I was wondering what would be a good blade to get started shaving with, I have noticed that i can get store brand ASR Blades locally and cheap at Walmart. Is this a good blade to start with?
If you ask me, Crystals are a good starter but you may want to pick up a Blade Sample Pack from...... www.westcoastshaving.com, www.razorandbrush.com, http://connaughtshaving.com/ Or you can just PM Rene, he has some too. Or you can just buy some different blades at the TSD store. The possibilities are endless.
the sample packs are the way to go. after trying about every blade i could, i finally settled upon derby blades. s~s
I agree, sample packs are great. You could start with the wal-mart brand blades though. Theyre not that big of a deal.
One thing I have found is that sometimes a blade will "feel" different in a certain razor. I will try the blades in several razors and try to find the one that seems to be somewhat universal. This takes some time but I think it's fun tyring.
Good advice. When I started, I found Crystals, IP Reds, Dorco 301, and Astra to be very forgiving, with Crystals perhaps being the most forgiving of the lot. I found using these initially helped build technique and confidence. The large variety in the sample pack did not benefit me until a month or 2 later.
You COULD do that, or you could do like I did and buy a hundred pack of Derbys, then experiment with different blades later once my shave was pretty consistent. People seem to love sampler packs, but when you can get 100 blades for less than the cost of a sampler of 2o that's a pretty attractive option. I found derby's good enough, consistent enough, and cheap enough that I pretty much recommend them to anyone starting out with DE shaving, & I give a pack away with every razor I sell, and I tend to give them to friends so they can try DE shaving. They are not currently my favorite blades, but they are certainly a good place to start for most people.
I have to agree with going the sample pack route. I'm about a month into this and still working on the ones that I got but I am starting to figure which ones I like and which are just ok. The only ones that I just can't handle are the Derby blades but obviously some people like them. I would not want to be stuck with a hundred blades that I did not like though so that's why I think samples of a few different kinds to figure out what you like is the way to go.
I have to agree with this. I only started a couple of weeks ago, but I took people's advice and got a sample pack. I started with Derby blades as these were most recommended for beginners, but found within a few days they just weren't right. I've switched to Astra SP and they're much better so have ordered 30 of these to see me through a month or 2. At which point I will hopefully have honed my technique enough to try some others from the sample pack. I really want to try some of the sharper blades-but I'm being patient and waiting to reward myself for improving my technique. Could be a while....
I'm gonna disagree with the majority opinion here. OK, maybe I lucked out that the 100 pack of Derbys I started with happened to work so well for me, but at $8 shipped for a hundred blades, it was not much of a gamble. If you don't like em, give em away to someone who does, you're still out way less money than any sample pack out there, but if you DO like them you're set for a year! I kept trying to buy sample packs when I was starting after I had finished sampling razors and moved on to sampling blades, but I kept finding that all the sample packs out there were full of blades I already had like Derbys, and blades blades I'd already tried and hated like Lords, and I did the math and realized I could just order the blades I wanted to try individually, and create my own custom sampler pack full of blades I actually wanted for the same price as buying a pre-bundled sampler pack. In my case in the first few weeks of trying DE shaving I bought 100 Derbys, got a couple packs of Lords with my first razor, bought Wilkinsons at the local drug store for $1.25, and got piffed or traded a few miscellaneous blades, after that I would order 2 or three packs of things I wanted to try, usually when ordering other shaving stuff. So in spite of never buying a sample pack, I have at this point sampled a healthy cross-section of both vintage and currently manufactured blades. The biggest disappointment for me was Feathers. It took a while before I tried them, was excited to see what all the fuss was about, but it turned out they just didn't work that well for me. Not smooth at all on the first shave, way too dull by the third, so basically there was one halfway decent shave, but I had to endure a lousy one to get to it AND they cost 2-5 times as much as any of my favorite blades. For instance 8¢ Derby's give at least 3 consistently decent shaves, and Personna Labs will give me a good 7 excellent shaves for 13¢. They weren't my least favorite blade, but they were worse than several cheaper blades I didn't like well enough to bother with. So I spent almost the same for 10 Feathers with shipping as I did for 100 derbys. So I traded and piffed the remaining Feathers. not really a waste, a learning experience, but how is it more of a waste to wind up with 98 blades you don't care for than 8 when they both cost the same? Bottom line is although a lot of people recommend sampler packs I don't really see any advantage in buying a preconfigured sampler pack, especially when there are such great prices to be had on packs of 100. Whatever small savings is had from a sample pack is eaten up if there is one pack of blades in there you don't care to try. I say just buy the ones you actually WANT to try, and if you find a deal for 100 blades that is less than a third per blade of what you would pay to buy them in packs of 5, why NOT pick them up. If it turns out you hate them you can always trade them with someone who happens to love them, chances are they've got a few blades they don't care for that you may not have tried.
I would not buy any 100 packs without first trying a sampler. I would hate to buy 100 blades and not enjoy the shave your getting. Also like anything else how will you know if there is a better blade for you without trying different ones? You could get some derbys and get a so so shave and think this is the best I can get then get some yellow Gillettes and go wow this is a whole new shave that I actually enjoy. Personally I cant stand derbys or wilkinsons they hurt my face but some people love them that is why you need to try different blades. Why not spent the extra 5 bucks getting a sampler and get a blade you like then risking being stuck with 100 blades that gave you the same shave as a mach 3 (your also still ahead compared to cardridge razor prices)? I thought the whole point of using these razors and the extra work was to get a better shave? At least that is why I do it. These are just my humble thoughts.
Well... I did. It worked out great for me. suit yourselves I guess. I still don't see the big deal about being stuck with 98 blades that a hundred other guys would be glad to have.
It's not about right or wrong. It's about how YOU enjoy YOUR shave and how YOU go about achieving it. I am glad it worked for you. I do like the idea of the sampler packs. I would hate to buy 100 and not like them. Buy another 100 and not like those. Buy another 100 only to find they don't work well. Buy 100 more... You get the idea. That's why I like sampler packs.
Yes, blades are a YMMV thing. But, there is also much to be said about engineering one's own sample pack based on popular den opinion, and buying in bulk for economies, even if done blind. I bought 100 voskhods in the first group buy without ever trying them first, and am glad I did. Except for a couple gems (like the 7-Oclocks) the sample pack approach has mostly left me with a pile of marginal blades, many of which I have given away. There are many ways to win here.
Yeah, I'll say it one last time and then shut up forever (on this subject anyway): If you buy 100 blades and it turns out you don't like them, it's not like you are stuck with them forever. Just trade them to someone who DOES like them. Sharing and swapping hardware and software as well as experience is all a part of what makes online communities so rewarding to be a part of.
