New to forum from Pennsylvania

Hi all. As I search for recommendations on blades, soaps, etc, I figured I'd join the forum.

I work in manufacturing so I can be a bit lazy with shaving. I'm a 2 or 3 times a week shaver. Beard hairs are thick and using cartridge razors were lousy. Cartridges are way expensive for what they are so I had an electric. Problem with electric is being a couple times a week shaver. Any substantial growth and electric just yanks the hairs out. Had packages of disposable double or triple blades but those clogged rapidly with growth. I couldn't get them cleaned and sometimes used 2 per shave.

That lead me to about a year ago. On a couple other non-related forums I frequent, there were shaving threads. From those I had thought about getting a DE razor for a while. Was at Walmart one day and finally looked at the Van der Hagen DE razor that is in all the stores. Picked one up and a package of blades and the next day tried my hand at using the DE.

It was absolutely a thing of beauty. My 4 day growth at that time just sliced off so easily. I hated shaving so much that I would sometimes go a week between shaves and it was a huge chore to hack off that much growth with various methods (using the trimmer of the electric to get long growth taken down enough to either electric shave or use the disposables. I've even resorted to use the hair clippers to get it down to be able to shave.)

Starting out, I just used The Edge Gel shave cream I had used for years and years. Just trying the DE razor was eye opening. About 6 months ago I picked up just the Van Der Hagen brush, bowl, and soap to give that a try. That was an experience trying to figure out how to whip it up into a lather. I had soap suds more than lather. After watching youtube videos and lurking here now and then, I got a bit better at it.

Up until 2 days ago, I was still using the Van Der Hagen blades and soap. My soap is almost gone and I've been actively looking at soaps and blades these past few days. Learned of the Try-a-Blade site and ordered two of 13 different blades. They came in yesterday. So now I had a good 3 pass shave on Wednesday with my last Van Der Hagen blade so I can start trying out the different blades tonight. I figure I'll give each one a try with a 2 day growth since after a really good shave, there isn't much there the following day so 2 days will give me a nice stubble to try with. That starts tonight.

I wrote that above while finishing up some stuff at work. Copy and paste into a text file to send home and continue my intro. Now that I'm home, I did give my first blade a try from the assortment I received. Started out with the Astra Superior Stainless. Huge difference from the VDH blades. It was very smooth and felt very sharp. I'm not completely new to DE as I've been using the razor for about a year now as I said, so I've gotten pretty quick with my shaves without nicks and cuts. For this, I took my time with a careful and deliberate pattern to the shave. I did 3 passes and it is so close, closer than Wednesday with my also careful and deliberate pattern 3 pass shave with my last VDH. I also ran out of the VDH soap that I was using and everyone was out of it, so I picked up a tube of creme that they sell at Bath and Bodyworks, C.O. I think it is? Thus, the creme is a new variable as well, but I'll try to use it throughout my blade testing.

When finished and face washed off with cold water, my face is burning fairly decent right now. That's not something I've had for the year of using the VDH stuff. I find that kind of an interesting result and I'm curious now as to how other blades will go. I plan to switch a new blade every day and then go back once I'm through all of them and use them for a 2nd time. Quite the nerd here as I have an excel file made up to record my results, LOL.

Well, there's my intro and a little bit more. I think trying to learn about all the variety of soaps/cream is more daunting than the blades. You can't just go to one site and order samples of any soap available unless someone can point to somewhere like Try-a-blade for soaps. I thought I wrote it up there, but I did just order 4 sample pucks from Stirling. And, like I said, I picked up a tube of cream of whatever brand at Bath and Bodyworks. Funny how the womenfolk have stores upon stores tailored to their stuff and all we get is a shelf if we're lucky, LOL.

Mike

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New to forum from Pennsylvania