Wet Shaving! Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the shave!

I am now a shave snob.

It started out innocently enough. Sam Sanchez told me how much he is enjoying his shaving and I was intrigued. I told Katie that it sounded cool and she went ahead and bought me a kit from The Art of Shaving. It comes with Pre-Shave Oil, a Shave Brush, Shaving Cream, and Post-Shave Balm.

This was step number 1 for me.

I started using the brush and oil and everything and I loved it. I read a bunch of stuff online about wetshaving. I even watched a lot of tutorial videos about how to lather and shave properly. This led to step 2.

Buying an old-school classic double-edge razor. This is the baby. A Merkur 38c. Also known as the Merkur Barberpole. It is a beautiful, satisfyingly heavy piece of metal that feels solid and works great! I love it.

Replacement blades can cost as little as 12 cents each. That is a far cry from the $3.50-$4.00 each for a Mach 3 or Fusion cartridge. But even better than that, these blades work even better. Let me explain. The Gillette and Schick cartridge blades work on the yank-and-cut principle. The first blades are supposed to pull the hair so that it can be cut lower down. But this can be really painful. A good sharp single blade on a properly prepared face just glides down with wonderful little cutting noises. You can hear each hair being cut.

This sort of led to step number 3 where I bought some great glycerin shave soap ($3.50 per cake, and lasts forever) , and some "Kiss My Face" shave cream ($5.99 at our local store). I whip up a good batch of lather with the soap as taught in the tutorials above and then I throw in a little shave cream for extra goodness. A couple of shave passes with this stuff and a good blade and my face is as smooth as the hindquarters of an infant. (Baby Bottom Smooth, or BBS) Also, my skin loves it. No more bumpy painful neck spots. I have to be a little bit more careful around the mole on my upper lip but that is typical.

If you are interested in learning more about wet shaving, watch some of the tutorial videos I linked to above. Here are some other sites to visit and read:

badgerandblade.com
leesrazors.com
classicshaving.com

Here is a good post about how to shave like your grandpa

Believe it or not, now I look forward to shaving every morning. I even shave on Saturdays when I wouldn't have previously done so. I love it!