I’m currently performing a brief experiment to see whether softening my beard prior to shaving will prolong the useful life of the razor blade.
See if you can spot what I screwed up in my experimental design:
- I have one safety razor and one blade.
- I marked one edge of the blade with “Barbasol”.
- Each day I shave half my face with Dove soap, and the other half with Barbasol.
- I always use the Barbasol edge of the blade on the side of my face with Barbasol on it.
- I alternate sides to eliminate any left-right differences (in my face, in holding the razor). One day, Barbasol goes on the left side, the next day, on the right.
- I rinse both sides of my face with tap water when I am done.
Here’s a hint. On the first day of the experiment, I became an instant Barbasol convert. The side shaved with Dove soap stung quite noticeably. No sting on the Barbasol side. But as the experiment has progressed, somehow, the soap side still stings a bit, but not nearly as much as it did at the outset.
In any case, after four shaves, I expected the soap side of the blade to be worn out, because that’s roughly normal for me. You can see microphotographs of worn blades in my earlier posts in this series. That’s what I expected to see.
To my surprise, when viewed under a microscope, there’s no material difference between the soap and Barbasol sides of the blade, at the four-shave mark. And both sides are still in very good shape.
What? That can’t be right.
Now that I have read a bit more about beard softening agents, I believe my mistake was in alternating sides of my face. As it turns out, oils commonly used as beard softeners, including stearic acid (the principal active ingredient in Barbasol):
- Penetrate the surface of the skin (e.g., reference).
- Penetrate into the hair follicle
- Penetrate the shaft of the hair to some degree
- Enough so that they actually have measurable effects on hair metabolism (e.g., reference).
I’m pretty sure the upshot of all that is that it’s a mistake to swap sides of the face each day. The most straightforward explanation of the lack of difference between two sides of the blade is that I’ve been accidentally softening the beard on both sides of my face.
Basically, Barbasol leaves enough softening “residue” to mess up the experiment, if you alternate sides of the face. It not only softens the beard AT skin level, it probably softens the beard BELOW skin level. Which then becomes tomorrow’s shave-able beard. And it softens the entire top layer of the skin, to boot.
To do this right, I have to change the protocol and not switch sides from day to day. Which I will do henceforth. But this clearly delays the final results.
Live and learn. Or draw incorrect conclusions from faulty experimental method.
