I’m going through the DE “safety” razor renaissance phase now and getting nicked more often than not. But that’s the time suck for me … lengthy dabbing and waiting for coagulation…
Hot shower, regular soap, single blade disposable razor (I find it gets gummed up less and is easier to clean in between strokes) and I’m good to go. I go every which way, but start with the grain. Shaving gel and foam doesn’t seem to do anything for my skin and face that soap doesn’t. The most important thing for an easy shave for me is a hot, damp face. My whiskers come off like butter then. Otherwise, it hurts like hell, no matter what I use.
Barber shop. I haven’t had a shave in over a year now.
My whiskers don’t grow that fast, and my facial hair is both soft and light-colored (now mostly gray I guess) so I shave “wrong” (i.e. mostly against the grain, finishing with the grain) maybe twice a week (used to be 3x a week before I retired) using gel and a 5-blade disposable. No aftershave, just lotion, because I have dry skin. Works fine for me. My razors seem to last forever.
I use an electric because I can’t bring myself to use a bladed razor over my surgery scars*. I’m not good at it. Mask wearing has let me do it less, but my wife hates it.
(*: I have a big divot in my neck from a neck dissection and parodidectomy, but the hair follicles in the worst of it were killed by radiation therapy. And my phone typer remembers this, apparently.)
My father gave me his grandfather’s (my great-grandfather’s) safety razor and I kept it as a cool old memento.
But then a few years ago I started using it after I realized how incredibly cheap the cost is to use them. Really nice, high-end blades for the thing cost around $0.10 each. I typically only shave a couple times a week and I switch blades every other time putting my razor cost at $0.40 per month.
I have to be a little more careful (some skill is involved) and it’s not quite as smooth as a Mach3 razor (my previous favorite) but I get great shaves for next to nothing.
I hate spending any more time in the bathroom than necessary, so I shave in the shower. The idea is to soak the beard soft in the hot water / steam, while getting one’s hair and body clean. Then, taking a Mach 3 or whatever, I shave with the grain, without shaving cream, or a mirror, just by feel and thoroughness.
Rinsing the blade with high pressure water (from a bidet) and drying afterwards after each use is what keeps the blades working for a really long time, long after the “change now” strip on the blade has turned into mushy remains.
Here’s the thing- the old-style double-edged safety razors weren’t really intended to produce a super-smooth shave in one pass. Apparently they were intended to produce a passable one pass shave, but super-smoothness took a second lather and pass from different angles.
The modern-day cartridge razors effectively give you as many passes in the same direction as you have blades, and they actually reward pressing relatively hard versus what works best with a safety razor. So they’re fast, reasonably smooth, and rather foolproof- they’re also hard to cut yourself with.
But they’re expensive as hell, and get obsoleted surprisingly regularly. Part of what made me switch to the safety razors was that it seemed like every 7 or so years, the makers would basically release a new sort of razor, and the kind I was using would be pushed out of stores. Not discontinued exactly, but just a lot more difficult to get hold of. This frustrated me, and I figured I’d just learn how to use the safety razors and I’d be more or less future-proof. And it’s cheaper as well in terms of consumables; you can get 100+ blades for $25, and that’s for the high quality ones, and they probably last about 4-5 shaves each.
In 1986, when I moved into the dormitory at the University of Oklahoma, it seemed like every time I turned around, someone was giving me a can of Gillette shaving gel. I think I got 5 within the first week.
I’ve tried shaving with the grain. Whenever I do, it feels like I still need to shave.
One time while travelling I had to use a shared washroom (I mean basins in a shared room, not showers), and was surprised to notice several guys banging their razors against the basin furiously to try to knock out the stuck hairs. Really weird.
Perhaps they noticed me calmly brushing out the stuck hairs in my own razor with an old, soft toothbrush and maybe had an “Ohh” moment. Or maybe they thought *I* was the weirdo.
The basic tip (for women, too) is to use a razor that is… razor sharp.
Seems like going at it with a brush risks fucking up the edge?
Not really.
So, what I’m referring to is just removing the hair and gunk that collects in disposable razors. It only takes a light sweep to do this, and mostly coplanar with the blades. There’s no way the blades could cut or nick the bristles.
If you allow the gunk to collect over time, that might be a different story, but I’m referring to doing this as you shave. I’ve been doing this for years and never noticed any issue with how long the blades last.
I don’t know about any of this. The few times I tried shaving made me break out, so I gave up on it. 64 and no male teachers on the subject.
New word for the day!
Until my late thirties, shaving cream and disposable razor. I finally got tired of shaving every day so just let it grow. No I just have an inexpensive beard trimmer to trim around the edges each week. When I feel like it, I’ll shorten the whole thing.
I changed my shaving habits in the last couple years. Seems like, maybe since my beard is going gray, my beard is tougher to shave. Is that a thing?
I use Harry’s razors. Pretty inexpensive and easy to find. I experimented with a safety razor, but slashed the hell out of my neck, so I gave that up. It’s strange, since that’s what I learned with. It was pretty cheap. I wonder if that’s a factor?