Extending the Life Of Your Razor

I'm a big fan of Kickstarter (a big weakness of mine) and I'm really jazzed about getting a denim razor strop designed especially for modern, multi-blade razors! The problem is, it won't come for another month or so.

Being impatient and annoyed at the fact that the new razor system I'm using by Gillette (the fancy 5-blade one with the pivoting ball AND vibrating head) costs about two George Washingtons per razor head at Costco (the cheapest way I can get them), I decided to see what I could do to stretch out the lifespan of the one I'm using before my Shave Face denim strop arrives.

Well, the only thing that seemed logical was to use my own body as a strop. I do the following steps:

1. I vigorously blow the water out from between the blades a couple of times to get the razor dry (this is half the reason people's razors go bad: having a wet razor that gets microscopic rusty burrs that continue to grow)

2. I dry the razor head off on my tummy with a couple of strokes (and duh!, please don't stroke the way you do when you're shaving: go THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!!!!)

3. This next step was the revelation for me: instead of stopping at just drying off the razor head fully, I learned from the Kickstarter site about this razor strop is that they recommended people do 15-20 strokes of the razor. This process apparently re-aligns the multiple blades to give you a really good shave over and over again. So, I figured, why not just do up to 20 strokes on my belly beyond my usual 2-3? (I never used a towel, since I figured the loose fibers would probably dull the blade edge much like paper).

I have found that doing this some 20x has really extended the use of my blade a great deal! Maybe I won't need that Shave Face strop after all! Who knows?

Give it a shot!