All you have to do is wait for the google-trac, the razor with the most number of blades before infinity.
Eh, I’ll just settle for the googol-trac. I don’t really want sponsored advertising on my razor, even if it is shilling for different types of shaving cream and aftershave.
Oh, and Hitachi just pwn3d Gillette. This puts the amount of blades we’ll see sometime in the 22nd century at 10! or 3,628,800.
I can’t believe I spelled it google. They’ve taken over my brain.
There is a whole lot of old school machismo in shaving with a straight razor. The plastic orange thing just dosen’t have it. It looks more like a fisher price toy. But the straight razor always seemed to me to be a big pain in the butt. So straight razor guys, how much of a pain is it to keep the razor honed?
The Hitachi looks like a frickin’ lawnmower!
Keeping a straight razor sharp is pretty damn simple. Mine is somewhere around 130 years old (Yes, I shave with an antique King Cutter from the 19th century) that I bought from a guy at straightrazorplace.
Honing is a fairly simple task – simply run the blade backwards against a leather strop. Some people prefer to run it against a rough cloth strop first, then against the smooth leather. While I have a strop that I bought at a barber supplies store, I stopped using it because I prefer an old guitar strap instead ( longer and wider).
You don’t want to run your razor into the strop, because it’ll just cut into the leather.
Every year or so you’ll want to put a new edge on your razor (or if you’re clumsy and nick the edge against your faucet…). Just grab your trusty grindstone and do it by hand. Unless you’ve got a wedge razor, you’ve got something that’s beveled. (It’ll be T-shaped in cross-section). This means you just lay the razor flat – so the bottom of the T (the edge) and one of the crossbars are lying on your stone. Grind away with a smooth, even, light stroke, flipping it over every 20 strokes, then 10, then 5, etc… Then strop strop strop at least 50 times.
Shaving with the thing is a horse of a different colour. Suffice it to say that if you mash the thing into your face like a clumsy teenager using a regular razor you’ll be covered in blood. You want to hold the blade close to the plane of your face, then draw it lightly across your stubble. It’s a very different technique than using something with a pivoting head that is designed to be pressed very hard into your jaw.