Had to go back to a cartridge for about a week now... thoughts

[jrm]

Okay,

I'm a wet shaving noob. There's really no denying it. But I'm learning. It's only been a few months now, but I think I've recently been affirmed in my decision to pursue DE shaving.

On Memorial Day I lost all my shaving gear. It wasn't much... a generously PIF'd Tech and NEW, a Merkur, some blades, some Proraso, and an Omega 49. So, i got replacements on order, and while I'm waiting on them, I ran down to the store and picked up a Mach 3. My wife was at Target and saw the often mentioned VDH luxury set, which she so generously brought home with a tube of CO Bigelow. So for the past week I've been shaving with a cartridge and have come to some realizations.

1. Cartridge shaving may be faster (for me at this time in my shaving journey), but I enjoy it way less. I like the care and focus that the DE experience calls for. Slapping a cartridge on my face is much less satisfying at the moment.

2. Shaving multi day growth with a cartridge is not a great experience. Before I used to shave about every other day. This time I was not looking forward to the cartridge experience and let my beard grow out about 4 days. Cutting though that much growth with a multiblade cartridge was not fun. There was a lot of tugging, pulling, and clogging.

3. I like the feel of a more substantial, all-metal razor. I think the Mach 3 is nicely constructed and feels good in the hand, but that little Tech felt so much more natural and the weight was a welcome addition to my shaving experience.

4. That even in the past few months, the techniques I've learned for DE shaving is paying dividends. My DE shaves are obviously multi-pass affairs. With the correct skin prep, I'd been enjoying great shaves. By using the same techniques, but using a cartridge shave, I'm getting way better shaves than I ever did with a cartridge. My shaves with the cart are smoother, easier, and less irritating than befor I switched over to DE. Nice to know that the skills from one do transfer to help the other.

5. I miss DE shaving and am looking forward to a couple packages in the mail.

6. This is one of the most helpful places on the net.. even if you're missing a razor.

Thanks for the great place and great info everyone!

-jon

 

[Captain Coconut]

Yep, shaving more than a few days' growth with a cartridge is ridiculous. You can effortlessly shave off a full beard with an open comb, and the only thing that will get clogged is your sink!

Also, I can't justify the cost of a cartridge. True, I've spent more on traditional shaving supplies, but it's extra luxury stuff. A few dollars for a cartridge that only lasts about as long as a ten cent blade doesn't make sense to me, especially when the cartridge doesn't do as good of a job.

 

[Myosin]

Cartridges are no where near as bad as the band wagon makes them out to be.

I shaved with cartridges from the time I was 16 (2002) up till 2 years ago, when I discovered that DE razors even existed.

Reading these forums, I would swear that some people who talk badly about cartridges try to dry shave against the grain with them.

The killing blow for cartridges is their price. I just can't bring myself to pay $25 for 8 fusion cartridges when I can literally buy over 200 DE blades for that. If cartridges stopped being so extremely expensive, I would definitely use them more. It could never replace DE shaving, but DE shaving has travel limits, which can get annoying for me. I can't take blades with me, so you have to stop and pick some up when you arrive at your location. On top of that, I'm always afraid to lose my favorite DE razors if I traveled with them. I don't care if my fusion gets lost, even though I still have the one Gillette sent me for my 18th birthday for free

 

[LazycatEB]

I went back to my pre-DE cartridge once just to see if my improved DE technique would yield better results. I have to agree with all of your points – it was a pretty miserable experience. Hope your replacements arrive quickly!

 

[jrm]

Cpt. Coconut, yes the price is pretty intense... I realized it before, but it didn't really hit home until I went down to the store and bought the setup again.

Myosin, agreed. I shaved with a cart for about 16 years. I could still be doing it. I just happen to like the DE better thus far. I think it does an adequate job (even better when not using canned shaving cream and prepping my face right), but I dont enjoy shaving with them... part of the reason I sought out DE shaving in the first place.

 

[Doppelgaenger]

Cartridges are no where near as bad as the band wagon makes them out to be.

They really are as bad as they're made out to be when you shave once every 4-5 days like I used to, the tugging and pulling always made my eyes water and shaving any more frequently than once every 3 days would always give me bad razor burn. Turning on the POWER thing was guaranteed to cut me. To me that's not a good design effort at all.

Now don't get me wrong, a brand new fusion 5 cartridge delivers a very nice shave, especially if you do 3 passes (which I have done before) but it only lasts one single time, after the first shave it's all downhill from there. And for the price that just isn't worth it.

 

[Giant Kiwi]

OP sorry to read you lost your kit.
I hope it wasn't through any traumatic means like theft.
Very nice of your wife to buy you the C O Bigelow.
I tend to keep a Gillette guard with a couple of spare blades handy for travel and guests that forget a razor.

 

[dfigz]

The only Carts I use are the Trac II type and usually for Convenience only ... as in travel

 

[bennyblade28]

I actually like the Gillette ProGlide cartridges. They are a good way to shave and get the job done.

My problem is I cant justify spending so much money on a cartridge that I get 3 decent shaves, 1 bad shave and 1 painful shave from before having to replace.


I am still new to DE shaving (only been doing it for a week) and so far I am enjoying the experience and my shaves are almost as good as I get with the ProGlide blades.

As for the comments people make about cartridges saving time... I only take 5 minutes longer to shave with my DE (sometimes 10 minutes if I take my time), maybe this is because I generally have to do 2 passes with a ProGlide to get a smooth shave.


Anyway my point is, theres nothing wrong with cartridges. Most will give "ok" shaves, some will give terrible shaves, and the ProGlide will give you a great shave if you know how to use it.

Irritation is more of a problem with the cartridges. Sometimes I would do 3 passes with the ProGlide (usually just as an experiment), this would always get me BBS but would leave pretty bad irritation, whereas even as a DE noob I manage to almost get a BBS, with no or little irritation.

 

[Alejandro1969]

I hate multi-blade carts and all the marketing hype they promise, plus the overpricing is just unfair. The DE razor blade was an ingenious invention and was a design to last until the end of the world.
Some greedy men said to each other "just like eating, men will always shave. Let's design shaving systems and take as much money from them in doing so." It just portrays the horrible greedy side of humanity.
I always hated shaving with multi-blade carts and used to keep putting the shave off because it felt like a chore and something stank about paying for expensive 5 blade carts. What could this cart do with 5 blades that a barber could do with only 1? Nothing! It's just sheer marketing and brainwashing.

I remember 20 years ago, a friend told me he went to a barber and got shaved with a straight and said it was so close that you would be smooth for ages after, and I used to think how could 1 blade do that?
I'll tell you why because 1 is all you need. You don't need a 5 blade knife to cut a cake now do you?

 

[chris.hale]

Totally agree with JRM. If I shaved every other day with a cartridge I got a passable shave but it wasn't enjoyable. Shaving daily resulted in major skin irritation, and leaving it for three days resulted in lots of tugging and me spending as much time unclogging the cart as I did shaving with it.

I find using a DE with a good soap or cream and a brush to be comfortable and enjoyable, daily shaves don't irritate and my DE will mow down a four day beard with no problems. I have wondered if I'd get a better shave with a cartridge if I tried using one with my soap and brush, and DE-taught improved technique, but really can't see any advantage in trying it. Considering that I can get BBS with no irritation using a DE, the only way a cart could possibly improve would be to get the same result faster, and I don't want that because I like to take my time and enjoy my shave.

Tsuji: I used a Sensor for years, and the best shaves I've ever had come from a DE. As we say a lot round here though, YMMV.

 

[scottish steve]

Cartridges do have limitations, no doubt. The 5 day growth clogging is ridiculous- the first time I shaved off a proto-beard with a straight I laughed out loud at the first stroke- GONE....just like a train.
But.
If you don't have a monster growth of barbed wire coming out of your cheeks and treat the exercise seriously, you can get a very good shave from (in my personal experience), Sensor, Vector, Contour Plus, Shick's version of the Vector and Dorco's TGII. I have a feeling that some who are into traditional gear, when 'trying out' a cart spend 20 seconds on 'prep', rake their face without a thought about what they're doing, declare the cartridge concept 'garbage', then rave about their new R41, which they took 5 minutes prepping their face to use and then concentrated on the angle and pressure of every stroke.

 

[HoosierTrooper]

Some greedy men said to each other "just like eating, men will always shave. Let's design shaving systems and take as much money from them in doing so." It just portrays the horrible greedy side of humanity.

That is exactly what motivated King Gillette to design the very first razor and blade that he sold over a hundred years ago. The same can be said about Colonel Schick and the Kampfe brothers because that's what businesses do. It's nothing new.

 

[Oblique Human]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that cartridge break. Enjoyable read.

 

[Mick]

It does not matter what you shave with as long as it removes the whiskers.

Glad I moved on from the sharp rock.

 

[CHSeifert]

Cartridges are no where near as bad as the band wagon makes them out to be.

I shaved with cartridges from the time I was 16 (2002) up till 2 years ago, when I discovered that DE razors even existed.

Reading these forums, I would swear that some people who talk badly about cartridges try to dry shave against the grain with them.

The killing blow for cartridges is their price. I just can't bring myself to pay $25 for 8 fusion cartridges when I can literally buy over 200 DE blades for that. If cartridges stopped being so extremely expensive, I would definitely use them more. It could never replace DE shaving, but DE shaving has travel limits, which can get annoying for me. I can't take blades with me, so you have to stop and pick some up when you arrive at your location. On top of that, I'm always afraid to lose my favorite DE razors if I traveled with them. I don't care if my fusion gets lost, even though I still have the one Gillette sent me for my 18th birthday for free

I use and love both my Mühle Sophist Fusion cartridge razor and my 3 DE razors. They work great if used for their specific build purpose IMHO.

I tend to clog up hair and cream if I use any of my DE razors on more than 4 days growth, while the Fusion for me is just the PERFECT razor on just that - 4-5 days growth. Even my R41 get clogged up with hair very fast on that kind of growth. For some reason the Fusion is the ultimate razor for several days beard growth IMHO.
However using the Fusion on shorter than 4 days growth is not as comfortable for me as using one of my DE razors for that.....FYI I grow 1 cm beard in 4 days, but short strokes and cleaning after each stroke will remove 4 days beard in 12 minutes with my Fusion.....2 passes and touch up.....

So I say use what works best for YOU

My Feather DE only works for me on max 1 days growth, my R41 is great on 1-4 days growth and my Mühle Sophist DE R-106 is great all around from 1-3 days growth.

People tend to forget that you can use all the same products with a DE as you can with a cartridge. One does not exclude the other...... I use alum bloc, shaving cream, brush, pre shave, post shave - all the same no matter of I use my DE or my Fusion

 

[LarryDarrell]

I had to switch to carts this week- I was at a conference and staying in a college residence with shared bathrooms so I wanted to tie up the bathroom for the minimum time, so I dug out the Schick Quattro.
it wasn't as pleasant as the ej089, it lacks the weight and feedback but it did the job. The main difference for me was the amount of pressure to get a good pass, instead of focusing on being as light as possible I had to press firmly.

prep BTW was a Mama bear rosemary and mint stick, face lathered with Bodyshop synthetic brush. Great lather with just a few swipes of the stick on my cheeks and neck, plenty for three passes if I'd wanted, and great smell. It's going to be in my travel kit from now on.

 

[Bejaar]

I've used every cartridge system out there because each one promised to be better than the other. Eventually I gave up and went on a shaving hiatus for about 4 years. Except for the occasional and inevitable social event shave (if you have a SWMBO in your life you know what those are), I avoided shaving like a cat avoids water. Like the bathroom scene in Psycho, it drove fear into my heart. That was until last year when I joined this forum and discovered DE wetshaving for the first time. Once you get passed the initial investment on hardware it's like cruising down the highway off the California coast with your softtop down and the sun shining on you. Over the past year I've had to switch over to cartridge (Proglide) due to travel, and even using DE techniques my neck erupted with ingrown hairs.
If by "good shave you mean" irritation, redness, infections, etc. Then they sure do a good job at it. And yes, most companies are set up to make profits, and will sell you what they can "within reason". However, one thing I have learned about how this system works, is that they won't put on shelf what won't sell, and ultimately we as consumers make the decisions (hopefully well informed) and ultimately vote with our wallets.

That's my two cents....oh darn..anyone have change I can borrow to buy lunch (I'm two cents short).

 

[Alejandro1969]

Cartridges are not bad it's just the marketing gimmicks behind them and the high cost by monopolizing giants! You end up with very little choice, that's all.

 

[Pietro]

I don't see anything wrong with cartridge shavers like the Mach 3 or Fusion Proglide except the price. I have never got any razor bumps or burn unless I try to shave with the cartridge for 5 weeks like the guy on the Gillette Fusion Proglide commercial. Five shaves is the magic number for me before I start to get tug and pull. IMO, cartridges give a comfortable, Fast, safe and close shave. Safe being key to me today since I sliced my finger open with my DE yesterday. I don't think that would have happened with a cartridge. The reason that I shave with my DE most of the time is that when I go to the store and see the prices of cartridge razors I just can't stomach it. I can get a close and presentable shave with my trusty Merkur 38C for a lot cheaper. YMMV.