Entries from September 2010 ↓

Shaving cream was recorded by Benny Bell in 1948 but was considered unsuitable for general audiences. It was re-released in 1970 and sold more than a million copies.

ARTIST: Benny Bell with Paul Wynn
TITLE: Shaving Cream
Lyrics

I have a sad story to tell you
It may hurt your feelings a bit
Last night when I walked into my bathroom
I stepped in a big pile of

{Refrain}
Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you’ll always look keen

I think I’ll break off with my girlfriend
Her antics are queer I’ll admit
Each time I say, “Darling, I love you”
She tells me that I’m full of

{Refrain}

Our baby fell out of the window
You’d think that her head would be split
But good luck was with her that morning
She fell in a barrel of

{Refrain}

An old lady died in a bathtub
She died from a terrible fit
In order to fulfill her wishes
She was buried in six feet of

{Refrain}

When I was in France with the army
One day I looked into my kit
I thought I would find me a sandwich
But the darn thing was loaded with

{Refrain}

And now, folks, my story is ended
I think it is time I should quit
If any of you feel offended
Stick your head in a barrel of

{Refrain}

There are three points to this article. Firstly real, traditional shaving is not a walled garden like multibladed system shaving. The choices are infinite so you can tailor your shaving experience every day to be exactly what you want.

Secondly this is anti snobbery. Too many people in traditional shaving only want to talk about Simpson’s brushes, Feather All Stainless razors and Castle Forbes shaving cream, or similar expensive, high end kit. Yet there is stuff out there that costs a fraction of the price and is just as good, if not better.

Thirdly this article is about cheap shaving. How to have a great shave without spending a lot of money. Double edged safety razor shaving using a lather generated with a brush has been with us for over 100 years, there are no patents to prevent competition and there is lots of that competition from manufacturers in low cost developing countries. A recipe for bargains. We will be using kit from India, China and Egypt.

For this shave there will be no compromises. Everything will be of the very highest, most luxurious quality. You could shave with this combination for the rest of your life and be happy with it. The fact that it is so cheap is just an enormous bonus. So this is what we shall use:

Shaving soap. Palmolive tallow based shaving stick, less than 50 pence in British supermarkets. Say 1 penny per shave. This is one of the world’s great shaving soaps, it forms a smooth, lubricating, luxurious lather very easily and smells fantastic. In fact it is difficult to know what they could do better. This is raved about across the wet shaving community and is very highly sought after in America where it is not on general sale.

Brush. I could suggest a cheapo boar brush from the discount shop, but we are talking about luxury here. The Frank Shaving finest badger at $9.99 from China is our bargain, it is as good as big name brushes at ten times the price. A quality brush like this should last for decades so the cost is just a few cents per month. This is a really excellent brush that will easily and quickly face lather the shaving stick, then it will hold enough charge for several passes. It is luxuriantly soft yet has enough backbone to give your face a good massage.

Razor. The Lord L6 (in the L1822 packaging) would be an outstanding shaving razor if it was $30, but it is about a tenth of this in its native Egypt and can be picked up for just a few dollars/pounds in the West. This is a 3 piece Tech type razor so the blade is held very rigidly. The highly chromed head is an almost exact copy of the highly rated Merkur head and, if anything, shaves even better. This is a top razor even by absolute standards. The long handle is aluminium which gives it a nice balance and which just adds to the control you have over it. And as this has, effectively, an infinite life, the cost of using it is zero.

Blade. Super-Max in India are the second biggest manufacturer of razor blades in the world, making about 20% of all blades used and they are sold in 125 countries. 200 Super-Max Super Stainless double edged blades cost just £6. That is 3 pence per blade, which is less than 1p per shave. The blade snobs don’t like this blade and you can understand exactly why. However many more open minded shavers report good results.

So our total cost per shave is around 2 pence. This is a tiny fraction of the cost of using a multibladed system razor with a foam that comes out of an aerosol can. Not only is it cheaper, it is also better and it is far kinder to the environment.

I just shaved with this combination. The Palmolive stick, as ever, caught me out with just how good it is. Lush, lathers so easily and with that manly scent that is redolent of barber’s shops. The Frank Shaving brush was just perfect, face lathering quickly and well then holding enough for multiple passes. The razor is fantastic, light after a few weeks with the Mergress, but very wieldy with that long handle. And the blade was a little less smooth than my favoured Iridium to start with but quickly settled down to give an excellent shave. Two passes and a touch up gave the desired results with no nicks or weepers. All for 2 pence. How can anyone use an expensive multibladed system razor?

As I have said before on here badger shaving brush knots are mainly made in China, they are available in the West from companies like The Golden Nib or, in quantities, directly from China. This means that to make your own custom brush all you have to do is turn your own handle, after which you can simply glue the knot you have bought into it. Many hobbyists are doing this.

But it also opens the door to small, artisan, businesses to provide low volume hand crafted brushes that can be unique works of art. Kimson in Vietnam is one such company, they specialise in making handles out of horn which they sell for $30 to $50. But the jewel in the crown is their black buffalo horn brush handle inlaid with abalone which you can see being made in the videos below. For this they charge $60, or $80 with a silvertip knot already glued in. Kimson handles are absolutely beautiful and have been well received by those lucky enough to own one.

As I have stressed repeatedly everything about traditional shaving is personal to you. You do exactly what you want no matter what anyone else says. This is part of the whole anarchic joy and is the exact opposite of the constrained, walled garden, approach that the big global shaving companies try and force on their customers.

To make a lather to shave with we can use either soaps or creams (there are also soft soaps which are half way between) then using a bit of elbow grease, a good brush and some water we magically convert this into a superb, luxuriant cushion and lubricant for our shave. 1,000 times better than any aerosol foam or gel.

There are three techniques to build a lather. Firstly you can use a mug, bowl or scuttle, gradually adding the water and working till you have a rich lather. The second technique is the same but using the cupped palm of your left hand in which to build the lather. Thirdly you can actually build the lather on your face, just load the brush then work it on your face till it delivers the results you want. I go for this third option and here’s why:

• It is simpler, there is no intermediate step. It is also quicker.
• The action of building the lather with the brush is good for you. It massages and exfoliates your face.
• This process gives more time for the lather to soften your stubble which makes the whole shave better and easier.
• It keeps the lather warm.
• A good brush will hold enough lather for multiple passes, you don’t need to use a bowl.
• I shave in the shower, a bowl would tend to get unwanted water in it.
• Face lathering is much less complicated when you travel. One less item required.
• With shaving sticks it is awkward not to face lather.
• It gets the concentrated soap, at the beginning of the process, right into the stubble.

You may well completely disagree with all of this, which is your choice and which does not make either of us right or wrong. But face lathering works just perfectly for me.

Michael Ham (Leisureguy) is one of the most influential people in the traditional wet shaving renaissance, his blog, Later On, covers a wide range of topics but has lots of real shaving content and it is probably the most popular blog covering the subject. In addition he is the author of the book: Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving: Shaving Made Enjoyable, now on its 4th edition and pretty much the standard tome evangelising, popularising and explaining the move back to shaving how our grandfathers did.

To mark the publication of the 4th edition I asked Michael if he would write an article for this blog telling the story behind his book. Here it is:

It all started with a letter to my son. I had discovered shaving cream (TOBS in a tube, specifically) and wanted to mail him a tube to try. I asked if he had a shaving brush, and he had only a cheap drugstore brush.

So I googled “shaving brush” and discovered that the tools I used in the 50’s were still in active use—and this time, lots of information was available. One reason I hated shaving so much in those days was, I now realize, that I didn’t know how to shave. And getting information on how to shave, should you decide to look, was incredibly difficult. I just discovered (via one of the shaving forums) a February 1957 article from Science and Mechanics—freely available now on the Web, but unseen by me at the time (my senior year in high school).

I read with fascination, bought approximately 1 bl (boatload) of shaving tools and supplies, and started learning and experimenting. The letter to my son was to tell him of what I had learned, and I posted the shaving content of the letter on my blog. (The phrase “gourmet shaving” is from my brother-in-law, who’s worn a beard his entire adult life. When I tried to get him interested by touting all the lovely shaving creams and shaving soaps, he told me he wasn’t that interested in “gourmet shaving.”)

As I continued to learn new things and find new products, I kept revising and extending that post, until my son-in-law told me I should publish it as a book. I didn’t much like the idea—who would buy a book when the information can found on the Web.

He pointed out that for most guys, a book would provide an organized introduction and consistent information. Plus you could give a book as a gift.

That appealed to me greatly. I had grown a beard in the first place simply because shaving was a boring, tedious, daily chore. To my surprise and pleasure, I now was actually looking forward to each morning’s shave, which had become an enjoyable ritual. I went from shaving only on Monday, Wednesday, Friday to shaving every day but Sunday, and skipping Sunday only because I like shaving a two-day stubble at least once each week.

Lulu.com was around, and I decided to take the plunge. The whole idea was to show guys who hated shaving that they could actually enjoy it—thus the subtitle “Shaving Made Enjoyable.” I went with Lulu, and the first edition of Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving: Shaving Made Enjoyable came out and was rapidly revised. With print-on-demand, the technology used by Lulu, you can update the content easily at any time, so I went through editions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc., up to 1.8, at which point I realized I was going to run out of edition numbers. So the final version of that first book was edition 1.85.

I wrote that first version based on my own experience, so it omitted any discussion of problems foreign to me—acne, ingrowns, razor bumps, and the like. One reviewer on Amazon dinged the book severely for not having the very shaving information he needed, and I immediately recognized that his criticism was just.

So Edition 2.0 came out, specifically to add a chapter on shaving problems.  And, of course, I updated the reference material in the book (the vendor list, for example).

Edition 2.0 turned out to be relatively stable, but Lulu.com seemed to be going through some changes not good for my readers. The postage for a single copy of the book, for example, went to $11—about the same price as the book.

So the primary motivation for edition 3.0 was to move from Lulu.com to CreateSpace.com, which offered reasonable postage rates and also (like Lulu) a plan that allows the book to be purchased through Amazon.com. (CreateSpace is in fact owned by Amazon.com.)

I did, of course, update the references and add a bit more information—for example, I recommended a shave stick as ideal for the beginner, and I added some information on boar brushes that’s new to that edition.

For edition 4, I reorganized some chapters and added new matter:

• A reorganized and extended section on razors to include new razors that have come to market, including some really excellent ones like (alphabetic order) Feather Premium, iKon, and Pils.
• A reorganized brush section, fully acknowledging the excellence of “artificial badger” brushes, that name now being used for the best synthetic fibers.
• A section on having your razor replated—I held up the book so I could include photos of some of my own replated razors.
• New insights: For example, I finally figured out why some men detest shave sticks: if your beard is sparse or soft (or both), a shave stick simply will not work. The beard’s stubble has to be long enough and tough enough to scrape soap off the stick—that’s the soap from which the lather is made. If no soap is scraped off, no lather results, and the shave stick doesn’t work. And, as you probably recall from your own experience, when a man first begins shaving, his beard is generally fine, soft, and sparse: totally unsuited to a shave stick.

That last point is particularly important to me: the idea is to make shaving a pleasant ritual, and having something not work, though you’re following the instructions exactly, is highly frustrating and annoying. With this additional information in the book, readers can decide for themselves whether a shave stick will be of interest to them and can avoid frustration.

I thought of the book as primarily a gift—guys already on the forums would, I figured, have little interest in the book for themselves, since they probably know already most of what’s covered in it. It is, after all, a book for beginners in traditional wetshaving.

Since the recipient may well not have previously considered this method of shaving, I devote the beginning chapters to persuasive writing: trying to interest the reader in giving traditional shaving a try. Thus I address potential objections and do all that I can to smooth the path. Roger Fisher made an excellent point in Getting to Yes: if you want a horse to jump a fence, you should make the fence as low as possible. I tried to write the book to remove all potential barriers to taking up traditional wetshaving.

I was pleased to hit upon the (perhaps obvious) organizational scheme of presenting the material following the natural chronological sequence of a traditional shave. I think it makes it easy to follow and, by the end, the reader has in effect experienced (through reading) all the steps of a traditional shave.

Given the thinking behind the book, it’s no surprise that this is probably my favorite reader review:

“I bought this as a gift for my fiancé, along with a wet-shaving starting kit and a safety razor. He DEVOURED this book, and finds himself reading it again and again. He finally enjoys shaving. This book has helped him figure out so many things about wet shaving, and has recommended it to all of his friends and family. Truly a great source of information for any man.”

That’s the goal: a guy who hated shaving now enjoys it: a daily pleasure instead of a daily chore.

Front row (L to R) Long Loft Silvertip, Short Loft Silvertip, Short Loft Best, Long Loft 2 band Finest

Whilst the reaction to Frank Shaving brushes has been very favourable indeed and many people are enjoying these high quality badger brushes having paid very low prices for them, there is always ways that things can be improved and Ian Tang, my supplier, is very keen to look after his customers.

One of the main parameters of a shaving brush is how much stiffness is built into the knot (the bundle of hairs), this is the result of a number of factors in the construction of the brush. Some people prefer their brushes floppy so they can paint their faces, usually with shaving cream lather. At the other extreme there are those who like a lot of backbone to attack hard soaps and to massage the face vigorously. So there was demand for Frank Shaving to produce a brush with more backbone.

2nd row (for comparison): New Forest 2201, Simpson's Duke 3 Best, Trumper Pure, Trumper Super Badger

Now it is not as if the original $9.99 Frank Shaving Finest Badger brush is floppy. Far from it. It compares well with some expensive European brushes and has no problem with hard soaps. But there are other brushes that are stiffer and this is what some people wanted from Frank Shaving too. The Frank Shaving Silvertip is considerably floppier, but then that is the nature of silvertip hair.

On his eBay adverts Ian has always listed the knot dimensions (which differ quite a lot, these are handmade items) so people have been able to select their brush’s backbone to a degree. When he asked me if I thought that he should go to even shorter lofts I sent him the knot dimensions of the Simpson brush range as a reference point. Even a couple of millimetres change in the loft can make a considerable difference to how the brush behaves.

As a result Ian has had some short loft brushes made and sent me two prototypes to sample. One is a Silvertip with a 22mm knot according to my vernier. The other is a 3 band Best Badger, not the 2 band Finest that Frank normally use, with a knot of around 21mm. Both of these brushes have a 50mm loft. This is a full 5mm less than the loft of the original Silvertip and Finest brushes that I bought, a big difference.

Out of the box the softness of the tips is still there, but there is a marked difference between the long and short loft silvertips, the newer brush feeling more luxurious. The long loft Finest and the short loft Best are both less soft than the Silvertips and have the slight pricklyness that you would expect, but they feel exactly the same as each other. Both short loft brushes have more backbone though. I used both of them to work up a lather using a puck of Mitchell’s Wool Fat hard soap which is a stern test. The Silvertip did the job quickly and efficiently the short loft Best even faster, it loaded up the soap as fast as any brush I have used before. So far so good.

Day 1. Used Mitchell’s Wool Fat and the short loft Silvertip on the left of my face with the short loft Best on the right side of my face, face lathering with both which is a very stern test. The Best just romped away, it loaded quick and made a great lather with no effort. The Silvertip was not so happy, it still did the job, but didn’t load or lather so easily. However it was extremely soft and luxurious on the face. So, much as you would expect of a Silvertip.

Day 2. Taylor’s of Old Bond Street (TOBS) Lavender cream. Once again a side of the face each, charged both brushes up and face lathered. Both brushes were excellent at this, honours were even. They held enough charge for four passes with enough left for several more. The difference was that the Best was more prickly whilst the Silvertip was again superbly soft.

Day 3. Proraso cream. This time it was the short lofted silvertip Vs the long lofted silvertip that I bought earlier. The short lofted brush has bloomed much more than the long lofted so may be packed more densely, also when dry the tips are now much softer. I charged both brushes up then face lathered half my face with each through 3 passes. The biggest difference between them was that the short lofted brush was markedly softer and more luxurious at the tips, secondly it released its charge of lather more easily and finally it had a tiny bit more backbone, but you really had to go looking for this.

Day 4 etc I will post in the comments section at the bottom of this article. Plus some conclusions.

The brushes with different lighting

Finally, Ian has added another new brush to his listings, this time it is a Silvertip with a massive 28mm knot and a 54mm loft. This is a short loft for such a big brush and it must hold enough lather to shave an entire rugby team. It would certainly be perfect for a lady who wanted to shave her legs.

note: A well known shaving forum has deleted a lot of posts from their members about Frank Shaving brushes. When challenged their moderators came up with reasons that are, at best, spurious and disingenuous. Charges of multiple accounts and shilling are untrue and absurd. You would wonder what their real, ulterior motives were for this action. This same forum has banned many of the key people in today’s traditional shaving renaissance, they have also banned some of the very best suppliers of goods. Once again their stated reasons for doing so are often spurious and disingenuous. They lose relevance and credibility by their actions. It is a great pity that real shaving lacks an unpoliticised, vibrant, well moderated online community, something that is surely holding back the development of the movement.

Meanwhile the members of the offending forum are being deprived of knowledge of one of the great bargains of modern traditional shaving, the Frank Shaving brush. That you can buy such high quality, luxurious items at far lower prices than the competition is something we should all be shouting about. And it is the only reason that I have championed these products.

further note: The other two great bargains of traditional shaving are the Lord L6 razor and the European Palmolive tallow shaving stick.

When people look for vintage razors to put to daily use today they mostly think of Gillette, who manufactured very large numbers of well engineered razors which, with care, have an almost infinite life. But there were many other, smaller, razor manufacturers around the world, some of whom made very good razors and one of the very best was James Neil & Co of Composite Steel Works, Napier Street, Sheffield, England, who manufactured the superb Eclipse Red Ring razor.

At the time that the Red Ring was designed Britain was still the world’s superpower with the biggest empire ever seen and a technology base to match. The unions and socialism were yet to yield their destructive power. Robert Watson Watt was inventing radar, Frank Whittle was inventing the jet engine, Alexander Fleming was inventing antibiotics, Ernest Rutherford was splitting the nucleus and Reginald Joseph Mitchell was designing the Spitfire.

The Red Ring had several innovations and was protected by patents. British patent no 344280 by W. V. Hudson and J. L. Pickerell is from 5 March 1931 and British patent no 380958 was granted in September 1932 to J. Neill & Company Limited. Innovations include the head design, the adjustment mechanism and the magnet. It is quite a heavy razor at 62.1 grams (2.19 ounces).

The head design is like no other before or since. On the bottom plate there are teeth but these have a solid guard bar before and below them, the top plate has matching grooves. The head is a fairly mild shaver but is unusually effective at cutting through the stubble. What I think may be happening is that the curved profile of the teeth, just before the blade, moves the hairs sideways into the edge. This creates a scything action a bit like a slant bar razor. However it works, it gives a unique and excellent shave. Also it is particularly insensitive to the angle you use it at, it seems to find its own perfect stance as you shave.

The adjustment mechanism was a quarter of a century ahead of the Gillette Fat Boy, it works in a similar manner to today’s Merkur Progress, you turn a knob on the bottom (which has an arrow on it) up fully for mildness then slacken it off slightly for more aggression, there are markers on the handle so you can calibrate your setting. Unlike the Progress it clicks as you wind it back.

The magnet is a small but very nice touch, handling double edged blades takes some care and with the magnet life becomes a lot easier, especially when picking a blade up from a flat surface. You wonder why more razors don’t have this useful feature.

The wonders of the Eclipse Red Ring are not all over yet, there is the logo. This is the very height of Art Deco and depicts a stylised solar eclipse. A square moon is moving in front of a square sun which has rays shooting off it.

If you want to own an Eclipse Red Ring there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that it is a robust razor and was in production till the 1950s, so they are still about and come up fairly regularly on eBay. It was chrome plated, which was very rare in that era and we know from our Mohs that this makes it more durable. The bad news is that just about every traditional shaving enthusiast wants one (or more), which is quite understandable. It is one of the most sought after of razors and the price is rocketing, even over the last few months they have more than doubled in value. Expect to pay £50 to £100 for an OK to use example, double that if it is in its original box and add another 50% if it is in mint, new condition. These prices can only go up as demand far exceeds supply.

James Neil & Co became a part of Spear and Jackson, which is still thriving today. If they still have the tooling for this razor they could put it back into production to satisfy the demand and we would have a rival for Merkur.

My Eclipse Red Ring

I must admit that this is plagiarised from a well known shaving forum. Thanks chjome.

I have written on here before about iKon razors, they have a good reputation both for product quality and for the good shave that they give. So I asked Greg at iKon if he wanted to write an article to give us some background as to how the razor came about.

How iKon Razors Got Started. By Greg / Ikon Razors

Razor bumps.

I always had a line of razor bumps right at the baseline of my neck where my stubble started, it was there and pretty much everything I tried had little effect on it.

Then a little over 2 years ago I discovered double edge razors.  Using  a DE razor and some better quality shaving creams (I highly recommend The Body Shop Maca Root Shaving Cream) really worked for me as all the modern day multiblade contraptions really do is just shear and push  the remaining stubble back into the follicle it naturally grew out of, whereas a  sharp DE blade slices the hair clean off in a single pass. Older technology really worked well in this regard and the choices of double edge razor blades are great with something to suit even the most demanding shaver out there.

R.A.D. (Razor Acquisition Disorder)  then set in , I was hooked on this new method of shaving and had to try every product out there. Some were great but I saw room for improvement. The idea to make stainless steel razor was born.

As an avid outdoorsman and parent  of young children another appeal of using a classic style double edge razor is from a conservation viewpoint, the statistics  of how many disposable plastic razors are thrown out per year are astounding & immense. Shave The Earth , use a double edge razor that creates minimal waste and saves money as well. Most men spend approximately $250 a year on disposable razors and shaving cream from a can – both proven equally bad for our now fragile ecosystem. After the  initial investment of buying a high quality safety razor that will effectively last a lifetime, a realistic yearly shaving cost will average $59 per year.

Why not a stainless steel safety razor ? The very first iKon razor was made.

Totally hand made on a milling machine & industrial lathe from a stainless steel billet with the handle turned from a piece of 316L bar stock stainless steel rod , a method we still incorporate today. From there it was a matter of perfecting this idea, the first  iKon production  razors were made using a slightly more technical manufacturing process using a series of processes such as machining, wire cutting, bending brakes and welding

Not an easy task I learned,  as perfecting a razor head, getting the blade to sit aligned consistently and perfectly proved a challenge, these images were of the early iKon 3 pin style heads that are no longer being made and now considered by many collectors items. No more than 75 of these razors were made.

Our current iKon razors use what I feel is the best blade locking mechanism available , known as a slot bar – it provides the best consistent blade alignment possible.

A website was needed to help with all the incoming queries about this new product , www.ikonrazors.com There is a strong demand in today’s modern wet shaving market for superior made safety razors, we are at the forefront of this. iKon  continues to refine and develop this new product that initially started on a whim to create something I intended to use myself. The current iKon designs are totally user inspired, taking what were considered the premier double edge razors designs from yesteryear and modifying them into modern professionally machined “shaving tools”. We listen to our customers and take  every comment and suggestions into consideration when making our products.

A razor’s aggressiveness is very subjective to the end user and often I am asked to recommend what razor is best for a new perspective iKon owner. A simple solution to a hard problem was to  make a less aggressive standard head razor  and also special open comb razor head that has a bit more shaving edge exposed for those with heavier beards. Also creating two handle styles using a special deep diamond knurling technique  offering an incredibly positive grip  to compliment our razor heads . A classic long handle that is equally as effective as our short robust bulldog handle, again a simple matter of preference for the end user. With these initial  two head and handle design options we are pretty much covering the demands of the most discerning wet shaver out there.

The end result was so successful more iKon designs are currently under design works, the possibilities are limitless and I have some great ideas.

– Greg / iKon Razors

Professor Randal C. Picker is the Paul and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law at The University of Chicago Law School and a Senior Fellow at The Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and at  the Argonne National Laboratory. He has written a 36 page academic paper which is available to download for free in pdf form via this website. Titled “The Razors-and-Blades Myth(s)” it takes a fresh, academic, look at the early years of the Gillette company and makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in traditional shaving or in marketing.

Here is an abstract of the paper to give you an idea of the content: