The newest Schick entry into the shaving market is a five-bladed device that features, rather than the hydrating ’strip’ that’s been around for more than a decade, a ‘reservoir’ that contains aloe vera, vitamin E… you know, stuff to make your skin feel better.

I priced a pack of four replacement cartridges at Walgreen’s at $11.99 USD.

That’s THREE DOLLARS A CARTRIDGE, kids.

At that kind of price, it ain’t your face that needs to be lubricated.

It’s simple, fellas. If you want your skin to feel and look great, and your wallet to stay full, take up wet shaving.

You can get a vintage Gillette Super Speed on eBay for ten bucks.

Blades average a quarter each.

Etc. Etc.

You can buy a nice tub of high-end English shave cream if you really feel the need to drop serious coin on your shave, and even then you’ll save a bundle compared to this Schick affront to the dignity of shaving.

If you’ve found your way to this post via Google, because you were looking for info on the Schick thing, I sincerely hope I’ve talked you out of it, or at least given you food for thought.

Lifehacker has a post about how to extend razor blade life by soaking your gear in mineral oil between uses.

I’m sure this works, because anything you can do to eliminate water from the blade will keep it from oxidizing. Those tiny rust spots can wreak havoc on your blade’s edge.

I’ve also previously posted about a canny gent from Iowa who has set up an entire line of products devoted to keeping your blade edge sharp.

I’m not too crazy about spending a lot of money to save some. I’m also not much into oil when it comes to wet shaving. I find shave oil gums up the blade more than it’s worth.

So, I’ll say again: I use a different method for eliminating water from the blade, and it works pretty well. It’s also dirt cheap and doesn’t leave any residue.

Rubbing alcohol. Plain old isopropyl.

I keep a covered dish of it by the sink. When I shake the water from my razor, I then immerse it in the alcohol, and swirl it around a bit.

That will displace the water, dry quickly, and extend blade life.

Now go spend that money you saved on something great, like a new brush or some killer soap.

Wait! I meant, flowers for your wife. Yeah, that’s what I meant.

The gent found through his research that water rusts blades – figure out how to remove the water, and presto! Blade life is extended. You shave with the lube, then store your razor in the extender.

Christensen.

His Revolt sells for around ten bucks a bottle.

Okay.

I’m down with invention, making a buck, the American way.

And I agree, if you can remove all water from your blades after a shave, they stand less chance of developing micro-spots of rust which will make the next shave rougher.

I’ve been doing some research of my own in this field and have found something that does the trick a helluva lot cheaper than Revolt.

Rubbing alcohol.

Plain old isopropyl alcohol displaces water. Using it as an after-shave razor rinse, you clear water from the blade before you put the razor away. You can enjoy the warm, relaxing pleasure of a wet shave and still extend blade life.

I’m not claiming anything new here. I’ve read about this trick, and have been trying it lately.

My DE blades have gone from three comfortable shaves to five. Also, any nasty germs that may have jumped from my face to the blade are killed before the next shave.

I keep an Anchor Hocking bowl of the alcohol on the sink. After my shave I swish the head of the razor in there.

Works like a charm, for 80 cents a bottle.

Maybe there’s another way, Jeff…

The Roberts Method relies on the use of products designed by Mr. Roberts and available through his shop, Enchante. The products stress natural ingredients minimizing the use of chemicals. All Method products are meant to keep the maximum amount of water on the face and beard, saturating the whiskers to their utmost potential.

Strict ‘forms’ of whisker cutting are observed, making Method Shaving almost a martial art in execution.

While devotees of Method Shaving are few, they are loyal and their numbers are growing.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the Method, as I haven’t tried it. I do want to add information about Method Shaving to the Wet Shavers Blog for the record, and give you a handy jumping-off point to find out more about it.

Here’s a list of links to sources of details on the Roberts Method. First off is of course a video by Roberts’ fellow Texan, Mantic.

Mantic’s Concepts of Method Shaving Part One

Hydrolast products forum

Method shaving board at The Shave Den forum

Enchante shop online

Here’s an article from 1972 on how to shave with a straight (cutthroat) razor. The advice is as sound today as it was back then. Or in 1872, for that matter.

Ah, desperation. Having a little trouble selling these things, are we, boys?

DE wetshaving costs me less than a dime per shave in blade use, plus some soap cost that’s maybe a penny, plus fixed cost of razor and brush over a lifetime.

Anyway, Here’s the link. There’s a video worth a look, a Tony Manero/Saturday Night Fever send up with Derek, Tiger, Roger and stuff.

The demographic the Fusion is aimed at for the most part wasn’t even born when Saturday Night Fever came out. Buy hey, Proctor and Gamble are the marketing wizards, not me.

Can’t say I never threw you any love, Gillette.

The men’s version of the ladies’ Mow the Lawn shaver from Schick/Wilkinson Sword. Look closely, it’s the same razor albeit different colors in each ad. P&G should take a look at whatever agency is doing the marketing for Gillette, because they’re being blown out of the water right now.

Today have a link to an interview with Mr. King, detailing how he got into the shaving products industry (used his girlfriend’s bath oil to shave, I’m starting to love this guy) and what gives him the major huevos to go up against the shaving Power That Be.

Really, when you think about it, is the current global economic downturn such a bad time to offer consumers an alternative to the horrific cost of shaving with a Fusion? Not if you have the vision and cash to make it happen.

I’ll let Mr. King take Gillette on at their own game, and continue to do what I do: Mock Gillette and the Fusion while I enjoy excellent results with my low-cost DE shaving solution.

“Remember those TV ads in which a razor traversed the skin of a man’s cheek, twin blades the size of aircraft propellers hacking into hairs giant as flax leaves?”

This is the opening sentence in an article out of New Zealand that goes into Gillette’s science of multi-blade cartridge razors. They’ve put a lot of money into perfecting the gap between blades, minimizing the distance between them while preserving ‘rinsiblility’.

The hysteresis effect is a phenomenon that the big brains at Gillette found applied to whiskers during shaving. I presume they mean ‘elastic’ hysteresis. I’m an idiot and can barely understand what Wikipedia is trying to tell me here; but I think the gist is that the whisker remains above the skin level just after it’s been shaved, because it’s been stretched a bit. This makes sense when applied to multi-blade cartridges… particularly what I’ll call ‘the ingrown effect’.

The first blade ‘pulls’ the whisker, the second cuts it below where the skin line will be, and voila! An ingrown hair!

DE wetshavers, of course, will hit that protrusion on a subsequent pass. So, maybe, the whisker has a chance to settle a bit before it’s shaved again, and ingrowns are minimized.

Or not. My science education was sorely lacking. That’s why I went to business school.

It’s a pretty cool read.

And, from the title of the post, your vocabulary building for the day is complete. ‘Pogonotomy’ means ‘cutting the beard’ and is derived from the Greek for, um, ‘cutting the beard’. Now you’re ready to tackle that Reader’s Digest.

You will be given a short lecture about how times are hard, and blades cost a lot of money, and you can save a bundle by getting your Fusion blades thru Ebay, and they’ll come from Australia.

This appears to be driven by somebody who has an affiliate account with Ebay, and gets a cut of sales from auctions to which he drives traffic.

That’s fine by me. I like Ebay. I’m wearing some jeans I bought there right now.

But, this pitch is showing up in the form of splogs all over the place. That, I do have a bit of a problem with.

You want to make a buck, cool. So do I. But don’t clutter the net with this crap. The noise level is bad enough as it is.

I’m sure there are deals to be made on Fusion blades on Ebay. Treat the purchase like any other Ebay transaction: make sure the seller has good feedback, preferably at least 100 positives. It would be good if the seller appears to specialize in what you’re buying.

Better yet, forget Fusion blades entirely. Buy wet shaving gear from the links in my Amazon portal to the right.

Your shaving experience will be lifted far above what you’ve ever known…. and maybe I’ll make a buck.

No Magic! This stuff isn't needed.

African-American (that is to say, any men of African descent, this blog is global, yo) men needn’t suffer the ’shave bumps’ and ingrown hairs caused by the crappy shaving methods that are being foisted on men today.

I ran across a statement not long ago at B&B (that’d be ‘Badger and Blade’ to the uninitiated) that stuck in my mind. To me, it touched on the whole paradigm we seem to have these days that we have it all figured out; whatever way folks used to do things has been improved by our mighty technology. As far as shaving goes, wetshavers know that just isn’t always the case.

“I saw an old photo of my grandfather looking very pristine and debonair during the Korean war and realized that African-American males were shaving irritation free back then, we just got away from it during the “microwave” age when people expected everything pre-packaged and fast. I talked with him and he was using DE’s so I decided that I would convert for a bevy of reasons and haven’t looked back since.”

Wet shaving with a DE razor helps eliminate those ingrowns that cause the bumps because done right, you’re not cutting the whisker off below the skin so that it ‘grows in’ due to its curl. For African-heritage men, wet shaving is even more beneficial than it is for those of us of the Caucasian persuasion.

Check out the full thread here: New African American Member Seeking Tips

“….Gillette Fusion Power Stealth”, yup.

That sucks, right? Wet shaving is about comfort and treating yourself right. Why should I suffer through the first shave from a new blade? Is there anything that can be done about that?

Glad you asked.

To make a new double edge razor blade as smooth as possible, try ‘corking’ it.

The idea is pretty simple. You run the edges of the new blade through a piece of cork, or maybe stiff styrofoam, a couple of times each direction before using it. This is a similar idea to stropping a straight (cutthroat) razor. You’re honing the edge a bit, smoothing any burrs or rough spots that may be left over from manufacturing.

The jury is still out on this practice. There are those who feel corking blades is fussy overkill. Those who regularly cork blades are enthusiastic about the method.

If you’re using a Slant Bar razor, which you are if you read the prior post about what is the best DE razor, you’re living on the wet shaving edge to start with. You’re shaving with a potential face shredder. You don’t need the additional risk of a new blade being rough.

Next time you open a nice bottle of wine, toss the cork into your medicine cabinet. Don’t worry about what your wife or girlfriend says. If you’ve gotten into wet shaving and are collecting gear like mad, she already thinks you’re a little bit nuts.