shaving I would ask my wife to feel the two side of my face to see if she could tell the difference between the two sides. The results were about 65 / 35 where she would say the DE razor side felt smoother. After bragging to my adult Son, he politely informed me he had been using the “big iron” for several years…
My simple recipe for shaving: Almaden Shaving oil and a DE Razor. Almost no one is surprised when I mention the first half of the above recipe but I get more than an occasional what’s a Double Edged Razor or what is a Safety razor. I’m continually amazed that most people are unfamiliar with or mystified by what used to be the standard. It just goes to show how effective the big companies like Gillette and Schick have manipulated and trained us into thinking that more cheap blades are better than one solid and sturdy one. Most people haven’t ventured beyond maybe a gel or some different razor.
Why switch to a Double edge razor? Here are my top reasons:
Here are my top reasons I shave with a safety razor.
- Great results! As I mentioned above my wife picked the Double Edge razor side of my face more times than not. If the reason your shaving is to look good. If you’ve got a better method, then there is no reason to switch. Personally, I think you’ll be amazed at how well it works. Do you remember the acronym K.I.S.S.? (Keep it Simple Stupid)
- Easier on your flesh, less abusive. At the simplest level (remember above) you are dragging a sharpened piece of metal across your skin. If you have a multi-blade razor, you are using that many more pieces of sharp metal with each stroke. Remember that while shaving you are taking off a layer of skin cell. Multiple strokes are almost always required to ensure complete coverage of the area being shaved. Let’s say it takes two or three strokes of a five bladed razor that’s 10 or 15 pieces of metal dragged across your skin versus 2 or three.
- Save some moola! A Gillette fusion refill costs ~$4 (an ad showed them on sale for $15.79 for 4) on the same website, you can get DE blades for $0.20 ($1.99 for 10). Assume you change your blades at the recommended once a week frequency and you’re paying an extra $3.75 ($3.95 – 0.20) = $195 in a year. That easily pays for a quality handle (Merkur) with lots of money left over. Even if you buy premium DE blades at $0.70 each, you’re still saving $170 a year. Take a friend out to dinner and let her snuggle up to that nice smooth face!
It’s easy. A lot of people I speak with believe (falsely) that it is difficult to shave with a safety razor. Poppycock I say (can you tell I was watching a Sherlock Holmes movie last night?) It’s as easy as shaving with any other mass marketed razor. You can read all sorts of articles on the web that offer suggestions, tips, techniques etc. but think about it, people were using these type of razors over a century ago and patents were issued in the US before 1900. Ater all, this is shaving, not rocket science.- Shaving under your nose or near facial hair is much more precise when you’re working with a single blade of your double edge razor. I always struggled to get the last couple of hairs right next to my nose, now it’s a breeze. Even Gillette and Schick with there multi-blade behemoths realize the folly of their ways and provide a separate single blade. Think Schick Quattro with their “Edging blade” or the Gillette Fusion with their “precision trimmer”
- 100% recyclable. Being all metal, it is very easy for recycling companies to recycle them. The multiblade units are a combination of plastic and metal so are not easily recyclable. There is technology on the horizon that enables recycling everything all at once, but that is probably a decade or more away from being mainstream. In the meantime we throw all that stuff in a landfill to the tune of 2 billion units per year.
- Variety is the spice of life right? With a Double Edge Razor, you can put a different brand of blade in each and every time you change the blade. I never would have guessed there could be such a difference between the various brands, but there is. When I bought my razor I also bought an assortment of 4 different blades. I religiously took notes of my shaving experience and even noted how many times I nicked myself with each blade and on which shave, how my face felt, what my wife and kids thought was smoother the DE or the disposable triple edge. For the first four blades I compared, I have concluded: Never again will I spend money on “Shark” Super Chrome blades, they were the ones that most destroyed my face. I gave the Sharks to friend and he has had decent luck so clearly it is a technique/face interaction thing if some people can have success and others don’t. I’ve since purchased another assortment and am busy testing those blades out. Again, I’m continually amazed at the difference between blades.
- Use less water to rinse the blades. The multi-blade monsters have very tightly spaced blades and clog very easily. I can remember using a lot hotter and higher pressure water in an attempt to clear the particles from between the blades. Double Edge razors are much easier to clean.
- Shaving time reduced by as much as half! With a double edge razor, you can simply rotate the head and you’ve got a fresh new blade to continue shaving before you need to rinse out the razor. How simple is that? Are you starting to see a theme?
- It’s the people… Early in the movie, Soylent Green, protagonist Robert Thorn (played by Charlton Heston) is shaving with one. It looks good and there is a certain Je ne sais quoi to the scene as he shaves in a minimalist fashion in his apartment. It just looks manly and right.
- You take pride in how you look right? Why not take the extra step and take pride in how you get to looking right? For me, I like the feel of the safety razor, there is a “heft” to it. I think that’s part of why I never really liked the disposables. Since they’re meant to be thrown away there as cheaply made as possible. Think about it, why put an extra gram of plastic into your razor if you’re just going to throw it away? That’s weight that has to be purchased, molded, transported etc. Any one razor is insignificant, but if you think of the fact that 2 Billion are thrown away each year in the US alone. The is a staggering amount of waste.
There, now you have not quite a dozen reasons to switch to double edged razor, what are you waiting for?