Wet Shaving: Sinfully Joyful

27 כז לֹא תַקִּפוּ, פְּאַת רֹאשְׁכֶם; וְלֹא תַשְׁחִית, אֵת פְּאַת זְקָנֶךָ

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads,
neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

-- Leviticus

Thus was I commanded as a boy never to touch a razor to my face, lest I provoke The Lord's wrath for so offending His creation. (Reportedly, He's okey-dokey with electric razors.) So please forgive the ignorance of my 2006 blog post "Read This Only If You Shave" hailing the Schick Quattro razor, confidently published as though I knew even the first thing about shaving.

Fortunately, the blogosphere worked, as helpful comments on my post humbled me with links and advice. One reader in particular, Jay Batson, set me on a new, resolute mission that I've traveled every day (except weekends and holidays) to recapture the facial smoothness of my infancy.

I remember Jay Batson from my days as a director of ON Technology (acquired by Symantec), where Jay ran engineering sometime around 1996 when we went public. (ON, at the time, was the leading seller of Novell Netware based apps, which turned out to be unfortunate...) I hadn't kept in touch with Jay, but i'm grateful that he somehow stumbled upon my blog and introduced me to the art of wet shaving:

Jay Batson said...

IMHO, the razor is a second-order factor. You'll see an order of magnitude difference if you focus on the prep instead.

Go buy yourself a silver-tip badger hair shaving brush. Buy the most expensive bristles you can find, in a handle that matches your taste. Then, be *sure* to buy a glycerin-based shaving soap. Pop for a nice nickel soap dish, too, David -- you can afford it. Go here: Emsplace isn't the most sophisticated ecommerce site on the net, but ignore the amateur look of the site; they have the goods, and they're great help if you need to call them.

Then, before you shave, run the hottest water you can get into the cup (warming the soap), and wet the brush with it, too. Lightly shake the water out of the brush (leaving just a touch in), dump out the water, and lather up the brush.

Then lather your face. Two things:
1) You'll fall in love with the way the brush feels. It's almost as good as sex. And you can do it before you go to work and not be late for work.
2) You won't get a 1/2" thick lather like you do with shaving foam/gel. Don't sweat it; just make sure you've rubbed the brush bristles into your facial bristles for 15-30 seconds.

Then shave. Pick your razor -- it almost doesn't matter. The shave will be the most comfortable, luxurious shave you've ever had, and your shave will be as close and smooth as anything you've tried - ever.

I'm not kidding.

He's not kidding. I tried out Jay's advice and it was all goodness. I bought a beautiful silver-tipped badger hair brush, a stand, a nickel bowl, and glycerin soap. I get a much closer shave now, and the rate of bloody injury has dropped from once a month to once a year. It feels great (not quite "as good as sex" -- maybe I'm still doing one of them wrong). And once you get the hang of whipping up a lather, it doesn't take any longer than shaving with canned foam.

It now seems laughable to pump foamy cream from a can. The manufacturers tout the thickness of their shaving cream, and thick foam is great if it comes from brushing up a lather, but most of the canned foam never even touches your skin.

Compared to canned foam, the cost of wet shaving is "a wash". There is a capital expenditure for the brush, but the glycerin soap consumables last longer than canned foam. Em's is indeed the place to stock up.

Selecting the Right Razor

Although Jay dismissed the importance of selecting the right razor, straight blades have a very big following, so I recently tried switching from my vibrating 5-blade Gillette Fusion to Merkur's highly acclaimed, platinum-coated, double-edged safety razor (image right). To properly assess the new equipment, I conducted a study comparing straight blades to the mass market
disposables.

This iPhone shot (right) portrays the beard I shaved off as part of this investigation--one side with a fresh stainless steel Merkur blade and the other with Gilette's state of the art Fusion. I also collected data on other days with a cleaner face, switching the left and right sides. (Unfortunately I couldn't conduct a double blind study without risking serious blood loss.)

The costs are comparable. The Merkur razor handle is more expensive but the blades are cheaper. Neither razor nicked my skin more frequently or worse than the other. How close a shave did I get? The two razors performed equally well, but the Gillette "shaved off" a few seconds of work each time, perhaps because one needn't be so cautious with it around the corners. In addition, the Merkur blade takes at least an extra minute during the tri-weekly process of installing a new blade. So at the end of the day I'm back to the Fusion. Jay was right again.

Recommended Accessories

As Jay had pointed out, the warmer the water the better. I went so far as to equip my bathrooms with a $14 Proctor and Silex fast-acting water heater for hotter, faster and more energy efficient water.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Never apply boiling water to your skin. Submerge the brush, shake it out, swirl it along the soap surface, and test the temperature gently before rubbing it on your cheek. Better yet, forget the water heater and never put anything but ice water on your litigious face.

I also recommend a travel size shaving brush with cover. Soap bowls can get messy so I travel with a TSA-compliant 2 ounce cream pump (lots of choices here) that works only with brushes.

Other ideas that have been suggested to me over the years include:

• Nick-relief styptic powder, available for $3 (hat tip to Rob Chandra). Sure beats the toilet paper method.

• My Philips Norelco Ear/Nose Hair trimmer was a gift from Brad. He also gave me a Philips Norelco BodyGroomer. I'm not sure why. The instructions specifically warn against facial use, but when I had my beard I used the thingy as a trimmer with great results.

• The lip wipe. Woody Allen taught me this move in one of his early films (Bananas, I think). Once your face is lathered up with soap, wet a finger and outline your lips with it to prevent accidental ingestion.

Once you get the hang of wet shaving, both you and your wife will enjoy the change. Just don't tell your rabbi.

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