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The all inclusive list of shaving myths

rockviper

I got moves like Jagger
How about a "badger-v-boar" commentary?
You could also throw in synths & horse, were you so inclined.
 
I agree completely with the list so far. Can't wait for the next myth!

here is one to coincided; " My beard is so tough that I can only get one shave from any blade"

I hear this one quite often with slight variation on the number of shaves, and I just don't buy it.
You may have thicker beards, or larger diameter hair than average, you may also have a larger area of the face with more hairs per square inch, but there is not a blade out there that is a quality blade that won't shave your face more than once. The problem is likely either prep or angle and may also involve pressure used. But more than likely it is simply a matter of the beard not being fully hydrated, and the lather not giving enough glide.

My my beard is not as dense per inch as many, but the hair is very large diameter. When starting out 3-4 shaves was all I could manage before getting nicks and cuts. After learning more about prep, and angle. I can easily get 35-50 shaves from almost any blade. I have ever broke open the blade bank and taken out some of those first discarded blades from early in my shaving and they gave excellent shaves now that my prep and technique have improved substantially.

35-50 shaves may not be possible for everyone, indeed, but seven shaves ought be be easily obtainable for even the most dense and thick beards out there. With proper prep and technique. YMMV!
 
In some ways, our costs are even lower. While any modern razor I'd have purchased over the past decade has no retail value, I'm sure that almost every DE razor I've bought over that time is worth even more today. In some ways, I can think of the razors as an investment (at least that's the line I feed my wife when I buy yet another).
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member

7. I need a stand for my shaving brush to dry properly.


False. Though I can see why people may believe this. The brain observes the actions of fluids in nature, and we naturally want to believe that a hanging brush will allow the water to drain towards the tips and dry faster than a brush on its base, where the water is draining toward the knot end. But we are assuming a false principle - the water isn't draining as much as it is evaporating in all directions due to capillary action.

Specific tests by B&B members have been done here, one very good one documented here;

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/52285-Drying-question (post # 10 and Post #15 of significant interest).

Essentially there is no statistical difference in the drying of a brush whether it is hanging or standing on its end. Capillary action of the bristles/hairs overcomes gravity, and the drying occurs equally as well one way or the other.

I will note that this test was conducted with animal hair, so perhaps a repeat of the test with a synthetic is in order to confirm or deny that a synthetic dries differently than an animal hair brush. It is possible due to the fact that synthetic bristles don't become saturated like animal hair does, but my money is on capillary action still being more powerful than gravity with the small amount of liquid water left over after a brush has been shaken out.

There are several reasons why you might be persuaded to buy a brush stand
You believe the people who sell brush stands that tell you one is necessary.
You prefer the neat and tidy way that a brush stand can organize your shave den.
Brush stands are another object upon which we can satisfy our purchasing disorder.

But if you are buying a brush stand only because you think it is necessary to dry your brush properly - this myth has been debunked.
 
Excellent posts Phil. Aggression personally for me is never been a issue. I can a quality shave from my Tech as well I can with my
FaTip Piccolo.

The razor is a tool your technique is using that tool to achieve a great shave.
 
Partial quote:
here is one to coincided; " My beard is so tough that I can only get one shave from any blade"

I hear this one quite often with slight variation on the number of shaves, and I just don't buy it.

I can easily get 35-50 shaves from almost any blade. I have ever broke open the blade bank and taken out some of those first discarded blades from early in my shaving and they gave excellent shaves now that my prep and technique have improved substantially.

35-50 shaves may not be possible for everyone, indeed, but seven shaves ought be be easily obtainable for even the most dense and thick beards out there. With proper prep and technique. YMMV!

Good point.

I used to change blades every Sunday, but not anymore. I can certainly go 30 days on a single blade, but those last few shaves are problematic, so I just change out the blade twice a month for convenience sake.
 

7. I need a stand for my shaving brush to dry properly.


False. Though I can see why people may believe this.

There are several reasons why you might be persuaded to buy a brush stand
You believe the people who sell brush stands that tell you one is necessary.
You prefer the neat and tidy way that a brush stand can organize your shave den.
Brush stands are another object upon which we can satisfy our purchasing disorder.

But if you are buying a brush stand only because you think it is necessary to dry your brush properly - this myth has been debunked.
Quite true. I have used a brush and soap for over 45 years and did not have a stand until I bought a new brush in 2009.

My Edwin Jagger brush has the printing oriented on the handle so it reads correctly when it is hanging in the stand. The printing is upside down when the brush is standing on its handle.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member

8. A * brush is better than a * brush.

* a.) Badger
* b.) Boar
* c.) Horse
* d.) Synthetic


False. This myth is purely a result of "my way is better than your way" thinking. We become invested in the way that WE like things, and the way that WE do things to the point that it skews our objectivity in many ways.

Obviously, there is animal hair which has, over time and experimentation, proven to be unsuitable for shaving brushes. You'd probably be hard pressed to get a decent lather from a brush made from the hair of a Persian cat. There may be other animals out there that also have suitable hair, but our tradition has, for whatever reason, settled on Badger, Boar, and Horse. Synthetics have been manufactured to emulate those qualities.

The fact of the matter is that a brush serves one primary purpose - to transfer soap from one location to your face.
Now, there are many variables to take into consideration here: Bowl or face lathering, amount of "scritch" and face scrubbing, and it's little brother "backbone" or stiffness.

Each of these variables is purely a matter of personal taste. Like a soft brush? A Silver Tip is probably your personal preference over a boar. Like hard soaps over creams? A boar is probably your personal preference over a Badger.

Early versions of synthetics were pitiful, and I remember owning a very early nylon bristle shaving brush that would take off a layer of skin if you weren't careful, but modern synthetics have just about matched the quality of experience that an animal hair brush is capable of delivering. I personally like the traditional boar and badger. I was never a huge fan of horse, and I don't have a desire to own any more synthetics, though I can honestly say that I have tried a synthetic that a friend owns, and if I didn't know going into it, I never would have guessed that it was synthetic from the experience.

The concept of using a natural or synthetic may or may not be important to you, but the impact of the use of animal products or the effect of the industrial effects of fabricating synthetics may be important to the man buying the brush. But that impact to each of us personally has no effect whatsoever in the efficacy of the brush itself.

I'm not even going to go into the question of drying ability of a synthetic over an animal hair brush. I have my own personal beliefs on that issue, and it may come up in a future post separately.

Each type and style and loft and - yes, cost, have their own impact on why we may like one brush over another, but when you get down to it - the chemical composition of the brush bristles are less important than the ability of those bristles to create a lather, and put it on our face in the manner that we like it done.
 

captp

Pretty Pink Fairy Princess.
A shave brush "lifts the hairs" so it's easier to cut. While I can't prove this empirically, I find it difficult to believe. If you shave daily, and get a good close smooth shave, I don't see how that hair, that is now maybe .01" long is going to lift up at all.
 
To hang, or not to hang.

$4d8957d8-fdb7-4b17-a86d-166a83a7838b.jpg
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
-Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Other topics which I will address

Pre-shave oil
Tallow vs non-tallow
Price vs value
Brush size
Alum blocks
Numbers on the razor blade
"Don't wipe blade"

Many of the items here I've adopted from suggestions in this thread.
Please keep the suggestions coming. I have them in my head, but having folks mention them reminds me.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member

9. The reason razor blade manufacturers put "Do Not Wipe Blade" on the package is to prevent people from injuring themselves.


False. Over the years here at B&B, many have asked why razor blade makers have printed "Do Not Wipe Blade" on the packaging. There are many possible answers, from the manufacturers wanting to prevent people from being injured, to the desire of the manufacturer to prevent damage to the edge, or some hidden ulterior motive.

Let us first address the main idea - personal injury vs edge damage.
Members with access to a wide variety of blades have posted pictures of blades with more extensive text than just the warning itself. Two such examples are provided here.

$dontwipe.jpg
$blade1.JPG

It is very clear that the reason imprinted on the packaging is to prevent edge damage. This is the stated purpose of the blade manufacturer. This is consistent with the idea that personal injury warnings typically state that personal injury is possible. It is very difficult to find manufacturers warnings which are intended to prevent personal injury NOT specifically stating that personal injury is possible.

So it is very clear that the stated reason of the manufacturer is to prevent damage and not to prevent personal injury.

So let us examine the hidden ulterior motive possibility.

Some have made the assertion that wiping the blade does indeed cause edge damage, and that the manufacturers are warning us not to wipe the blade so that a blade doesn't get a bad reputation as wearing out quickly, when in fact, it is our wiping it that makes it dull.

Some have made the assertion that wiping the blade does NOT cause edge damage, but actually extends the life of the blade by removing moisture which would cause micro-rust, and that the manufacturers are warning us not to wipe the blade so that it wears out quickly and we have to buy more.

Occams razor dictates that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, so I do not personally believe the latter. It's a pretty tinfoil hat universe if we start ascribing these motivations to manufacturers.

BUT

Even if there was a vast conspiracy to make us not wipe our blades so that they wear out quicker, it doesn't change the fact that the stated purpose of the manufacturer is NOT to prevent personal injury. That was always the question on the face of it.

The debate about the warning has long been whether it was put there as a warning to prevent damage to the blade, or to prevent damage to people.
Putting aside any belief on whether wiping does or doesn't cause harm to the blade, whether blade manufacturers put the warning there to save the edge from wiping or to destroy the edge through exposure to water, it appears that an answer to the specific question of why it was put on the package - "Don't wipe because it causes harm to the blade" or "Don't wipe because it causes harm to people" has been answered.

Fine Print: Occams razor actually says "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" or "plurality should not be posited without necessity." It can be neatly summed up to mean "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected".
 
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Other topics which I will address

Pre-shave oil
Tallow vs non-tallow
Price vs value
Brush size
Alum blocks
Numbers on the razor blade
"Don't wipe blade"

Many of the items here I've adopted from suggestions in this thread.
Please keep the suggestions coming. I have them in my head, but having folks mention them reminds me.
Don't get me started:laugh:
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member

10. A cheaper product does not perform as well as an expensive one.


False.
(mostly)

Let's face it guys, I think, deep down inside, we all know this.
There are two competing ideas with this myth, one is that you get what you pay for and the other is that a fool and his money are soon parted.

To a certain extent, there is some truth to the myth - in as far as people are unlikely to want to pay $ 2.00 for brain surgery.
But the opposite end of the spectrum is also true - who would want to pay $ 50.00 for a No. 2 lead pencil?
Chances are that the brain surgery you'd get for $ 2.00 is pretty poor, despite it being a bargain, and I doubt a $ 50.00 No. 2 lead pencil would perform leaps and bounds better than a twenty-five cent one.

In the shaving world, I know for an absolute fact that the cheap Arko soap performs WAY better than the more expensive Keihls Lite Flight Shaving Cream for the brush. Likewise, I know that the more expensive Muhle R89 performs WAY better than the cheaper Weishi.

But there's a limit to the performance vs cost scale.

Does the Edwin Jagger Chatsworth Barley Chrome Safety Razor at $ 120.00 perform better than the Edwin Jagger DE89 Chrome Safety Razor at $ 30.00?
Not to any measurable extent.

I have a very large collection of shaving brushes, from very expensive badgers to very cheap boars. In the span of costs for the brushes, I can tell a distinct difference in quality from a $ 300.00 badger and a $ 5.00 Burma Shave boar brush. Blindfold me and ask me to tell you the difference between some of my $ 50.00 and $ 150.00 badger brushes, and I'm embarrassed to say that I couldn't.

There are many reasons why we spend more on an object than merely it's perceived performance level. A study conducted on wine drinkers tested people tasting the exact same wine, one in a bottle with a cheap label and one in a bottle with a fancy, unpronounceable name. Hands down, the people preferred the same wine when poured from the fancy label bottle, and stated that they would pay more for it.

Prestige, name recognition, pride in ownership are all reasons for paying more for something than it is really worth, regardless of real performance level.

Without a doubt, it is possible to perform our daily routine with products that have an outlay of less than $ 50.00 all in, and get a daily shave that is every bit as good as the guy who paid $ 500.00 for his gear.

Outright, and within the reasonable bounds of our purchases here, I'd have to say that more expensive equals better performance is false, but I'd have to do so with the caveat that there are extremes, comparing higher and lower costs, where the idea doesn't hold water any more.
 
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