Tuesday, March 31, 2015

What's In the Cabinet Now?

One of my favorite blades.
My stable of razors continues to morph a bit, although the theme continues to stay the same.

The theme for me is mild: mild blade angles, mild blade exposures, mild blade-guard spans. As the sultan of sensitivity, I need coated blades that are still quite sharp: coating for comfort, sharpness to handle my beard, which is somewhere in the range of average to just slightly heavy.

The business end of the Merkur 33 Classic.
I continue to use up the sampler packs, which I selected with some care to avoid obviously poor choices. The only clunker in the group for my face are the Derby Extras, which I will pass along to my teen-age son. For me, they seem not quite sharp enough.

The Merkur 15C open comb.
But in terms of razors, what is the same and what is changing?

Constants are the Merkur razors, the 15C open comb and the 33C Classic. Both of these are three-piece designs. The 33 is always available for a potential face shave. On the other hand, I have given up on the 15 open comb for my face, but regularly use it to trim the hair line on the back of my head and to shave the back of my neck.

Rimei RM2003.
Another constant is the Rimei RM2003 -- the dirt-cheap gem, which I use with some regularity.

Lord L.6.
Recently I pulled out the Lord L.6 razor head, which comes as part of the LP1822L razor -- the one with the longer aluminium handle. I leave the handle in my closet-storage shaving shoe box, and use one of my other, more durable handles with this L.6 head. Having similar design aspects to the Merkur 33 except that the
Dorco Prime.
L.6 has a larger blade span, it gives a fairly mild shave too, but the larger span positions its shave character between the 33 and the Rimei.

The newest addition to my at-hand razors in the cabinet has been the Dorco Prime TTO. I have been evaluating it for about a week, and it has opened my eyes to the possibility of this mild instrument. I believe that it has earned a spot in my go-to stable of razors, and either this, or its twin that I already owned will stay in the bathroom cabinet. More on this in a day or so, when I publish my full-on review of the Dorco Prime Starter Set.

Happy shaving!


2 comments:

  1. Not related, but do you think that a smaller blade (lengthwise) would maybe be more maneuverable or reach tricky areas like the neck better? It would be hard to get something like that though as the market is pretty much standardized now to the size that Gillette made. Makes you wonder why they chose that size?

    ps, I think you need a 3D printer to print out your own razor head design :)

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I think a shorter blade edge would be very helpful on my beard to get that baby-smooth shave on my neck under the jaw, where the grain runs diagonally in the most difficult direction to use the standard DE. I currently use oblique strokes, which effectively shorten the edge dimension, but there is a limit to that technique.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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