Category: Non-disposable

Posts that may have some sort of permanent value, or that I consider to be the best of what I have posted here.

Post #1689: Strop-a-Palooza, Part 1: Historical Perspective.

 

The last thing I need to do, to finish this deep dive into understanding wet shaving, is to learn how to strop a razor blade.  In particular, how to strop a stainless-steel razor blade.  Correctly.  So that it actually sharpens the blade.

I have no practical reason to do this.  Now that I understand the importance of using shaving cream instead of soap, I find that my razor blades last a long time.  Currently, I’m on shave #8 on a single Personna stainless steel blade, shaving with Barbasol.  I’m just starting to see the first bit of blade wear

So the blades won’t last forever.  But at that rate, I probably already own a more-than-lifetime supply of razor blades.  And so, I have no practical need to try to extend the life of a blade.

Instead, this is more a question of separating fact from fiction.  As with the rest of wet-shaving lore, when I look at ways to re-sharpen a razor blade, I see a lot of stuff that just looks nuts.  And I see a lot of clever antique devices that look downright interesting.  What’s missing is anybody taking the time actually to test these methods and determine whether or not they do, in fact, work.

So that’s the purpose of this next set of exercises.  History.  Fact vs. fiction.  Historical methods.  Ending with a practical method for stropping a stainless steel razor blade.

Just to jump ahead, I think I’ve already figured out what that’s likely to be.  It’s like to be honing the blade using polishing compound on the inside surface of a Pyrex container.  But it’s going to take me a while to explain how I got to that conclusion.

A history of razor blade stropping devices

Part 1:  Sears and Roebuck Catalog.

Source and credit:  All illustrations in this section are from Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogs.  All early years are from an on-line collection maintained by the University of Illinois, which you can access by starting at this link:  https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1910-1919.  Catalogs from later years are via https://christmas.musetechnical.com/

The decade of the 1930s was the heyday of stropping razor blades to re-sharpen them.  Sears offered multiple models of stropping device, including electric stroppers.  The razor blade market still appeared to be dominated by cheap (and easily stropped) carbon-steel blades, and Sears flatly stated:  “Stroppers make razor blades last longer”.

But by the time you get to WWII, electric razors were the in thing, Sears was pushing stainless steel blades, and stroppers had all-but-disappeared from the catalog. One self-stropping razor set was all that was left of the notion to strop blades to extend their life.   The more conservative Montgomery Ward still offered a stropper, but it was the same model that had been invented in the 1920s.

Of particular note:  In 1940, Sears told you that you didn’t need to dry off stainless steel blades.  That’s 80 years ago.  And people will still incorrectly tell you that you need to dry off your razor blade after each use (Post #1686).  Such is the power of folklore.

Edit:  Nope, see Post #1699.  If you live in an area with hard water, you do, in fact, need to dry off your razor blades.  The issue isn’t rust/corrosion (for stainless-steel blades), it’s that water spots (mineral deposits) coat the razor edge and dull it.  See that post for details.

As of the 1955 Sears catalog, there’s zero mention of stropping, but Sears is still offering a mix of carbon-steel and stainless-steel blades.  By 1965, razors had disappeared entirely from the Sears catalog, and Sears only offered stainless steel blades, no carbon-steel blades.  By 1975, “razor” doesn’t even appear in the index, and the only shaving options shown are electric shavers.

Decade-by-decade detail follows.

Sears & Roebuck, 1918

As I found out courtesy of the 1918 Sears and Roebuck catalog, razor blade stropping was an expected part of shaving with a safety razor at that time.  Sears sold a clever device consisting of leather rollers, a blade holder, and a crank.

Sears & Roebuck, 1924

Not much had changed by the 1924 Sears catalog.  That same stropping device (now branded Kanner’s) was sold, along with an even-more-complex “Twinplex” stropper (above).  There were also several razors marked as “self-stropping”, which appears to mean that you could attach a leather cylinder to the razor itself, which would then roll across your skin and strop the back of the blade as you shaved.

Not shown, the catalog offered a broad array of shaving soaps, largely in stick form.

Sears and Roebuck, 1936

By the time you get to the 1936 Sears & Roebuck, the stropping market had expanded, and Sears boldly claimed that “Stroppers make razor blades last longer”.  If it says it in the Sears and Roebuck, it’s so.

I see two notable changes beyond the proliferation of products.  First, there’s an electric stropper on the market.  But Sears is also offering honing stones specifically designed for honing razor blades.  Note the “Duplex Home”, with a curved side made specifically for honing razor blades.  That comes up again in the next section on stropping artifacts.

Up to this point, all razor blade stroppers had been variations on a standard leather strop.  They rolled the strop up into a cylinder.  But it was still a piece of stout leather, rubbed at the correct angle against the underside of the blade.  But now we also have a curved honing stone specifically for honing razor blades.

The other notable change was the explosion in the offerings of razor blades, and the plummeting price of blades.  Note that Sears now offered blades in bulk at less than 1 cent per blade.  So this must have been the generation when safety razors really took off.  I also note the many blade manufacturers offered chromium steel blades, which, from the consumers’ point of view, would have been indistinguishable from stainless steel.

Not shown, this catalog offered many different shaving creams.  That was a change from 1924, when only shaving soaps were listed.

Sears and Roebuck, 1940.

First, not shown, electric shavers were clearly the “in” thing.  Sears devoted almost an entire page to them.

Second, Sears was offering stainless steel blades as a premium product.  Normal carbon-steel blades were still less than a penny each.  Their stainless steel blades, advertised as long-lasting, were 6 cents each.

Of special note, way back in 1940, we already knew that there was no need to dry off a stainless steel razor blade.  Sears explicitly says that with stainless steel blades, there is “No need to wipe off”.  And yet, here we are, 80 years later, and every wet shaving site you come to still tells you how important it is to dry off your blade after use.  (See edit above — you need to dry them in areas with hard water.)

At this point, Sears is no longer offering a stropper, and offers just one “self-stropping” razor set.

Montgomery Ward, 1942

Here, I found it notable that Wards also offered stainless steel blades.   No ambiguity, with a promise that they’d never rust.  The price of bargain blades had fallen to less than a penny a blade.  As with Sears, the stainless blades were a premium product, costing 5 cents each.

Wards continued to offer the “Twinplex” stropper that had first appeared in the 1920s.

Sears & Roebuck, 1955

By this time, all the emphasis is on electric shavers.  There’s one small section for safety razors.  No mention of any type of stropping device anywhere.  Sears continues to offer both cheap carbon-steel blades and stainless steel blades.

Sears, 1965.

By the time you get to 1965, the only shavers offered by Sears are electric.  This year they featured many models of cordless electric shavers.  The offered no razors.  Certainly no strops.  And all the razor blades on offer were stainless steel.  Carbon steel blades had disappeared from the Sears catalog.

Sears, 1975

At this point, the word “razor” no longer appears in the index of the catalog.  You have to look for “shavers”.  And, sure enough, all they sell now is electric shavers.  The only vestigial nod to wet shaving is the hot shaving cream gizmo pictured above.

Part II:  I bought it on Ebay.  Other vintage razor-blade stropping devices.

Source and credit:  All illustrations in this section are from Ebay.  I will try to be sure to give a link to each individual listing that I use.

If you look on Ebay you can find examples of most of the stropping machines and self-stropping razors show in the Sears catalogs.  These are incredibly helpful for figuring out how those devices work, because the Ebay listings typically show multiple photographs from different angles.

By and large, the stropping devices shown in the Sears & Roebuck were leather cylinders, turned in some fashion, with some way to hold the blade in the proper position against the leather.  Fundamentally, they were no different from a traditional leather strop used with straight razors.  Merely made smaller and adapted to the form of the safety razor blade.

Instead, in this section I’m going to concentrate on razor-blade stropping devices other than the box-with-leather-roller types shown in the Sears and Wards catalogs.

Finally, let me be clear that I’m only interested in tools that could be used to hone or strop safety razor blades.  In particular, I need to avoid tools and devices designed for straight razors.

At the end of the day, a curved sharpening stone or even just a curved piece of hard glass appears to be the most common non-leather tool used to re-sharpen razor blades.  For those where instructions were evident, all of them said to use a light touch.  I have to assume that the curve of the stone or glass then aligns with the angle of the razor edge, and that the stone or glass itself is hard enough to strop or polish the razor edge.

Criss-Cross leather disk strop.  Click here for Ebay listing.

This is a leather disk, turned by a crank, with a blade holder sitting above the disk (in the upper right).  Put the blade in the holder, let it down onto the leather disk, and crank to strop the back of the blade.  Basically, this is just another variation on a traditional leather strop, fit to the form factor of a safety razor blade.

Curved sharpening stones

These are all sharpening stones with a curve cut into them.  You lay the blade in the curve, so that both edges touch the stone, and lightly rub it in a circular fashion.

Safety razor hone.  Click here for Ebay listing.

Safety razor hone 2.   Click for Ebay listing

Safety Razor hone 3.  Click here for Ebay listing

Curved glass strops/hones

I had never heard of using glass as a strop or hone, but there are several variations of that represented on Ebay and elsewhere.  Based on one set of instructions, I think these work just like the curved stones.  You lay your blade in the curve, edges touching the glass, press down, and just kind of move it around in a circles over the glass.

Curved glass razor hone 1.  Click here for Ebay listing.

Glass razor hone 2.  Click here for Ebay listing

Glass razor hone 3.  Click for ebay listing.

Velvet glass sharpener. Click here for Ebay listing.

Pretty sure this one works the same way as the others, you just use the inside of the glass as the curved edge of the glass.

Other/weirder stuff

Magnetic razor-blade sharpener.  Click for Ebay listing.

Well, that’s just hilarious.  I came across a modern version of this the other day.  The claim here is that by something-something-something magnetic fields something-something-something, and presto, the blade is resharpened.  It’s Science!  I assumed the modern one was a scam, and I’d bet that this is merely a 60-year-old scam.

Bakelite razor sharpener.   Click here for Ebay listing.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve seen several models like this, mostly from Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union.  All of them have this clamshell design, with what I assume is some type of sharpening media, but I have no clue how this works.

Summary:  Some clear direction for stropping stainless steel blades.

I’m pretty sure that most common glass is not quite hard enough to be used to sharpen stainless.  Glass comes in around 5 to 6 on the Mohs scale.  Stainless, if you can put it on that scale, varies, but goes up to at least 7, depending on who;s counting.

That said, nothing would stop me from putting a little polishing or fine grinding compound on a piece of curved glass, and having at it with a stainless steel blade.

Finally, borosilicate glass (Pyrex) comes in around a 7.5 on Mohs.  So, arguably, the 21st century analog of resharpening carbon-steel blades using soda lime glass would be to resharpen stainless-steel blades using borosilicate glass.

So I think that’s the direction I’m going to take.

Post #1688: Winning the Game of Razors-and-Blades.

 

When I started this series of posts, I was bewildered by the market for wet shaving.    Four questions stood out.  Really, two pairs:  One about economics, one about performance:

  1. Why do manufacturers keep coming up with ever-more-absurd gimmicks for shaving cartridges?
  2. Why does a shaving cartridge typically cost a buck or more, but a double-edged razor blade costs ten cents?
  3. Why do some people report getting a ludicrously high number of shaves from a single blade or cartridge, while others report re-use in the low single digits, for the exact same blade or cartridge?
  4. Is any of the folklore around ways to extend the life of a razor blade true?

After doing my research, I reached a state of razor enlightenment.  It all makes perfect sense.  So let me start by ‘splaining what I think I know.  Then finish with a short discussion of stropping. Continue reading Post #1688: Winning the Game of Razors-and-Blades.

Post #1687: Razor blades, some economic footnotes

 

I set out to compare modern prices for razor blades to prices from earlier eras.  I got a lot more than I bargained for.  Turns out, there really is nothing new under the sun.  Except that razor blades have gotten a lot cheaper over time.

The basic question is, how cheap are modern razor blades?  Compared to what they would have cost historically, that is.

But the fun part is the 1918 Sears & Roebuck catalog.  This post is worth it for that alone.

 

They cost how much?

If you wanted to know about historical food prices, or typical rents, or average family income, or the cost of gasoline from bygone eras, you can find that information.  Those were all important commodities, and their prices were duly tracked and recorded.

By contrast, there’s no such luck for a cheap disposable product like a razor blade.  Nobody really much cared about them, in the sense of preserving their prices for history.  Nobody systematically recorded information about them.  And that makes it hard to find out what they used to cost, way back when.

Initially, all I could do was look for bits and pieces of advertising.

Even then, the only razor company modern historians much care about is Gillette.  And Gillette was not only a super-premium product, Gillette also played fast-and-loose with their pricing, owing to patents on some key aspects of safety razors early in that era.

In fact, there is a term-of-art in economics called “razors-and-blades“, to discuss profit-maximizing strategies for companies who sell razor handles that will only fit their razor blades.  Think inkjet cartridge pricing, and you’ll get the gist of it.  And, sure enough, once you’re locked into a handle, the manufacturer tries to extract the as much money as possible in the cartridges.

Let me start with Gillette’s list price for blades.

I am supposed to say something like “Gillette introduced the safety razor in 1904”, but that’s not even remotely true.   One can find ads for “safety razors” for many decades prior to that, all with the same basic design of a blade contained in some sort of housing, to make it hard to cut yourself.

What Gillette actually invented was the cheap, stamped-steel disposable razor blade (per Wikipedia).  And, of course, the razors that would use those blades.  Before Gillette, most safety razors had a permanent blade, designed to be re-sharpened.  Gillette got the idea to do away with a permanent, knife-like razor and substitute a disposable blade.

At that time, Gillette’s razor was marketed as a superior and more sanitary way to shave, owing to the reduced likelihood of nicks and cuts from shaving.  It commanded an appropriately premium price.

From 1904, until his patents ran out around 1924, Gillette razor blades were priced at 12 for a dollar, or 8.3 cents per blade.  That was the list price, and some sources suggest that discounting was common.

But taking that 8.3 cents at face value, I’ll translate that to current dollars using the BLS inflation calculator.  That only goes back to 1913, but it tells us that 8.3 cents, in 1913, is the equivalent of just over $2.50 in today’s (December 2022) money.  Per blade.

As noted in prior posts, current prices on double-edge razor blades range from about 5 cents each at the low end, to about 40 cents each for high-end Japanese Feather brand blades.   It’s reasonable to say you have your pick of medium-quality blades around 10 cents each.  (Those are all Amazon prices for lots of 100 blades.)

Thus a modern stainless-steel quality razor blade costs about 4 percent of what a name-brand, list-price Gillette razor blade originally cost.

But wait, there’s more.  Average (family, I think) income in that era was about 750 dollars per year.  (Based on various sources).  Median family income today is about $71,000.  So, as a fraction of a year’s income, a modern 10-cent razor blade is just 1.3 percent as costly as Gillette’s original 8.3 cent blade.

Thank goodness for Sears & Roebuck.

But wait:  Gillette was not the only blade on the market, it was just the best-advertised.  And likely the most expensive.  A comparison to the Gillette list price overstates how costly razor blades were, on average, at the dawn of the disposable razor blade.  Unfortunately, the earliest pricing I can find on other blades dates to the WWI era.

I stumbled across a University of Missouri collection of old mail-order catalogs, all scanned and available on-line.  You can get access to from this URL:  https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1910-1919.

With that in hand, it’s just a question of looking up razors in any year’s catalog and see what’s on offer in the Sears & Roebuck.  And it’s a real eye-opener.

Let me take the 1918 Sears and Roebuck catalog, despite that being in the middle of WWI.  The source for all the images below is page 1321 of the 1918 Sears and Roebuck catalog, via the University of Illinois.  Clicking this link should take you to a page that’s about 20 pages earlier in the catalog.  Just page down to get to razors.

The first surprise is that stainless steel blade are NOT a 1960s invention.  Check out this 1918 Sears & Roebuck ad, for a razor and 12 chromium steel blades.  While technically incorrect, the term “chromium steel” is often used interchangeably with “stainless steel”, for the simple reason that it behaves like common stainless.  It’s very hard, and it’s rust-proof.

Second, as is true today, you could also purchase carbon steel blades.  Oddly, you will note that the chrome steel blades are NOT a premium product.  At 12 for 38 cents, they are actually cheaper than the “crucible steel” blades at 5 for 20 cents.  (I believe that, in that era, “crucible steel” was a catch-all term for higher-quality steel carbon steel, free of inclusions or impurities.)

Third, Gillette’s stuff was, indeed, pricey.  Here you can see Gillette blades at 6 for 39 cents.  That’s about twice the price of the most expensive blade on the illustration above.  The complete shaving outfit from Gillette was four times the price of a similar outfit from the off brand.  (Also, what’s with “We do not exchange old blades.”?)

Finally, re-sharpening blades by stropping must have been common practice.  Not only do most of the razor outfits include “stropping handles”, Sears sold two different stropping devices, one to fit Gillette blades and one to fit most other blades.  This comports with the findings from my tests, where stropping definitely cleaned up and re-formed the razor edge of a used blade.

I now wonder whether stropping might have been more effective on old-style (softer) carbon-steel blades, than on chromium steel.  That’s sure the case with knife sharpening.  It’s vastly easier to sharpen a high-carbon steel blade on a whetstone than it is to sharpen a stainless blade.  Perhaps that explains the lack of premium pricing for chromium steel blades in that era?

The calculation, redone.

The cheapest blades offered above appear to be the 12-for-38-cent chromium steel ones, or about 3 cents per blade. In addition, with all that stropping going on, I bet those blades were used longer than modern blades are.  But I have no way to factor that into my calculation, absent any data on average shaves per blade in that era.

At face value, then, the best bargain on blades in the 1918 Sears & Roebuck catalog translates to about 66 cents per blade in modern money (using January 1918 as the basis for pricing, WWI saw a brief but very sharp round of inflation in the U.S.)

Or, crazily enough, just about what a low-end name-brand disposable cartridge costs today.  Still a good bit of money relative to the average family income.  But not nearly as expensive as the list price for Gillette blades would have suggested.

Really, almost the only structural difference between the 1918 market and the modern market is that disposable blades had not yet been standardized.  Gillette blades fit Gillette razors.  (Again, just like disposable cartridges today.)  Other brands seemed to have adopted a more-nearly-interchangeable standard.

If I had to point to one subtle-but-important difference, it’s in the quantities.  Recall, this is a mail-order catalog, with all the time lags that implies.  And yet, no razor blades were offered in lots larger than 12.  And everybody seemed to offer either a stropping machine or a manual strop for use on their blades.  Together, this suggests to me that you were expected to use each blade for quite a long time.

As opposed to Amazon, today, where almost any blade you’d care to buy can be had in a box of 100.  And “strops” for disposable razor blades are niche-market oddities.  Which both suggest that we probably re-use blades a lot less in the modern world than they did back in 1918.

Post #1686: Three shaving myths, tested.

 

Starting back in Post #1672, I decided to test internet-based advice on how to extend the life of razor blades and disposable razors. EDIT:  And I’ve had to change some of the answers, after further, research, as shown below.

At this point, the answers are obvious, and I’m kind of tired of having razor blades sitting around all over my bathroom.  So I’m calling it a day and presenting the results.  Despite not having done the purest possible tests, I’ve done enough to be confident that I have the facts straight.

It boils down to this, for three commonly-offered suggestions for extending the life of a razor blade or disposable shaver.

  • Carefully dry your razor blade after use:  BUSTED. CONFIRMED
  • Strop your razor blade to re-sharpen it:  PLAUSIBLE BUSTED
  • Soften your beard/lubricate your face:  CONFIRMED

Details follow.

Carefully dry your razor blade after use:  BUSTED, for rust, but CONFIRMED for hard-water spots.

If this were 1960, “dry your blade” would be excellent advice.  At that time, most razor blades were made from a hard carbon-steel alloy.  Carbon steel rusts.  And rust will surely destroy the delicate edge of a razor blade.  But these days, you are hard-pressed to find double-edged razor blades that aren’t made of stainless steel.   (Treet brand is the only one I know of.)

The key point is that stainless steel doesn’t rust.  (Well, decent-quality stainless will not rust in the bathroom.  Some stainless, in some environments, will rust.)  In particular, there’s no rust on the blades I use (Persona), despite sitting around in a damp “used razor blade bank” for years.

My guess is that “dry your blade after use” is folk wisdom that was passed from parent to child. Once upon a time, it was good advice.  But I’m pretty sure that it has been made irrelevant by the switch to stainless steel.  It remains good advice only for the rare blade that is still made out of rust-able carbon steel.

At any rate, I decided to test this one “backwards”, so to speak.  If keeping a razor blade wet for long periods of time does not harm it, then, as a matter of logic, drying it off does it no good.

So I took some razor blades — some new, some used — and kept them wet.  The razor blades pictured above have spent the last week with one edge wet and one edge dry.  They were either continuously wet (in a wet sponge) or periodically wet, and allowed to dry by sitting around at room temperature.  The other edge of each blade was either kept dry, or dry-and-oiled.  Presumably for extra protection.

Below see microscope view of the results.  Each photo contrasts one blade edge that was subject to the “abuse” of being kept wet, for the better part of a week.  The other blade edge was carefully kept dry.

Can you guess which one is the abused, wet edge, and which is the carefully-cared-for dry edge?

 

 

In all three cases, the wet, abused edge is on top.  I surely see no difference between the two edges.

I then tested both edges of the dry-and-oiled blade on my crude D-I-Y sharpness tester (Post #1684).  This latest version of the sharpness tester has considerable variance from test to test, but by taking five samples on each edge, I ended up with an average of this much pressure required to split a stout thread:

  • Dry-and-oiled edge:  17 grams
  • Continuously wet edge:  18 grams

In other words, the two edges are equally sharp, within the limits of of resolution of my crude testing setup.  Keeping the edge wet for a week did nothing, compared to keeping the edge carefully dry and oiled.

Caveats:  Of course, I can’t test every possibility.  Plausibly, you might be unlucky enough to have purchased carbon-steel blades.  Perhaps your water is so acidic that it can eat stainless steel.  And so on.

But there’s a simple-enough test.  Leave your blades wet.  If your blades rust, then you need to dry them carefully after each use.  If they don’t, not.

Conclusion:  For the typical shaver, with normal tap water, leaving a stainless steel razor blade wet does absolutely nothing to it.  Doesn’t rust it.  Doesn’t pit the edge.  Doesn’t dull the edge.  That’s not a surprise because that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen with stainless steel.  But, if keeping them wet all the time does nothing, then keeping them dry also does nothing.  By inference, the notion that razor blades will last longer if you carefully dry them is simply out-of-date.  Great advice for shaving in 1960.  Irrelevant for modern stainless-steel blades.

EDIT 2/26/2024:   But that method — keep the edge wet — only tests for rust.  As it turns out, rust isn’t the issue.   The issue is water spots.  If you have even moderately hard water, and you don’t dry your blade, the evaporating water will leave behind thin deposits of calcium carbonate, a.k.a., water spots.  And, goofy as it sounds, a water spot is a hard mineral deposit that is much thicker than the edge of a razor blade. As a result, if you let water spots form on your razor blades, you’ll get a lousy shave.  That’s laid out and tested in Post #1699. 

The upshot is that “dry your blade” is good advice for most people, but not due to rust or oxidation.  (Not if you use stainless-steel blades.)  That’s because most tap water contains enough dissolved minerals (“hardness”) to form water spots. 

That said, all of the other goofy advice aimed at blade oxidation — keep your blade in oil, keep it in the freezer, and so on — is useless.  At least for modern stainless-steel blades.  You don’t need to go to extremes to prevent oxidation, because they simply don’t oxidize under normal bathroom conditions.

Strop your razor blade to re-sharpen it:  PLAUSIBLE, but ultimately, BUSTED

Here, I’ll just refer you back to Post #1673.  Stropping a used blade on an improvised leather strop definitely changed the edge of the blade.  Below, you see the same used blade, before and after stropping.

 

After stropping, the edge is much smoother and almost returns to a like-new appearance.

Unfortunately, stropping also appears to remove the double-faceted aspect of the factory edge.  (Which makes sense, when you think about it.  You can only strop it at one angle.)

In the end, neither my crude sharpness tester nor my face could tell that the stropped blade was better than the original used blade.  Maybe that’s because I wasn’t using my blades very long — see third section below.  So I find it plausible that if you wore a blade down to where it was un-usable, stropping could restore the edge enough that you could continue to use it.  For some additional time, at least.  Maybe?

But, as with a straight razor or a knife, stropping has its limits.  If the edge gets sufficiently worn, you have to re-sharpen it, which is a different process entirely.  So I don’t think stropping will allow you to use a blade indefinitely.

Conclusion:  I didn’t prove it, but it’s plausible that stropping a razor blade extends its usable life.  That’s based on the much fresher-looking edge that stropping creates, as shown above.  Straight razors get stropped to refresh the edge.  There’s no reason that wouldn’t work on razor blades.  With the caveat that stropping a razor blade will eventually eliminate the factory double-faceted cut of the razor edge.

Edit 2/24/2024:  I have since gone on to try wide variety of different methods for stropping a stainless-steel razor blade, up to and including buying an actual razor strop and stropping compound, as well as stropping a blade on a knife steel.  Stropping a modern stainless-steel blade makes the edge look better, but it absolutely does not restore a dull blade to usability.  I think my last post in that series is Post #1692.  My post-stropping conclusion was “still doesn’t shave worth a damn”.  And that’s what I’m sticking with.

In the end, the practice of stropping razor blades died out as stainless-steel blades took over the market, and I think there’s a good reason for that.  Those blades are just too hard. 

For sure, all the goofy internet advice (strop it in the back of your arm, or on your jeans trouser leg, or on the inside of a glass, …) is wrong.  For stainless-steel blades.  Stainless is just too hard for that to have any effect.  But I went the extra mile, and used what should have been the right materials for stropping.  In this post, I used a knife steel, and in a prior post, I used an actual leather razor strop and compound.  (Which is what you would use on, say, a stainless-steel straight razor.)  And none of that restored a dull stainless blade to sharpness.

Soften your beard/lubricate your face:  CONFIRMED

If nothing else, this razor blade test has broken me of a life-long bad shaving habit.  I shave(d) with soap.  Most recently I’ve been using Dove, because that’s supposed to have more emollients in it and be generally nicer to your skin.

And, not unrelated, I’d typically get three shaves out of a blade before I got the urge to replace it.  Maybe five, at the outside.  But by the time I got through that fifth shave, it required multiple passes of the blade and, basically, it hurt.

For this final test, I decided to shave half my face using Dove soap, and half with Barbasol.  The main active ingredient in Barbasol is stearic acid.  That’s the same as the main fat in coconut oil, and it is frequently recommended as a beard softening agent.  (And, as it turns out, almost all shaving creams have almost exactly the same main ingredient — see the end section of Post #1688.)

Three things happened.

1:  After the first shave, I was sold on Barbasol.  Immediately, unambiguously, and obviously better.  Vastly less skin irritation than shaving with Dove soap.

2:  But, weirdly, as time wore on, the difference between Barbasol and soap seemed less pronounced.  And the two edges of the razor blade (one for soap, one for Barbasol) did not appear materially different.  I’m pretty sure that’s because the active ingredient in Barbasol penetrates the skin and hair follicles.  In effect, it softens not just the hair above the skin but the hair below the skin as well.  And by swapping which side of my face got the Barbasol, with each shave, I was actually providing some residual protection to both sides of my face, all the time.

3:  I just got through my sixth shave with Barbasol.  One blade, six shaves, no problems.  No irritation.  No nothing.  That never happened with soap.

And, as importantly, almost no visible blade wear yet.  Here are two microscope views of a new blade next to a blade after six shaves with Barbasol.

 

Tough to tell which is which, isn’t it?  The new blade is on the left, the used blade is on the right.  My used blades never looked like that when I shaved with soap.

So, I screwed up the formal testing on this one, by alternating which side of my face got the Barbasol.  But the results are clear enough.  Despite the lack of controlled test, I’m calling this one confirmed.  I’ll keep counting shaves, and at some point, I’ll edit this for the final count.  But I’ve already exceeded what I can get out of a blade with soap.  And I’m at about twice the number of shaves I normally get out of a blade, with soap.

Whether this occurs solely due to the reduced blade wear shown above, or in addition to the increased comfort of the better-lubricated shave itself, I can’t say.  But, for sure, the combined effect is to give me a lot more shaves per blade.

YMMV.  I don’t have a particularly tough beard to start with.  And my comparison is off-the-shelf Dove bar soap.

I guess real shaving aficionados laugh at something as pedestrian as Barbasol.  I should be using yak butter, or some such.  I don’t care.  It’s been around forever.  It’s made in America.  It’s a few bucks a can, which works out to maybe 2 cents a shave.  And it works.

I see no reason to look any further.

Here’s the kicker:  Not only is shaving with Barbasol a lot more comfortable, it’s almost certainly cheaper than shaving with soap.  The per-shave cost of the Barbasol (about two cents, best guess) is more-than-offset by the reduction in per-shave cost of the blade wear-and-tear.

As a result, I now realize that the way I shaved for my entire life (up to now) was both more painful and more expensive.  Oh for dumb.

Conclusion:  I can’t speak to every possible way to soften your beard or lubricate your skin.  But Barbasol obviously extends the usable life of razor blades, for me.  Relative to shaving with Dove soap.

Conclusion

I could have done this whole analysis better.  But I think I did it well enough to know what’s what.

And, there are almost certainly other tricks that might or might not work.  For example, some people carefully flip the blade between shaves, presumably so that both sides of each edge get equal wear.  But this expert says no dice on that one.  You get the same number of shaves either way.  Which makes sense to me.

The final upshot is that I know as much about this topic as I will ever need to know.

The whole reason I started this experiment — the need to buy my next tranche of razor blades — no longer exists.  By switching from soap to Barbasol, it will be years before I’ll have to buy more blades.

Post #1685: Razor blade experiment, unexpected results, and a redo.

 

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.

Post #1684: Improved sharpness tester

 

Recall that I’m in the process of testing various internet suggestions for ways to extend the life of a razor blade or disposable shaver.

As part of that, I’d like to have some objective measure of blade sharpness.

One way to test the sharpness of a blade is by measuring the force required to cut a wire or thread.  The sharper the blade, the less force required.

Commercial sharpness testers using this approach cost maybe $200 and up.  That’s a bit pricey, considering that the only use I have for that is to test 10-cent razor blades.

For my initial post in this series, I made my own crude sharpness testers out of washers, super glue, a stout thread, and a kitchen scale.  Like so:

Set the washer on the scale, tare the scale, and see how much downward force is required to cut the thread.

For this round, I decided that a) that was too much work, b) it doesn’t yield enough tests per batch, and c) there are easier and better ways to do this.

Here’s the new, improved sharpness tester.   The principle is the same as the old one:  Make something to hold a thread in place, then cut through that thread while it’s sitting on a kitchen scale.  Use the scale to measure the force required.

But:

First, instead of gluing thread across washers, glue thread to a slotted piece of wood.  In this case, I’m using a little bit of “fluted” commercial trim, about one inch wide, and about a foot long.  Wrap the thread around the trim, spiral-fashion, and glue each piece of thread to the trim.  This way, I get about 20 tests per foot of trim.

Second, instead of holding the blade by hand, rig up something so that you get a steadier cut.  Here, I’m using a scrap piece of steel, some magnets, a bit of duct tape, and some blocks and clamps to make a long, moveable arm to hold the razor blade above the sharpness tester.

To test sharpness, install a blade, tare the scale, position blade above one of the hollows in the trim, and push down slowly until the thread parts.  Try to catch the maximum weight reading on the scale.  (If I were totally serious about this, I’d film the weighing so I could rewind to catch the maximum weight.  As it stands, I just go slowly and do my best to catch the maximum.)

The exact choice of materials doesn’t much matter.  If I hadn’t found that trim, I would have just ripped some slots in a board using a table saw.  If I hadn’t had the steel on hand, I’d likely have used PVC pipe and rigged up something for attaching the saw blade.  All you’re after is something rigid to hold the thread, and something steady to hold the blade.

This surely isn’t perfect.  And the readings in grams are not comparable to what you’d get from a commercial sharpness tester.  But this should be plenty good enough to show that (e.g.) the two edges of a razor blade, treated differently, either do or don’t have the same sharpness.

For sure, if my only other alternative for testing blades is to shave with them, or maybe scrape a fingertip over them, then this is a significant improvement.

Post #1658: Testing eyeglasses and sunglasses for UV protection. Part 2, the initial tests

Recall the goal of this:  I want to see how well my eyeglasses, sunglasses, and car windows block ultraviolet (UV) light.  See my recent Post #1654 on this topic if you wonder why anyone would care about that. Continue reading Post #1658: Testing eyeglasses and sunglasses for UV protection. Part 2, the initial tests

Post #1653: The life table as the cure for lucralgia.

 

As we approach the end of the year, I think about my final charitable donations for the year.

“Give all you have to the poor, and follow me.”  You can find that said, as the supposed words of Jesus,  in one form or the other, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In fact, in the most radical interpretation of those various passages, one cannot follow Jesus unless one does that.  “Easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven”.  And all that.

How nutso is that? 

I mean, just work out the literal implications of that for the modern U.S. suburbanite.

“Honey, I’m selling the house, the cars; liquidating the IRAs and the investment accounts; and giving all the proceeds to the church.  We and our children can live as beggars.  But it’s OK, we’ll get our reward in heaven.”

One might plausibly expect some negative feedback to that plan.  As in, I’d expect to be declared mentally incompetent if I tried to do that.  That’s how contrary to any sense of self-preservation or self-interest that particular piece of New Testament wisdom runs.  If you actually tried it, the courts would stop you, one way or the other.  For your own good.  Because no rational individual would do that.  They would assume you were nuts.

But is that necessarily true?

Lucralgia

When I was a much younger man, I made up the term “lucralgia” to describe something I felt from time to time.  It’s a portmanteau of lucre (money), and -algia (pain).

It’s that special pain you feel when giving away a significant sum of money.  It’s the “hurts” in “give ’til it hurts”.  I suspect that each person’s sense of lucralgia sets an upper limit on their charity, barring those who literally follow the rules of their church (e.g., literal tithing).  You can only stand to give but so much.

I’ve always felt inadequate, somehow, in my philanthropy.  You’re supposed to feel cheerful and upbeat about all the good your doing by contributing to worthy charities.  All those babies saved, trees hugged, and whatnot.

But all I ever felt was a vague sense of duty.  And lucralgia.  That ache behind your solar plexus when you do your duty and sign a bunch of checks to worthy charities.

No joy.

The life table.

Those of us in the business know it.  Actuaries.  Health economists.

For the rest of you, find your line.  Then read ’em and weep.  This is an excerpt from the 2020 U.S life table, showing how likely it is that, all other things equal, 100,000 Americans will live past a certain age.

Source:  CDC

The life table as the cure for lucralgia, or the rewards for a lifetime of hard work.

Here in the U.S.A., if you work hard, succeed financially, invest with wisdom, and live modestly, and generally are lucky enough to have all suns shine, you will eventually be rewarded with the epiphany that you will die before you can spend all of your money.

I am one of the fortunate ones who has met the criteria.

Perhaps less fortunately, I figured this out, for myself, a few years back.  Maybe  it’s because I am a health economist, working mainly with Medicare data.  But I was completely familiar with the life table.  And when I slapped that up against an estimate of expected financial returns — that’s when I retired.

The truly weird thing about that is that once you reach that realization, then, rationally, as long as you place little or no value on passing your money on to your kids, then the value of money is zero.

If the checking account balance is going to be massively positive on date-of-death, then, what’s the value of another $1000 more or less?  It’s zero. 

You can’t take it with you.

An aside for my favorite economist-religous joke.

Old Mr. McGill is getting on in years.  He’s exceptionally well-to-do, but never married and has no close relatives.  All throughout his life, he’s donated millions to the Church.  But all he has now, in life, is his fortune.

So he asks the parish priest if he can take his fortune with him when he dies.  And he gets the stock answer, no, you can’t take it with you.

Not satisfied, he kicks it up the Church hierarchy, based on his history of massive charity toward the Church.  At some point, the Pope Himself communes with God.  And, lo and behold, in this one case, God will make an exception.  The decision comes down.  Mr. McGill can take it with him.

Overjoyed, Mr. McGill starts liquidating his assets, converting everything to gold bars and stacking them in a big aluminum suitcase.  Block upon block of the precious metal.  And, as is so often the case, as he almost got that suitcase filled, he suffered a massive stroke and died.

And there he went, suitcase in hand, off to heaven.

St. Peter met him at the gate, took one look at Mr. McGill and his suitcase, and said, “Nope, you know the rules.  You can’t take it with you.”

To which Mr. McGill replied, “There’s an exception in my case”.

St. Peter promptly conferred with God, found out that this was true, opened up the Pearly Gates, and waved Mr. McGill into heaven.

“But,”, said St. Peter, “I have to know.   What was so important that you couldn’t leave it back on Earth, but had to drag it with you to Heaven?”

And McGill gets a big smile on his face, places his suitcase down, and opens it up to display the contents.

Said St. Peter, incredulously:  “You brought pavement?”

Lucralgia no more

My point is that, if you get old enough, and have enough, it’s all just so much pavement.

As a consequence, what hurt badly as a young man doesn’t sting any more.  Inverse Widow’s Mite, I guess, as long as I’m in New Testament mode.  I’ve found the solution for lucralgia.  Or it has found me.

Weirdly, I’m still as cheap as ever.  All those habits of thrift, ingrained over a lifetime, continue to function.

But when it comes to writing those checks at the end of the year, it’s just not the painful chore it once was.  I still find no joy in it.  It’s just something that needs to be done.  But I no longer have to fight down that pain as I sign my name.  It’s just another chunk of pavement.

Post #1642: Hallelujah! The report.

 

Background

As I sit down to do my legally-mandated Cyber Monday shopping, I’d like to talk about a somewhat-less-commercial aspect of Christmas.

Last night, my wife and I attended the 51st annual Messiah sing-along at Clarendon United Methodist Church. For those of you unfamiliar with this tradition, Messiah is a baroque oratorio about the birth and death of Christ.  The words are straight out of the King James Bible (ca. 1611).  The music is straight out of the early 18th century (ca. 1741).

Despite these handicaps, the Christmas portion of it is still widely performed at this time of year (ca. 2022). The phrase used last night was “it’s been running longer than Cats”.

Talented soloists do the hard parts, while the audience serves as the chorus.  The audience ranges from excellent singers, to people like me (I can usually make it through the notes), to folks that are mostly lost, most of the time.  But it’s all good.  If you can’t sing the 16th notes, no problem.  Just sing what you can.

In a typical year, in the Washington DC area, there are easily a half-dozen Messiah sing-alongs to choose from.  I suspect the same is true for most cities across the U.S.

I’d like to say that it’s a way for us to kick off the holiday season on a more spiritual note.  But, really, for us, it’s more about the music.

My wife and I agree that, should we ever have access to a time machine, our first act would be to go back in time and kill Katherine Kennecott Davis, thus saving the Western world from untold billions of mind-numbing parum-pa-pum-pums.

The report

We attended this sing-along for several years ending in 2019.  Every pre-COVID-year, the church was more-or-less packed.  To the point where we’d come early to make sure we could get a parking place.  There was a lot of gray hair in the audience.  And a large portion of the audience had been attending that Clarendon UMC Messiah sing-along for years, if not decades.

Choral singing is such a risk for spread of COVID that we hesitated to return to it.  Even after calculating the odds (I crudely figured a 1-in-300 chance of picking up a COVID infection there), it still felt a little iffy.  I had to wonder if we were just being wimps about this.  Seems like almost everything is back to almost normal,despite continued new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that would be considered high during any other part of the pandemic.

We’re going back to this one, in the era of endemic COVID, because they require masks.  Near as I can tell, none of the other sing-alongs in the area do that.  I briefly went over why choral singing is such a risk for spread of COVID-19 in my last post on this (Post #1638).  So the masks seem prudent, to me.

Turns out, we are far from alone in hesitating to return to mass choral singing.

I would guess that the church was less than half-full last night.  In addition, the church had set up a broadcast for those who wished to attend virtually.

Moreover, the composition of the audience had changed.  By eye, there was less gray hair.  By show of hands, more than half were there for the very first time.  Only a handful of persons in the audience were multi-decade veterans of this event.

In hindsight, I interpret that as showing that many of the church’s aging, veteran singers decided not to attend in person.  Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about who is most at risk.

But is nevertheless a shame.  It suggests to me that if the current new-case levels really are the “endemic” or long-term level of COVID in the population, then this event will never fully recover from the pandemic.  It’s an event that largely catered to an elderly audience, but now carries an inherently high risk of COVID-19 infection.  That’s just not a winning combination in the era of endemic COVID.

Whether or not the newcomers will eventually repopulate that sing-along, it’s far too soon to tell.  I give Clarendon UMC credit for soldiering on.  I dropped a wad of cash in the collection basket on my way out, because it can’t be cheap to hire a small orchestra plus soloists.  But unless the level of COVID in circulation falls greatly, I suspect that this will only survive in its current, greatly reduced, form.

As for the other sing-alongs in the area, my wife is uncomfortable attending unless masks are required.  The science says that singing generates as much aerosols as coughing.  In this era, do you really want to stand in a big room full of people continuously coughing, and none of them wearing masks?

Ah, yeah, I think that’s where we draw the line.  At least at the current level of COVID-19 incidence.

The issue of mandatory masks for mass choral events cuts both ways.  We wish some other Messiah sing-alongs would follow Clarendon’s lead on the issue of masks.  But, I guess, it’s a question of whether the organizers of those events figure they’d lose more audience by requiring it, than not.  Maybe with a younger audience, no mandatory masks is the attendance-maximizing decision.  Last night, though, I’m pretty sure that masks were key to the modest level of attendance that was achieved.

Post #1638: Hallelujah! Or maybe not. Messiah sing-alongs in the era of endemic COVID.

 

Background

In the runup to Christmas, my wife and I like to attend sing-alongs of Handel’s Messiah.  That’s the one with the Hallelujah Chorus.   I posted about this in December 2019, Post #496.

Or, rather, liked.  Past tense.  That was pre-COVID.

As we learned the hard way, both here and abroad, getting together with a bunch of people and singing is probably the single easiest way to spread COVID-19.  In the U.S., the first such choral super-spreader event was the Mount Vernon, Washington choir practice, which left dozens ill and several dead.  Abroad, many countries saw similar incidents, such as this superspreader event at a church choir in Berlin.

There’s no mystery here.  COVID-19 is spread by aerosols, and singing produces as much aerosol as coughing.  From the standpoint of spreading an aerosol-borne disease, standing in the middle of a choir practice is equivalent to standing in a room full of people who are continuously coughing.

It just sounds a lot better.

Most churches all figured this out, at some point, and pretty much all mainstream U.S. churches banned singing in church during the height of the pandemic (see Post #708).  But that was only after a number of church-related super-spreader events (see Post #679).

Along with that, of course, many (but far from all) Messiah sing-alongs were cancelled for one or more years.

They’re back

A typical example of the adaptation of Messiah to COVID is the long-standing event at Clarendon United Methodist Church.  We attended for years, and it was always one of the best in the area.  The last pre-COVID year was the 2019, when they held their 48th annual sing-along.   In 2020, risks were high enough that they cancelled the in-person service, and instead offered up a retrospective on (what would have been) their 49th Messiah sing-along (reference).  In 2021, they held an in-person service for their 50th annual event, but required masks and proof of vaccination or recent negative PCR test (reference).  Finally, this year, in 2022, they are holding their 51st sing along, with masks required (reference).

Others that we have consistently attended in the past are being offered this year, but with no requirement for masks.  To pick an example, the Reston Chorale always manages to put on a very nice rendition of Messiah.  The ads for the 2022 sing-along make no mention of any precautions (reference).

Near as I can tell, Clarendon UMC is the outlier for requiring any precautions at all.  No others that I have found in my area make any mention of a mask requirement.

So, what are the odds?

Clarendon UMC looks like it holds about 500 people.  Using the same calculation that I’ve used in the past, with our current rate of roughly 10 new cases per day per 100K population, the odds that at least one person in that crowd has an active COVID-19 infection is 36% (calculation not shown).

This should probably be moderated somewhat by this being an elderly and fairly upscale crowd.  So the true odds may be somewhat smaller than that.

Then come all the unknowables.

First, being in the same church as someone with an active case is not the same as getting infected.  Mainly because of distance, but also because my wife and I have both recently had the bivalent booster shot, so our immunity should still be pretty good.

Second, it’s not clear what the impact of the masking requirement will be.  It cuts down the risks, for sure.  And I’ll be wearing a 3M unvented N95, appropriately fitted.  But there’s no telling what the average singer will be wearing.  Or how they will be wearing it.

Finally, there’s the evidence from last year’s events.  I cannot find even a single mention of an outbreak of COVID being traced back to a Messiah sing-along.  I don’t know whether that’s because it didn’t happen, because it wasn’t traced, or because it just didn’t make the news.

If I had to roll it all up into one big explicit guess, between a) the size of the church, b) our recent booster shot, c) the age and high educational attainment of the audience, and d) N95 respirators, I’d have to guess at least a 100-fold reduction in the odds of actually acquiring a COVID-19 infection at this event. Relative to that 36% chance that somebody attending the event with have an active case of COVID.

Or maybe a one-in-300 chance of getting infected. Fully acknowledging the guesswork that went into that.  But, you know, it’s better to make a decision with some number in mind, no matter how hazily derived, then just go with a gut feeling.

And to me, right now, for something I’m going to do once a year, that number doesn’t look too awful.

So, YOLO.  And I ain’t getting any younger.  After talking it over with my wife, maybe it’s time to get out our Messiah scores and start get up to speed on our parts.

Hallelujah.