Today I received in the post a Lord L5 safety razor which I bought, brand new, for £3.50 on eBay. This is about as simple as a metal razor can get. It is a three piece design like a Gillette Tech, screwing in the handle clamps the two sides of the head together, sandwiching the blade. All three parts are very well and precisely made, I would guess that it is made from chromium plated steel.
So I put an Iridium blade in it and lathered up using Body Shop shaving cream and my Frank Shaving brush. It certainly didn’t shave like a Tech, it was far more effective. In fact it was not far short of a Feather Portable. And very smooth, which is a reflection of the precision of its construction. Overall a quite impressive performance.
Now a lot of people reading this will not know who Lord are. They are one of the six major razor manufacturers in the world, based in Alexandria, Egypt and employing over 2,000 people. Founded in 1930 they are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified. They export to 75 countries and their products are found throughout much of the developing world. A lot of their technology came from their long standing historic joint venture with Wilkinson Sword. Often their produce is sold with different brand names on it. Some of these are Shark, Big Ben, Asco, Crown, Silver Star, Racer and Rainbow.
Lord are very well known in the traditional shaving community for their excellent blades. However they also make 12 different models of safety razor, some in plastic and some in metal. My L5 is their entry level metal razor. Another metal model is the L6 premium model. This has a scalloped bar, much like a some Merkur and Edwin Jagger razors, this will be interesting to shave with when it arrives. It gets rave reviews in the traditional shaving community.
And also they make their “Click” range of plastic double edged safety razors with a novel side opening mechanism.
So for razor collectors out there these are well worth trying, they are very good quality razors. And if you see any of these brands on your travels then give them a go. For beginners on a low budget one of these razors, picked up from eBay is ideal. They must give just about the best quality to price ratio of any brand new razors.
Bakelite is one of the first ever plastics, named after Dr. Leo Baekeland, the Belgian who invented it at the beginning of the 20th century. During World War 2 there was a strategic shortage of metals so Bakelite was pressed into service for a myriad of uses, they even thought of making coins out of it. So it is no surprise that it was used for making safety razors. Manufacturers like Wardonia and Souplex produced models that are collectors items today. I have a Souplex and it is terrible to shave with.
So when Merkur announced that they were going to produce a new Bakelite razor there was a lot of interest. It is a three piece design, like a Gillette Tech, though it is unusual that it arches the blade a lot, like a Merkur Progress, this means you hold and use the razor at a shallower angle. It is very light indeed, just 14 grammes, so in the hand it feels a bit like a Weishi.
Merkur are selling the Bakelite quite a lot cheaper than its existing range of razors, presumably to reflect it’s lower manufacturing cost Although it may also be not as durable, only time will tell. The Bakelite that they have made it out of is quite bright and distinctive, so it certainly stands out from other razors.
I have been using one of these for a few days now and it certainly is an excellent shave, the exact opposite of my Souplex. It is quite aggressive, something similar to a Feather Portable, but is easy to master once you adapt to the very light weight. On the internet many users are reporting very favourable results from using it.
So it looks like Merkur have another hit razor on their hands. Something that is different to everything else and which delivers great results.
btw In case you were wondering what Bakelite is here is it’s chemical name: polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride.
This is amazing. A guy called Brett undertakes all sorts of projects and documents them in a blog called Project Blog. And he decides to make a double edged safety razor. So he sandwiches a blade between two pieces cut out of PVC tubes and holds it all together with a long nut and bolt, which also serves as the razor handle. And it works and he is shaving with it.
Obviously it didn’t just bolt together and work straight off, he spent 2 to 3 hours fettling it. But the materials cost him $1. Another blow against the multinational shaving industry. He could buy Supermax blades for just over 2 pence each and then he would have the ultimate in bargain DE shaving!
One of the great delights of real shaving is the wide range of different razors that you can own and use. This is a huge improvement from the monotony of the mutibladed system razors, where you are using exactly the same razor as tens of millions of other men and have no say in the matter. Today I shaved with an Eclipse Red Ring, a rare and fabulous razor made in Sheffield for just a few years in the 1930s and 1940s. Yesterday I shaved with a legendary Gillette Fat Boy, which were made between 1958 and 1961. And so on.
So when a batch of 27 razors came up this put me into two minds. I already have most of what I want, for the moment. Yet some of the razors in there would have been good additions to the collection. Not only that, these things are rapidly going up in value as more men discover real shaving, so they had great investment potential as well.
Here is some of what was in this batch (for those of you who know a bit about the different models): 3 flare tip Super Speeds, 3 black handled Super Speeds, some Techs, a Milord, a Slim adjustable, 2 Gems, an Eveready, a Cosmo from Germany etc. A nice, ready made collection.
The bids were very low so I stuck $70 on (they were in America) half hoping to get it and half hoping to be outbid. The sale finished in the middle of the night and made just $76. That is £50. Less than £2 per razor. Amazing. If you just split these up and sold them one at a time, with full details and descriptions, you would get several hundred pounds for them.
So there are bargains out there, even on eBay. The forums are also continually mentioning people finding very good razors at silly prices at car boot sales etc. I must say they have had more luck than I have. Of course the bargains will go once more people become aware of the increasing value of many vintage safety razors.
Real shaving, with a dual edged (DE) safety razor and lather generated with a brush, was the dominant way of shaving on planet earth for about 50 years, practised by hundreds of millions of men. During this half century many of these men travelled and many went to war, whist continuing to shave properly. In fact DE shaving is better adapted for travel than the more “modern” methods. You don’t need access to electricity at the right voltage and with the right pin configuration, like the miniature lawnmowers, that some men use, do. And DE blades are available in far more places than the patented multiblade cartridges are.
The adventurous thing to do is to take nothing and buy locally. Men all over the world shave, so when in Rome do as the Romans do, just use whatever is available. Then when you come home bring it back with you as a memento.
If you want to take your own DE razor with you then there are two routes to go down. The first is to buy a leather sheath for your full sized razor, there are available from Parker and Merkur, some of the online retailers stock them and they are on eBay.
Your second route is to buy a special travel DE razor. Merkur make their 933 travel razor which fits into either a very small soft plastic pouch, or a leather one. It is available with the choice of two standard Merkur heads, the standard straight head with the scalloped blade guard, or the more aggressive comb head. The razor handle unscrews into two very short lengths, so when it is broken down and packed away it is very compact indeed. Which is perhaps why it is a favourite of the military. The Feather Portable is a fantastic travel razor from Japan that fits into a very small case. Manufacture has been discontinued but you can still buy them for less than half the price of the Merkur.
DE blades you can buy just about anywhere, buy maybe not with the same quality as your favourite brand. If you do take some with you remember to put them in your hold luggage. If security find them in your carry on they won’t be happy.
Image from SafetyRazors.co.uk
It is worth noting that when DE shaving was at its peak a popular gift to buy a man was a travel set. This was a small leather case containing a DE razor, a hairbrush, sometimes a clothes brush and two well ventilated metal tubes. One of these tubes was for the shaving brush and the other was for a stick of shaving soap. Mostly these travel sets never got used and you can still buy them in secondhand shops today in mint condition.
Image from SafetyRazors.co.uk
For your brush you once again have two options. The first is to use your regular brush and to find a tube for it. The cheapest is a tubular pill box with a few holes drilled in it. The second option is to buy a special travel brush, which comes with its own tube. Vulfix make their 2190 and Turnback travel models and Simpson their Case and Major models, for instance. So you can take real quality with you.
For your soap or cream you can just use a standard tube of cream, like the 3Ts and other St James’s grooming companies make. This should keep you in luxury when you travel. The alternative is the soap stick kept in a pill box tube, this will last much longer and you have access to some amazing soaps in this form: Arko from Turkey, La Toja from Spain, Tabac and Sir Irisch Moos from Germany and of course the fantastic value Palmolive stick sold throughout Europe.
So as you can see real shaving when you travel is an opportunity to have even more fun, to experiment with more variety. And you can look on with pity at the poor traveller who gets his lather out of an aerosol and who is still a slave to multibladed system razors.
From the end of World War One till the invention of multibladed system razors most men in Britain used a double edged safety razor, they were enjoying real shaving. So tens of millions of razors were made for Britain alone, where are they now? These old razors are now classics, sought after by collectors and by real shavers. How can I get my hands on some?
Looking at the adverts in the local papers and the online classifieds yielded a big fat zero. So it was off to the biggest car boot sale in the area. A long walk round yielded mountains of tat, but not a single razor. So now it was time for plan C, the charity shops.
Leamington Spa is a faintly gentrified town but retail has moved largely out of the centre. This combination leads to lots of charity shops, about a dozen, full of old tat. Some of it really quite interesting. But not a single razor. One assistant told me that they weren’t allowed to sell them because it involved blades! Another said that they had one in once. Not exactly promising.
So plan D, a visit to the recycling centre at the local tip. A huge shop with an amazing stock. It is almost unbelievable that we throw so much good stuff away. And yes, you guessed it, not a single razor. And, talking to them, there seemed little likelihood of them ever having one.
Next, in logical progression, it was plan E, the antiques warehouse, with lots of vendors under one roof. A slightly more upmarket version of the recycling centre. In fact I can visualise the antique vendors stocking up at the recycling centre. Once again a good look round yielded zero, so it was time to talk to the staff. Yes they do get them in. Occasionally. More interestingly one of the guys had spent his life doing house clearances. He told me that he had thrown hundreds of them on the tip.
So where are the tens of millions of safety razors now. I suspect that most of them are in landfills or melted down for their brass. So we aren’t going to see them again. A lot are just stored away with the normal domestic clutter in attics, basements and the bottoms of draws. Some kept for sentimental reasons, some out of apathy. These have the potential to resurface one day and to be used again.
Real shaving is a snowball that has just started rolling down the mountain. Soon the less switched on journalists will discover what is happening and will report it, mass conciousness will increase. And many of those razors now in attics and the bottoms of draws will surface again. Car boot sales and charity shops will be full of them. Until then the only sources are 1) Asking friends and family 2) eBay, especially the American listings 3) The for sale sections of the online forums. Good hunting!
Merkur make many different razor models, only a couple of which are slant bars. Before we start it should be pointed out that these slant bars are aggressive razors and are not for DE shaving beginners. If you look at most DE safety razors you will see that the blade is protected by a bar and that this bar is straight so the exposure of the blade is constant across the width of the blade.
Yet this is not how man makes the most efficient cutting tools in other areas. A scythe, for instance is designed to angle the cut and the blade in some wood planes are set at an angle, so a razor blade would shave more effectively if it could work in this way. You can achieve this with an advanced technique that you can use with any razor called the Gillette slide, definitely not for beginners, as in this video:
But Merkur achieve exactly the same effect in the design of their slant bar razors by angling the blade safety bar. Like this:
They make two models with this feature, the 37 and the long handled 39. The 37 is the original version and there are some good reviews of it here. The 39 is more recent, a result of customer demand, and is known as the Slant Sledgehammer. In the right hands they will give you the quickest, closest DE shave on earth. In the wrong hands they will cut your face to shreds.
So who are these slant bar razors for? Experienced and confident DE shavers obviously. But they are ideal for people with a very strong beard growth and a thick stubble. The scything action will go straight through this. Another group they are very good for are those with sensitive skin, the cutting action is so efficient that used properly it removes the hair with the minimum trauma to the face.
This is the question I get asked most. Someone wants to come over from the dark side and start real shaving. Suddenly they are confronted with infinite choice. This is freedom, this is liberation, escape from the walled garden of multibladed system razors. It can also be a bit confusing. Especially as paying more money definitely does not get you better stuff. Far from it. So this article tries to clear the confusion and expands considerably on my previous article.
Real shaving, using a double edged safety razor, started in America in 1902, it rapidly spread to the rest of the world and it has been used by many hundreds of millions of men. So by now everyone involved in bringing you real shaving products knows what they are doing. There is very little bad stuff out there. And you can always use the power of the internet to research any purchase.
Razor.
One of the best ways of getting a good razor is to ask round friends and relatives and get hold of an old Gillette double edged safety razor. There are vast numbers of these in attics and the bottoms of draws lying unused. And they are brilliant razors, usually made of solid brass plated with nickel they are better engineered than most brand new razors you can buy today. Their life is virtually infinite, they shave nicely and they are going up in value. If you get one just boil it very briefly in water to disinfect it then clean it with an old toothbrush.
If you must have a new Razor then the cheapest option is the Chinese Weishi, available on ebay for about £10. This is lightly and not robustly made, largely out of aluminium. However it is a precision instrument. It is a good beginners razor because it is very mild, it also demands being used at an accurate blade angle. Because it is so light it forces you to put a lot of effort into learning not to put pressure on the blade.
Then there is the razor I would recommend to everyone, the Edwin Jagger DE89L razor, which costs around £20. Lots of people have bought these on my recommendation. This is a heavy razor and the weight does the work, remember you don’t press down like with a multiblade system razor. This one is not aggressive, so ideal for beginners. It is beautifully engineered, British and is getting rave reviews. Amongst the online DE community this is considered one of the very best razors. You can buy one here.
If you must start with what is probably the very best then you want a Mergress. This is a Merkur Progress adjustable razor modified by an American engineer, in small batches, to be as close to perfection ad he can get. A beginner can use one of these on #1 and get a really mild shave, then with improving technique gradually open it up to be more aggressive. The shaving world is raving about this so demand exceeds supply, when they are in stock you can buy them here for $90.
Brush
The key thing about a brush is what the hairs are from. Synthetic isn’t so good. Boar is stiff, so works well with hard soaps. With use the ends split and they become softer. Badger is the more expensive classic, very soft and holds a lot of lather. Or you can get the best of both world by having a boar/badger mix. Two big brush manufacturers with outstanding reputations are Omega, in Italy and Vulfix, in the Isle of Man.
You can get a cheap boar brush for £1 or so at a discount chemist. This is perfect and does the job. If you want better then you need to spend about £10, either on this Omega Brofessional Boar brush. Or on a badger and boar Vulfix 404 which you can buy here. Ultimately you will probably want to own both these brushes, they are exceptional and incredible value for money.
Then you can spend a lot more money. I would recommend the two big brands. Just buy the size and hair variety that you want. Remember that they will last at least 10 years so even an expensive brush isn’t too bad when you average the cost out on a per month basis.
Just get a Palmolive shaving soap stick from any discount chemist or supermarket. Rub the stick directly into your wet stubble like a big crayon then lather up with the wet brush. This is a truly excellent quality product at a bargain price of around 50 pence. Every wet shaver should have some, it outperforms many far more expensive soaps. Even if you still use system shavers this is a lot better and cheaper than using aerosol foams and gels, where you are mainly paying for water.
A more expensive soap is Mitchell’s wool fat, this really is the gold standard against which everything else can be measured. A puck of this will cost you about £5 and will last for a very long time, or you can pay more and buy it with a dish. If you really want you can pay a whole lot more for shaving soaps, but the main thing you will be getting is a fancy smell.
Creams are easier to use, less concentrated and generally have a stronger scent. Once again Palmolive make a very acceptable product, available cheaply at any chemist. Though it is not as outstanding as the soap. More expensive is a tube of Proraso shaving cream from Italy, a very famous product, and rightly so. It explodes menthol and eucalyptus on your face and will cost you about £6. For the same price you can get a classical London shaving cream. Taylor’s of Bond Street (TOBS) have a range of scents available in a cream that is outstandingly lush.
As with soaps you can pay a whole pile more, but there really is no need.
To start with just use Tescos or Boots own brand blades for about 20 pence each (a tenth the cost of a multibladed system razor). These are Israeli Personna blades which have a good reputation. Once you get into it I would personally recommend Iridium or Gillette 7 O’clock yellow pack blades bought in bulk over the internet, which are a lot cheaper per blade and which are both trully excellent. These both come out of the state of the art Gillette joint venture factory in St Peterburg, Russia, alongside another 6 brands of double edged blades. If you want to experiment (highly recommended) then you can buy online a sample pack of many different blades and find out what suits you and your razor best.
As you can see you can start real shaving very cheaply. And if you go the Edwin Jagger DE89L, Vulfix 404, Mitchell’s Wool Fat, Iridium route ( which are all exceptional quality products) then they will probably pay for themselves in a few months compared to the cost of using multibladed system razor cartridges and aerosol gels/foams. After that you will be saving yourself about £100 every year. And yet you will be using some of the highest quality luxury goods in the world. And, every day, shaving will be a pleasure that you look forward to.
One of the features of the real shaving community is people posting to forums saying what they had used for their shave that day. Now, these are interesting in that they reveal the infinite variety of experience that is to be had out there, they give some great ideas for emulation and they portray the sheer fun and joy that is to be had from this simple daily activity.
One of my rules is that I will only introduce one new element at a time to my shave. This is to stop my simple brain being confused by which things are doing what. So this morning I had the three new T K Maxx purchases from yesterday. But I also had my “new” 1956 Gillette Red Tip (which has been boiled and disinfected). No competition really, it has to be the Red Tip.
I have shaved with Gillette Super Speeds before. My father had one when I was a kid which I, obviously, experimented with. But the fabled Red Tip is a different matter. This legendary razor has a fantastic reputation as a shaving tool. But it is also known for its aggression. Supposedly a real man’s razor.
So in went an Iridium blade, very easily with the twist to open (TTO) butterfly head. This blade makes a very good reference which you can compare everything else to. Then, after making sure that the stubble was thoroughly waterlogged, it was on with the Cella Crema da Sapone using a Trumper’s super badger brush (which could well be a Vulfix). Standard, good quality components.
The Cella smells fantastically of almonds, like marzipan. And I approached removing it’s lather with considerable care, such is the reputation of the Red Tip, just enough pressure to keep the head attached to my face. The razor makes a fantastic noise as it scythes through the hairs, you can really hear it working. And it is very sensitive to head angle, just a small change and it wasn’t shaving.
After the first pass I rinsed my face and it was nearly job done, such is the power of an aggressive razor. So for the second pass I only lathered up the parts of my face that needed a bit more. Once again the minimum pressure was used and after a rinse that was it. A good close shave. And difficult bits, like the goatee section just under the chin, are just perfect.
All this with zero blood. Not a single little drop. No nicks, no weeping. So the fearsome Red Tip is a kitten if you treat it with respect and take care over your technique. And the final test, SWMBO was asked for her opinion. And the verdict: “very nice”.
A little introduction. Gillette made the Fat Boy for just a few years. It is a twist to open adjustable razor. And is considered to be one of the great classic razors. Mine is a 1960 model bought from SafetyRazors.co.uk. It is replated and is in absolutely mint, brand new condition. That is a picture of it above.
The adjuster alters the aggression of the razor from mild through to very aggressive. It does this by increasing the blade gap, so each shaving pass takes a bigger slice off. Obviously go too far and it is slices of your face that will be coming off.
I started using the Fat Boy on number 1. Then, the next day number 2. And so on up to number 5, which felt quite enough, so I left it there for a few shaves. Till now. At number 6 I knew that I could put zero pressure on the blade (an Iridium), it had to just skim my face sufficiently to remove the lather (Proraso cream). Also I had to manage the angle properly to stop it digging in. To be honest this wasn’t difficult, just a matter of paying attention.
Well it was a revelation. I now know why they rave about the Fat Boy. Just two passes and a bit of touching up and my face is softer than a babies bottom. Impressive, but more impressive was the way it dealt with the difficult bits, like the back of my jaw. These are now just as smooth as the rest of my face, something that is normally pretty difficult to achieve.
This real shaving is fascinating fun. Here my ceremony had a little challenge and the satisfaction of a job well done using first class tools.
