Why do razor blades get dull so fast?

I made her buy her own damned pink razor. And a mint-colored one. d8-)

...

You put soap in yours? Mine tastes like Jameson.

jsw

I had a Norelco AC shaver, but wasn't alowed to use it while in Basic Training. I would wear out a set of heads in well under a year. I wore out the shaver in under two years. I washed my face and used a preshave lotion every time, and cleaned it after every shave, but it didn't last. This was almost 40 years ago.

I've still got two -- one complete and one with one missing part, the formed spring around the rolling shaft which sets the honing and stropping tension and keeps the blade properly oriented during the honing and stropping..

You did not mention that not only did this include the strop and the hone, but the frame in which the blade was stored was designed to move the blade edge leading along the hone, and edge trailing along the strop. The hone and the strop were each mounted in a cover which went on *only* the proper side of the case, so you could not wind up pushing the blade into the strop.

The handle stored between the loops of the hone/strop actuator handle when it was all packaged.

It is still good -- but I'm no longer a good test, as even a blue blade would have lasted now about 28 years or so -- it has been that long since I last shaved. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

My step grandfather had an interesting razor for DE blades back in the 1950s. It had a very fat handle with a fatter knob on the bottom. You wound it up, and while you shaved it spun an eccentric weight near the blade end causing a vibration which improved the shaving action.

I looked for it when I cleaned up his house after he passed on, and did not find it, so it must have finally died -- or been replaced by an electric.

Enjoy, DoN.

I heard about arm-stroping, and tried it on a disposable razor I use in the shower, and I think it actually worked! The idea is to strope the blade (drag it up the back of your forearm, of course in the opposite direction to the normal shaving movement). About 10 times is as much as I had patience for, and the blade seemed to shave better, unless I am deluding myself. I will have better data after I do it for a week or so. Please give it a shot and report what you think about it.

My Dad taught me that trick, only on the palm of the hand - he got the information from a barber who did the final strop of the straight razor on his palm. I use trac II and hopefully have an adequate supply but will still buy them at yard sales. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I used it when I was in the A.F. Never had to worry about 5 o'clock shadow :-)

John B.

I remember going on trips (sometimes as much as 60 miles, to Grandpa's) and reading the Burma-Shave jingles, one line on each signboard.

John B.

Yeah. I recall reading a cover article in Cosmo (while in line at the supermarket some years ago) advising the young ladies that yes your man *can* tell if you use his razor to shave your legs, so don't do it without permission and especially don't lie if you did use it - too much relationship damage will result.

My wife already had her own razor, so no crisis erupted.

Joe Gwinn

Too bad it disappeared, that would be a cool item just to have.

Jon

Brookstone sold one like that for many years.

Well, I don't use those things anymore. I use the multi-blade disposables. The ones with three blades seem to be the best compromise for me. Five blades drag too much.

But I still have my straight razor and strop, which I used when I had a beard. Every once in a while I drag it out, along with the soap mug and badger brush, for old-time's sake. I do check my health insurance before using it, in case I sneeze.

I still love those things.

I used one of those for a while, till the mechanism froze up, IIRC. It seemed to work marginally better than an ordinary double edge razor, but lacked the "adjustable" feature of the Gillette double edge razors of the time.

Hmm ... he had his long before Brookstone started business.

Double hmm ... Wikipedia says that they started with mail order from classified ads in the back of Popular Mechanics back in 1965, but this is still later than the one which I saw. I wonder how similar/different these were?

I used to *like* Brookstone -- back when they actually had the useful "hard to find tools" which they advertised. There is now very little in the way of useful tools, unfortunately.

Enjoy, DoN.

Bingo! The razor does not appreciably dull from actual use, as the hair is a whole lot softer than the steel.

If you clean it well in fresh water then give it a blast of dry air with the hair dryer followed with either a shot of WD40 or dunk it in vegitable oil you can get over six months according to the super cheap skates.

Myself I use the Gillette disposables. The old one is in the shower and I whack off the bulk of the beard there and then I do the final in the mirror with the newer one. When the old one gets a little grabby, I toss it and replace the shower razor with the one from the sink.

When I rinse them I just give them a shake and I don't sweat over anything. Even so I only break out one or two new ones a month, so the box of 52 I get at Costco lasts me years. No shaving cream just a wet face.

I actually would prefer having a nice permanant razor with replacable blades, but the disposables are actually cheaper than the replacement blades so I never made the switch.

The could but the real benefit to carbide is its resistance to high heat not really an issue with razor blades and the edge would probably still dull and drag the old whiskers in short order.

My dad had one of those also. He stopped using those when they came out with stainless and abandoned those when they came out with the twin blade. I think my Brother ended up with the stropper.

One thing that I noticed to give me several months out of each disposable blade cartridge, was leaving the shaving lather to sit in place for a couple minutes before taking razor to it - (I keep a beard, so am talking about shaving only neck and cheeks). Also, rinse the razor in COLD water after every couple strokes, saw that in a movie once 8^).

Mike