What pushed you in this direction?

mine was simply cost, i had a few de's from my grandpa when he passed away but assumed you couldn't find blades etc for them anymore, my fusion was costing me more then groceries as i shaved every morning for work. a simple google brought up tsd and my wife laughs at me when i say i'm excited to shave now. i've got her using my tech and she loves it.

 

I'd been threatening since the late 90's that I was going to switch away from the Mach 3 due to the high price of cartridges. I just finally sucked it up and did it. I think Mantic's video may have played an integral role.

 

A few things:
- Gillette deciding they wanted to remove a cartridge from the pack, but charge the same price. That really pushed me over the edge.
- I'd seen the old safety razors and thought "man those are cool, but they can't be as good as my Fusion" ala ACE$&8s in the previous posts.
- When I found that you could still buy these things, I got hooked. I'm really into these WW2 era and post era things. I collect WW2 rifles and just imagine where these things have been - same with razors. I just picked up a 1955 Super Speed - makes you wonder who had it for all these years, who used it, etc.

My initial investment in all of this is ~$100. Compared to my current setup (shaving gel in a can and Fusion), that's around 30 cartridges, which is about a years worth of shaving for me. My "new to me" setup should last me for WAY MORE than a year!

 

My partner at work gave me a badger brush, a Taylor's cream, and a CBE soap as a holiday gift-"just try it." I immediately liked it. I decided to explore more on the internet (he still uses cartridges) and found this site. Got a Merkur 38C from Amazon. My passion for history and my wife's passion for antiques has drawn me to the vintage razors. I have a habit of getting into hobbies with gusto and endless research-as everybody out there knows this one certainly lends itself to that. I have already drawn 3 others into this. My neighbor now has a vintage razor collection that rivals mine-he's still lurking here--come on Glenn-reveal yourself.


Danny

 

Yeah Glenn, we don't bite.





Too hard...

 

Exactly! That's why I still like to shoot film with 35mm Pentax K1000 kit, listen to music on Vinyl and Tubes and Shave with a DE razor. Sometimes the old ways are the better. We lose so much with our time saving efforts.

 

I'm also a fan of things not modern. After retiring from the military I was quite keen to wear a beard so I did for a couple years. I picked up a Gem Micromatic in a local antique shop and sat on it for a couple years. When I decided to bail the beard, there was the Micromatic. I went out, found blades and took off from there. Before that I was a Mach 3 guy I guess back then quick was much more important than effective and well, fun just didn't equate with shaving. Not so anymore, I have a blast shaving and I doubt I've ever had such consistently comfortable and close shaves. My gear isn't typically fancy or spendy but it works very well and I enjoy it.

 

What pushed me?

Cost and more Eco-friendly as well as the soap and cream selection is better and last but not least it's a good 10-15 minute morning time to set my mind right for the day.

 

For me it was a visit at my barbershop for a monthly haircut.
The place was owned by an italian barber and his son.
His son was the one cutting my hairs, and one day i talked about shaving whit the guy, asking him if he ever tried the new Schick Quatro razor(back in the days it was my tool, i know, shame on me).
And he answered me almost laughing that he was using straight razor for shaving and that he never used one of those modern razor.
So it got my interest and i went to buy a shavette whit a pack of Merkur blades, blades that i paid 10$ for a pack at a local store
Anyway i tried to shave whit the shavette and it turned pretty bad so i got back to the Quatro , keeping the shavette only for the sideburns.
And last year while shaving whit my Quatro i realized that it wasn't normal to bleed that much when shaving so i got on the internet, search for shaving and ended up on a site like The Shave Den.
For the rest you know the story..shaving turned into a hobby.

 

I wanted to enjoy the better part of life. I have the time now so why not try to enjoy the morning ritual with a DE like my father used.

 

I always figured that, all things being equal, the simplest tool that'll do the job is usually the best. I remember as a kid, looking at a splitting maul that had spring-loaded wedges built in to open the cut as it split the wood and thinking, "Why not just sharpen your axe?". It's a rule that I've found holds good most of the time, so when I started shaving daily I finally settled on the Fromm Hairshaper as the simplest razor that I could handle efficiently. Since then I've learned alot about honing straights and how to use a DE; I recently fell heir to an old Atra handle and a few cartridges and I may even take that for a spin - I'm not nearly as much of a purist as I used to be.

Likewise the thing I've always disliked about canned shave foam is that it's a packaged end product that you don't make and therefore have no control over. With a brush and soap or cream, I can get the moisture and density that I like in my lather. I'd just rather do it myself.

Best Regards

goshawk

 

the cost of carts and i wanted hot lather. i didnt know about the Trac II carts at the time. i was using the Sensor XLs and thought that was the best i had used. the 3-5 bladed monstrosities didnt do that great a job for me. i bought a Conair lather warmer and it worked for a few months and then i started getting black specs in my lather. i thought it may have been mold or something so i aced it and had decided id try electrics again. i figured since there was a forum for everything id find some info on the latest elec models. i punched in shave forum or something like that and the rest was history.

 

I had stopped shaving pretty much altogether. I still did my neck once in a while. I'd gone to visit a friend I only see a few times a year and he commented on the growth (a time when I hadn't shaved my neck for a bit, and hadn't trimmed the beard). I said I knew it was ugly but shaving hurt so much and left me feeling awful. He suggested I look up shaveblog.com. That's all he said. So I did. And now I'm awaiting my first order of razors and other good stuff to arrive. I've already switch to a cheap brush and soap and the difference is astronomical.

 

I'm a nostalgic in many ways. I prefer old cars, old music, old everything, it seems. Classic shaving just seemed like a natural.

 

You know, seems like we've all got different versions of the same story, shaving the modern way sucked so I tried this and dug it and here I am. I think what's being totally missed here is the simple fact that whether your weapon of choice is a straight, a shavette, a single edge, double edge or injector blade, aside from the remarkable leap in performance, it's just so damn much cooler than shaving with the same crap everyone else does.

It sounds kinda dumb but if I told you the truth, I'd admit that most mornings at the office, I facerbate often and can't believe the shaves I'm getting off of 60-100+ year old razors! While the other sheeple dutifully lathered up with their Edge gel and mindlessly scrape it off their face with a $4 a cartridge Fusion abomination, I'm spending pennies a day for soap and aftershave and enjoying absolutely epic shaves with the same kind of razor my great grandfather used.

I never met the man (my great grandfather) but my Mom had about a million stories about him. He was a German imigrant, a farmer who owned a general store in Indiana. He was seldom without his plug of Days Work or Brown Mule chewing tobacco and often played the fiddle at Saturday dances. In his younger days his debauchery was the stuff of legend and he enjoyed good whiskey and the company of pretty women (sometimes courting several simultaneously.) That is until he met Agnes Bryant (my great grandmother.) Her folks were from county Cork, Ireland. A fine somewhat monied Catholic family that was none to pleased when their eldest daughter decided to marry up with a German Protestant hooligan named Charlie Richter.

What the hell has this to do with shaving you say? Well, I'm getting to it. My favorite Charlie Richter story was one my Mom used to tell about when she was 9 or 10 years old. Christmas was coming and she thought it might be nice to buy her Grandpa one of those new fangled safety razors. As subtle as a 9 year old can be, she once asked him if he'd like one of those Gillette safety razors so he wouldn't have to be bothered honing and stropping his straight razor and could simply replace the blade when it became dull. She said his response was absolutely priceless, if a little less than tactful. She said he got a very annoyed look on his face and replied, "No, I don't beilieve I'd like one of those safety razors at all. I don't know what the world is coming to when a man doesn't even have the time or know how to maintain his own razor. Those safety razors are just the end of men being men. I can always use some good bay rum after shave though." To my knowledge he shaved with a straight to his dying day. I think of this story often when I'm stropping up a straight razor for my morning shave. I picture Charlie looking down on me with a big grin, happy that even in the 21st century there's still a few "real men" left.

 

Great story, 1OldGI. I wish I'd have known my granddad; he passed away just hours after I was born.

 

What pushed me

My Grandpa taught me how to shave with cream and razor. I shaved for years with disposables and canned goo. 5 months ago I caught an article online from the Today Show that talked about the lost art of shaving with a DE, Brush and English Creams, ordered a starter kit with brush, razors, Merkur long handle and Vulfix Cream, been hooked ever since. My shaving has become enjoyable, alot better let alone a great hobby.

 

For me it was Kiss My Face cream and some unusually good store brand blades on my Trac II. The combo gave BBS shaves every single day. I knew that the store brand blades tended to change over time, so it was unlikely the BBS shaves would last forever. How to find a reliable supply of super-good blades?

Cost was another factor encouraging the switch to traditional wetshaving. The store brand Trac II cartridges were reasonably priced, but generally not as good as the Gillettes. The Gillette cartridges gave reasonably good shaves, but were rather pricey. The goo-in-a-can was getting annoyingly expensive, too. Then I saw a pack of the multiblade cartridges. Good freaking grief, they make Ferraris that cost less! Seeing that the commonly marketed, mass produced shaving future was rather bleak was motivation to find a better way.

Then I saw a post on a fountain pen website that linked to one of the wetshaving forums. The behavior there was pretty bad so I bailed, but then found a much better forum. There I learned a lot of the basics about DE shaving, and found a huge variety of blades. DE razors also seemed to be much better quality than their plasticky cartridge counterparts. I went a and bought a Merkur 34C, some Derby blades, a badger brush and Institut Karite shaving soap. One shave with that combination was enough to make me a convert.

 

I had already hated the price of Fusion cartridges for a while. Taking that together with their performance, I had hated shaving.

It was a Christmas gift that changed all that for me. An Art of Shaving set, that came with a pure badger brush, shaving cream, pre-shave oil, aftershave, and a fancy looking Fusion. However, after realizing that the cream and oil made a much bigger difference than the razor, I decided to do some research.

That ultimately led me to shaving with a DE.

 

Like everyone else, for me it is a combo of paying so much to get ingrown hairs, irritation, and bumps, and that DE razors just look so cool! I haven't been able to try mine out yet, but just the act of cleaning and sterilizing them was fun. To hold something from the late 40's or 50's in your hand, and see how much better it was made is something I really enjoy. I can't imagine my grandkids doing the same with a Mach 3 or Fusion in 60 or so years...