Shaving Oddities!

[Ron R]

Aug 7/2018 Shave #14 it looks like my blade is tugging a little to hard for my comfort zone & 1 weeper in the chin area but it still took off the whiskers and delivered DFS<SAS with a 1930's Gillette long comb. It was a interesting experiment and yes I did use the Antique Velvet glass hone (the glass texture is smoother with the antique hone?)but it was not a whole lot different than the glass drinking tumbler for results. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it and improvising equipment and there are still unknowns like always but like I mentioned earlier I have a 8 yr supply of blades to go through.
Conclusion!
Postives:
1: It will prolong the life of a blade by a few shaves IMO and slowly degrade again
2: It acts as a strop to straighten curled edges of the blade more than its hone abilities IMO
3: Under tough times & scarcity or in a hotel and forgot your blades and only blade in the razor is dull a drinking glass will more than likely get you out of that pinch until you can get new ones.
4: It will save pennies per shave and that was some of this THEME experiment.($.015-$.025 per shave savings and that over time could feed you something but not very much in our present time.)
5: You will look more presentable for potential job or just personal appearance sake for that time period!
Negatives:
1: There is a additional step involved in your routine.
2: Handling a sharp object like a razor blade will increase your chances of a cut.(knock on wood)
3: your lose the coatings through use and they do help for comfort of a shave.
4: this will not deliver the close shaves over time, the first couple were DFS>bbs at #7&#8
5: It will add time if that is a concern for the procedure.
6: You will get more tugging of beard and thus possible irritation of skin.
Oh well there's my $.02 worth of thought from a shaving enthusiast on the glass hone strop in our times!

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Thanks for the feedback, Ron

 

[Ron R]

Thanks for the feedback, Ron

You know my last shave was tuggy above normal acceptance IMO, but the results were very close to a DFS when the skin settled down.

 

[LJBraaten]

From what I can gather, the disposable razor idea began in the early 1900s when Gillette introduced the thin throwaway blade. JU Lanette, even printed on the blades do not hone. Kampfe bros. had introduced the wedge blade (basically a chunk of a straight razor), which needed sharpening, and when Gem and others switched to a thin SE blade they insisted (for awhile) that their blades be resharpened. One of their ads even read, you wouldn’t throw away and ink pen just because it ran out of ink would you? (perhaps this is where Bic got their idea half a century later?)

 

[LJBraaten]

The sharpener hone was patented in the 1930's(dirty thirties) so that could tell us that blades were expensive and scarce for folks who had very little and had to watch every penny.

I am sure that was part of it. But I also think our current mindset of discarding things that are still useful or that could be fixed took a long time to infiltrate popular culture. It was unthinkable for many to casually discard blades (and other items) as Gillette tried to popularize. I know this is a little exceptional, but I read a story about rural life in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the 1800s. People saved every scrap of metal, even their rusty bent nails, waiting for the annual visit of the blacksmith who could shape them into something useful.

Edit to previous post: JU Lanette, not JU Lynette. Gotta love VRS transcriptions!

 

[Ron R]

I am sure that was part of it. But I also think our current mindset of discarding things that are still useful or that could be fixed took a long time to infiltrate popular culture. It was unthinkable for many to casually discard blades (and other items) as Gillette tried to popularize. I know this is a little exceptional, but I read a story about rural life in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the 1800s. People saved every scrap of metal, even their rusty bent nails, waiting for the annual visit of the blacksmith who could shape them into something useful.

Edit to previous post: JU Lanette, not JU Lynette. Gotta love VRS transcriptions!

How true our ancestors where smart not to waste valuable products that could be put to use, I think in the future for those big garbage dumps people see with pictures on the internet will be future mines for robots to scour to reclaim. The world has a finite amount of natural minerals that are mined and are getting harder to reach in remote areas on land and in oceans. We are already reclaiming steel products, bottles, cans, gold, silver..... but a lot still gets thrown out.
I'm just guessing the future will have a lot more robots in industrial settings and are advanced many generations is what I'm seeing already!

 

[emwolf]

Something my parents did (they were born in 1929) was to save buttons, screws, nails, and each had their own coffee can in the garage. Need a new button for your shirt? Go out to the button can and find one that looks similar. I don't know anyone who does this anymore, let alone save coffee cans.

 

[BobbyB]

I was buying some Vintage Gillette razors at a Antique store and the fellow who owned the store was showing me some scuttles when I came across this relic. The sharpener hone was patented in the 1930's(dirty thirties) so that could tell us that blades were expensive and scarce for folks who had very little and had to watch every penny.
I have seen different versions of this sort of a sharpener hone, but this glass is very dark and black.
The thirties brought out a lot of invitations to try and survive and it made north Americans more frugal in there effort to survive a financial disaster.
This MFG even went to the extreme to patented the device to protect his ideas.
View attachment 899096 View attachment 899097 View attachment 899098 View attachment 899099

My dad had something like this, except his was clear glass and bowed in the middle. He would hone his blades as needed. when the blade was truly worn out it would go into 'storage' through medicine chest portal slot.

 

[Ron R]

My dad had something like this, except his was clear glass and bowed in the middle. He would hone his blades as needed. when the blade was truly worn out it would go into 'storage' through medicine chest portal slot.

I have photo of folks who renovated their bathroom from a older home and find a pile of spent razor blades in-between the wall and it is amazing how many there where after decades of using the slot like your Father had used. I think you can still buy that medicine cabinet with slot, but is a rarity.
(Borrowed these photo's from another B&B thread with blades in-between the wall. )

Have some great shaves.