Costco has a good price on the cartridges if you’re a member.
I tried using what I was told were some nice japanese blades with my great-grandfather’s safety razor for around a year, mostly because I thought it was cool.
They worked well and were stupidly cheap, but I had to be more careful and go slower than with my Mach3 razor. And even with being careful I would nick myself once in a while.
I eventually switched back to the Mach3 because I can drag it mindlessly over my face while half-awake without fear of cutting myself.
That’s what I need, given my klutziness.
Yep! I don’t think I’ve ever nicked myself in a quarter century of using them. From time to time I think about trying a safety razor like my dad used, then I think “why?”. I don’t need pieces of TP stuck to my face.
I started shaving well before the Gillette Trac 2 came along. For quite awhile now, I’ve been using Walmart’s cheap 3-blade disposables, and I think I get about one nick per decade.
Of course, I’ve had a beard now since 1993, so I only shave my neck and the underside of my jaw, but still: even the cheapo razors are miles better than the ‘safety razors’ that were available when I started shaving, so I’ve never felt much need to upgrade any further.
Not sure I appreciate the difference. It restores the blades to the condition when first used, provided you do not enough force when scraping to bend and weaken the joint. I would not do it if I had to “pay with my profile”. It restores a good quality shave for a long time. This is what barbers do - sharpen or hone the blade.
Sharpening involves grinding metal to create a sharp edge. Honing realigns the edge without removing metal. I don’t see any way for a pane of glass to remove metal, so presumably this hones the edges of the blades to realign them.
Ocassionally with the Mach 3 I’ve had nicks, but it’s vanishingly rare (and can say the same for safeties). A lot of it depends on facial geometry and skin resiliency.
I’d call it a polish but I think glass and sand is abrasive to blade steel. The blades first dull mostly by contact with skin and hair.
On a related note, is anyone here using pumice stones for depilating?
Vocabulary note: to me, sharpening is something you do with a whetstone. Honing (re-aligning the blade) is what you do with a steel. What you do with leather is stropping. Sharpening, on a whetstone, also has the effect of honing, and honing also has the effect of sharpening and stropping.
Wiping a blade on glass has the effect of removing water (critically important to staying sharp) and stropping. Drying and stropping are the two traditional things to do to a razor blade, because they are the important things. Sharpening and honing every year or month or day depending on how many people you shave, and if you’ve let the edge corrode.
Honing is more important for kitchen knives than it is for razor blades, because kitchen knives are used to cut, not to shave.