What does your razor say about you? Probably nothing. At least, no more than your computer says about you (underhanded slight in the general direction of Steve Jobs — wink wink, nudge nudge. That’s a joke, btw). Still, let me tell you about my razor.
Pictured at right is the razor I use every morning (or every second morning as the case may be). It’s a Merkur safety razor and uses one of those old-fashioned double sided blades. I even have a shaving mug with a disk of shaving soap and lather up with a badger hair shaving brush. A while back I got fed up with the over-priced Mach3 razor refills and decided to lay out $30 for a razor that would easily last the rest of my life and then only have to pay a couple bucks once a month or so for another pack of blades.
At the time I was in college and the decision to go in this direction was mostly a financial one. One pack of 20 blades cost (at the time) about $1. Compared to the $15 price tag for a dozen Mach3 blades you can see why I went the direction I did. It also didn’t hurt knowing that the disposed blades, since they were 100% steel would rust away instead of sitting for years in the junk yard like the Mach3 blades (which have a ton of plastic) do.
Using the razor took a lot of getting used to. I had to unlearn some bad habits I had gotten into while using a Mach3 such as shaving “against the grain.” I also found that it also took longer to shave with the safety razor. It’s a deliberate process. At first it was almost frustrating shaving because it took so long. I was used to being able to “flip ‘n fly” with the Mach3, but if I did that with a safety razor I’d inevitably die of blood loss. But in it all, I found that there’s something refreshing about shaving the “old-fashioned way”. It’s hard to explain.
The razor I use is somewhat antiquated (which I prefer) but I know that some guys out there might want something a little more streamlined and modern like this new Merkur safety razor. It looks like it was designed by a sports car company, very nice. it has an adjustable blade-height which lowers the learning curve somewhat and a lot of guys find that adjusting the blade height to a lower level can reduce shaving irritation.
If you’ve never tried shaving with a safety razor I highly encourage you to give it a try. There’s a significantly higher up-front cost but in the long term you end up saving a LOT of money. Not to mention that there’s a certain romance to shaving the old-fashioned way.
