Didja ever wonder why there are so many razors on the market? I mean, how much difference could there really be in shaving hair? Sit a while, and I shall tell you the differences.
I first shaved back in the 1950s, in the age of Gillette Blue Blades and “safety” razors from which you unscrewed the handle to separate the two-part head to change the blade. Shaving was a savage practice, at best – a bloody, sunrise ritual for most of us. It is well that Nature reserves the beard for manhood, since it took a man to face those thin sheets of blued steel. Two edges, one shave. The first use was rugged enough, but to try to get a second shave out of a Blue Blade was asking for disaster. Mayhem. Men with cheeks adorned with myriad bits of toilet tissue were an unremarkable sight in those days.
I well remember the flash of admiration I felt when, rummaging in our old medicine cabinet on Lyndhurst Street, I chanced to notice the stub of an ancient Blue Blade peeking out of the slot in its back. In those prehistoric times, medicine cabinets routinely included a slot in the back into which one fed the used razor blades, which fell into the dead space between the wall studs back of the cabinet. The sudden realization that the Old Man had filled that slot to capacity in the fifteen years he had lived in that house was sobering. What a blood trial those fifteen years must have been! Even with his leather cheeks and bull neck. He met his Maker clean shaven, and with a long list of Purgatory credits gained at that old porcelain sink every morning.
When I first came back from Germany forty-four years ago, I brought a wonderful straight razor with me. The ritual of shaving with it was a long and tedious chore that was, somehow, made into a delightful way to spend an hour each morning. Stropping the blade. Whipping up the lather from the shaving mug. Wetting the face with hot water and brushing on a thick layer of creamy lather. Then came the actual shaving, which was best done with great care, and never without a few nicks here and there, especially around the chin – a tough area fraught with dangerous curves. A pre-moistened styptic pencil was a must.
Alas, that ended when I bobbled the razor one morning picking it up from the sink to shave. It dropped to the tile floor, and it shattered into three pieces. Couldn’t afford to replace it at that time, so I grew a beard. Kept the beard for several years, but as my career changed over time, it became a hindrance in some professional circles. Off came the beard, but the moustache I retained for some time longer. Along the way, I discovered those marvelous BIC disposable razors and relied on them for several years, but the freight of shaving soap and mug and a handful of razors was a drag as I traveled more and more. Tried using canned shaving lather, but the pressurized cans don’t always travel well in checked baggage – a hard lesson to learn the hard way. Finally opted for shaving cream in a tube.
Then I discovered the minimal virtues of the electric razor. I essayed a crop of them before settling on a Norelco with the three round shaving heads. It was compact, and it had a small wall wart that recharged it or acted as power during charging. It was great, despite the occasional painful pinch, but it did not give a close shave. Convenience was now to be measured in shirt collars. After a few years, I tried a Braun unit that had a complicated “station” to clean and charge the machinery between shaves. It was far less portable, but I was travelling less and the charge lasted for more than a week of shaves. It was also more expensive, since I had to replenish regularly the siliconized alcohol cleaner it used to refurbish the blades. It cost more, but it shaved a tad closer than the Norelco. Collars lasted a bit longer, too.
Retirement brought a vast change to most routines, but not to that of shaving. True, one could opt out for a day or two before the pain of spousal pressure pushed one back to the sink, but that is a temporary respite at best. And a brief one, too. The real difference that retirement made was in the time that one could devote to any particular routine. The choice was now entirely mine; there was no grand societal requirement to present myself before the taps at precisely 0600 every morning. I was free to set my schedule. Free to choose my weapons. Free to joust with my follicles at my leisure. Heady stuff, this.
I had recently chanced upon my old shaving brush, resting unnoticed for the past couple of decades in back of a bathroom cabinet. The prime silver badger was still in perfect condition, but the ivory plastic handle had a nasty split. Replacing a first-class shaving brush in today’s market would cost a C-note or more, for even the lowest grades of gray badger run at $30 and up. Hog bristle, bleached and dyed to look like silver badger, is cheap, but hog bristles are shorter and stiffer than badger. They will not lather so well, nor will they last so long. The only choice was to repair the old brush or spring for a new one. JB Weld to the rescue.
I carefully cut out the margins of the split, using a carbide bit in a Dremel tool to assure that no soap scum or other contaminants would interfere with the bond of the epoxy. The dull gray scar on the yellowing ivory adds an ugly kind of beauty, sort of like one of those dueling scars that were marks of distinction in a long-gone age. Fitting. A tool of the past should bear a visual link with the past.
The restoration of the brush impelled a Rube Goldberg-like process. I found myself being fed along a complex track, one metaphorical collision after another, leading inexorably away from the habits ingrained over the past decades. In another dusty corner, I discovered a shoe box of old shaving stuff that some unremembered sense of frugality had caused me to set aside years ago. It had traveled from house to house, ending up in the back of a bathroom cabinet when I moved here twenty-five years ago. In it were a brace of old bottles of Old Spice, both cologne and aftershave, and a Gillette “Speed” safety razor that had lain untouched for at least thirty-five years. It was a “clam-shell” style, with a twist-knob at the base of the handle to open the top. Unsurprisingly, there was also a packet of stainless blades, two or three of which remained unused inside, an old shaving mug with no soap, and some other odds and ends. Never one to let wisdom intrude on a decision, I opted to give the old Gillette a try.
Soap was the problem of the moment. On many occasions in the past, I had cupped a bar of Ivory in my palm and rubbed up a workable lather with the brush. It was, however, far from ideal; too little fat or something, for the lather is really too thin to work well. Somewhere in the back of my brain a dim warning bell chimed. Not having scraped a sharp blade across these cheeks in decades mandated a measure of caution. I cast about for a solution. I finally settled on a bar of my wife’s bath soap, one of those body lotion-laden brands that boast the ability to soften oyster shells if used daily. I was too tightly gripped by nostalgia, and plunged ahead heedless of all. Though somewhat thicker than Ivory, the lather will still a bit too penurious to satisfy, yet I could not stop myself. Fortunately, I still had the styptic pencil – those things last forever it would seem – so I was able to staunch the loss of blood safely.
The shave was anything but comfortable. In fact, it was brutal, savage. But it was far closer than any electric had yet managed. The splash of the ancient Old Spice was bracing (to say the least), but despite the obvious torture, I was hooked. I felt different. I felt refreshed. The end effect was as different as the process; I had never experienced the satisfaction I now felt when I had used the electric razor. It was art, craftsmanship, a deeply personal interaction with me that separated the ritual from the mere machine. Shaving is more than just the removal of hair from the face. It is an existential statement. A manifesto of being.
And thus began a quest for new tools.
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Originally Posted by suddenseer
