Episode: 2283
Title: HPR2283: Saving money shaving with double and single edge safety razors
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2283/hpr2283.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:52:05

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This is HPR episode 2,283 entitled Saving Money Shaving with Double and Single Edge Safety
Rayman.
It is hosted by May 8th and is about 17 minutes long and currently in a clean flag.
The summary is using Double and Single Edge Safety Rayman to save money.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honest Host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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Hello again, this is Dave and you're also in the Hacker Public Radio.
I dropped out of the Linux Fast, Linux Oddcast and Linux Communities about six years ago.
I don't regret a thing I had to do and I can't say I didn't miss it but it is what it is
after nearly 200 Oddcast, three Linux Fast, I felt the need to just stop.
So I did but I'm back to do an episode of HPR, I recently started listening to Oddcast
again, HPR, I think Tech Show, New World Order and thought I should contribute to HPR, I'm
glad they're still around.
So forgive me in advance for two things, one is I'm severely out of practice, this seems
new to me again and two for what might be the delivering of HPR's death nail with an
episode that some might interpret as inappropriate in the fact that I'm talking about technically grooming.
Please don't press stop yet, I want to talk about shaving with double-edge and single-edge
safety razors, wet shaving with those razors and I'm not going to do this because it's
cool or hip or superior or even fun, I'm going to do this because it's a good way to save
money, you won't save time, you'll save money, a significant amount of money.
I started shaving like everybody does when they hit puberty, sometimes between ten and
a time I could start driving and I've shaved the same way every day that I've shaved
up until about six years ago and I only changed one thing then but the way I shaved is the way
I used to shave, when my dad taught me to shave is I had a shaving mug with a puck of shaving soap,
I would put some water in that to cover this puck and I'd wet a shaving brush, a boar hair,
a badger hair shaving brush, I'd dump the water out of the mug, I'd make lather in the mug with the
brush and I'd apply the lather to a wet face and I would shave with whatever razor that I bought
at a drugstore and for years up until six years ago that razor was a disposable or a razor with
replaceable, multi blade cartridge razors, having two dollars that shave and a wipe that
shaves in addition to myself shaving almost every day, the price for those replaceable,
multi blade cartridge razors just got ridiculous, it was way more than I wanted to shave so
six years ago I started researching a cheaper way to do this and inevitably came upon
Dollar Shave Club and I found out where they were getting their razors which was
Dorco, a Korean company and dorkousa.com I could order those razors even cheaper than Dollar Shave Club
could provide them but that was still too expensive for me, so a little bit more research I found out
that I could shave like people used to shave a long time ago with a safety razor with a single
edge or a double edge blade, one cutting edge but a double edge blade has two sides, it's not
the same as a multi blade, this is a single blade but it's either a single edge or double edge
and I could get those razors even today, razor blades and put them in razors.
I guess a little history is in order before safety razors and the late and the 1800s the way
shave was with a straight razor which was not a safety razor, you could cut yourself as deep as
you liked with a straight edge razor. Sometime in the late 1800s someone invented a safety razor,
I think the first ones had what was intended to be non-replaceable blades, blades that were,
you could hone and re-sharpen, they were wedge blades but it was a handle and the blade was
set in the handle between a base plate and a top cap that was somehow removable or could be open
so you could insert the blade and that blade set in the head of the razor and there was a safety
bar, it was a open comb, a comb style bar or a straight bar that provided a guard that kept you
from cutting yourself but only so deep now, as deep as you could cut yourself was the width of
the gap between the guard bar and the blade, a fraction of an inch, it was the most you could
cut yourself, that's the safety razor and the early 1900s safety razors were made that used
replaceable blades, the first safety razors that used replaceable blades were single edge safety
razors, the style blade that fits those razors, you can buy today, they look like the paint scraper blades
that you see at hardware stores, that isn't the same blade, the blade you want to get if you want
to shave this way, it looks just like that but it's stainless steel or carbon steel and they're
designed for shaving your face, you can get those at a drug store or through a website like
headpella.com which sells blades, the carbon steel blades rust, I don't use those, you look at them
funny, they rust, if they get any water on them and all they rust, so between shaves you have to
take the razor off and wash it in alcohol or soak it in oil or something to keep water from
rusting it, these blades are cheap, that's the whole reason I'm talking about this, you can get
200 of these single edge blades to go in a single edge safety razor for, I don't know, $20
and each blade last me between a half a month and a month, so let's say I can get 30 shaves out of
one, I don't think that's pushing it, that's 200 months for $20, 200 months where I'm not buying
multi blade replacement cartridges, so that's the significant cost of them, these razors, they don't
make razors like this anymore, the single edge safety razors, you have to get them antique stores,
you have to get them on eBay, they can be had really really cheap, there's a variety of styles
they were made from 1980, 1970 something, but they can still be had there in good shape,
they're really really cheap and the blades are still available online and are in drugstore
and they're cheap, significant cost savings, another style of single edge safety razors came a
little bit later, the 30s or 40s, the injector style razors, a lot of you probably seen these,
the chic injector razors, they were also made by PAL and Persona, they're called injector style
because the razors come in a cartridge with a, Colonel's ship was the guy that invented him,
he was a military man, he was evidently inspired by bolt action rifles where the bullet was loaded
in the chamber with a bolt, a sliding bolt, so the injector cartridge holds razors in,
the form factor of these, they don't look like the paint scraper blades, they look like
through the size of a piece of dentine chewing gum or trident chewing gum, it's that much thinner,
and they're delivered with a cartridge, an injector that you slide into the side of the razor
and you slide this lever and it pushes one blade in while it pushes other blade out,
these blades can still be bought today, mostly online, tedpella.com again, or amazon sales,
chic injector razors made in china, they're really good razors, they're the most expensive,
you'll find of those, there's 28 for about 20 dollars, and each one of those lasts me 30 days,
so that's, again, a significant cost, these single edge razors, the ones that look like paint
scrapers and the ones that come in the injector cases, they last so long, 30 days because they're
thick, they hold the edge longer, the other kind of razor that you can use to save money as a
double edge safety razor, and they use double edge blades which can be bought, still bought today,
online, really, really cheap and get 200 on amazon for anywhere from 5 to 30 dollars,
and each one of those blades last me a week, so 200 weeks, that's four years for 10 dollars,
that's really, really cheap, and those razors are still made today, you can still get double
edge safety razors today from companies like parker or macaer, or you can go the the antique route
like with the single edge razors, they don't make the injector razors anymore, don't make the
single edge razors anymore, you have to get those antique stores or eBay, you can get the no longer
manufactured double edge safety razors in the same places eBay or antique stores, and they can
be had really cheap, some of them demand a little bit more of a premium price because they're rare
whatever, but you can you can get a razor cheap, any one of these double edge the injector
or the single edge, you can get one for five dollars at antique store, ten dollars,
you know, you can buy one new the double edge for 30 dollars or 20 dollars or 50 dollars, but
that that razor should last you for you know 30, 40 years, and the blades can be had for
anywhere from ten dollars to 30 dollars for for four years worth of blades, so that's a
significant cost savings, I mean you're paying what you'd pay in two trips to the store to get
replaceable blades for a family of four, you're doing every four years instead every two months
or whatever, I don't know, it's a significant cost savings and I think it's worth doing if you're
tired of spending that kind of money on multi blade cartridge razors, I don't know if I got where
I was going next with this, so you'll save money, that's that's the one big advantage to shaving
this way, the other, well another way to save money, you won't save time, you'll save money but
you won't save time, a new multi blade razor about today you know has four, five or six or seven
blades, each pass on your face with one of those razors is cutting hairs with you know six different
blades at one time or one right after the other in quick succession, so one pass there's six blades
cutting hair, a single edge or double edge safety razor, one pass is one edge cutting hair, so
to get the same shave, the same equivalent clean shave from a double edge or single edge razor,
you're going to spend more time shaving, yeah I do three passes, one with the grain, one against the
grain, one with the grain, one across grain, one against the grain, lathering my face each time, I
use, I don't use a puck of shaving soap anymore, a mug and I don't make the lather in the mug anymore,
I use a shave stick, a stick of shave soap, the kind I use is made by a Turkish company called
Arco, ARKO, you can get 16 sticks of this shaving soap for 15 or 20 dollars and they last forever,
you apply it to your face like a giant tube of chapstick on your lips, you wet your face, you wet
the soap and you rub the soap on your face, your facial hair will collect soap residue and then
with a wet shaving brush you make lather on your face and then you shave one pass and then you
relather, you don't have to reapply the shave stick to your face, you just pick up the brush that you
lathered while I go with and lather again and you make another pass and then you lather a third time
again with the same brush which has lots of soap on it and then you shave a third time, it takes me
10 to 12 minutes to shave this way but I save a lot of money doing that, it takes me five minutes
with a multi-blade cartridge razor that I haven't used in six years, the other, the only other way
I think that this method of shaving is superior to the multi-blade cartridge expensive razors,
most people use today is at least for me, I don't get ingrown hairs anymore, those
multi-blade cartridge razors today are safety razors and the fact that the guard is the plastic
housing that the blades are set into, they're recessed inside this plastic box and you put the
razor on your face and you know sometimes the head swivels or whatever but a lot of people at
least me they tend to apply more pressure than they need to with that style razor with the
multi-blade cartridge razors because they can, they can get away with it because that plastic guard
they won't get cut but what happens is you end up shaving the hair underneath the skin, not just
along the surface of the skin, you're actually cutting hair sometimes beneath the skin so when the
hair grows back it gets confused by which way straight and it might grow, you know, curved back into
itself and causing ingrown hair which aren't pleasant, I used to get ingrown hairs along my neck
using a cartridge razor, probably could have stopped that applying less pressure but using a safety
razor, a double-edged or single-edged safety razor that doesn't happen anymore so it is cheaper,
it is slower, you don't get as many ingrown hairs, the only other advantage I can think I've
to shave in this way, I'm, I drive a Toyota Prius but I don't think about the environment every day
or much at all, I'm not eco-conscious but if you are the packaging that these razors come in
is much more minimal so there's less recycling, there's no plastic built around the razor so
when you're done with the razor, you just, I put mine in a sharp box, you can put them in a pill box
or something like, you don't want to just throw them in the trash because your sanitation worker
get cut but you can put them in some kind of plastic container and you can recycle all of that
since it's more easily recyclable and that's it, that's all I can think of is where the advantage is
to shave in this way, it does take roughly two to three times as long to shave but you're talking
15 minutes max and you're saving a lot of money this way, I wasn't successful in getting my
wife and daughters to switch to this but you can't make them do things sometimes so but I'm saving
money and I thought maybe some of y'all might want to save money, again I hope I've not delivered a
death knell to HPR steering episodes in a direction towards male grooming, that's not what I want to
do but I just thought I'd share a way that I've saved a significant amount of money and when I shave,
so that's it, I hope this wasn't a waste of time or too embarrassing, thank you.
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