Blade Chatter -- Vol. 1.0: What Dulls Blades Quicker...Long Hairs Or Coarse Hairs?

     I'm hoping to do a little miniseries here of occasional posts regarding my curiosities on razor blades. A lot of it I'm sure is stuff that may likely have been discussed here before, but hopefully we'll all learn a little something about blades and share opinions and experiences.

    My thought is that it would be coarse hair that would wear a blade down more so than the length of the hair. In my thoughts, especially with your first pass if you're going with the grain, you would be shaving down and cutting either through the hair or close to the face or the root. Thinking about it from that aspect, it would seem like length wouldn't really play into it too much. Now, perhaps, if it's considerably more growth than what you would typically have if you haven't shaved in a while, then perhaps the density or concentration of the hair could play into it.

    So, my thoughts are that coarseness or thickness would affect blade sharpness more so than actual hair length. What are yours?

What dulls blades most is failure to properly soften the beard before shaving.

An often overlooked quality of different shave soaps

What dulls blades most is failure to properly soften the beard before shaving.

An often overlooked quality of different shave soaps

Pre-shave prep. That is definitely a very important part of the process. Over time it is something I have definitely improved on and it has given me much better shaves, more consistently. And there is a lot to be said for what the shave soap can bring. More recently, it is something I'm paying a bit more attention to now as I use soaps/creams. It used to just be real simple for me. If I was able to get a really good lather, I figured hey how bad could the soap really be? But now I'm paying a bit more attention to how it softens my beard, how it helps the razor glide, and also residual slickness after I do a pass if I want to just go over a spot or two here and there. I have some soaps that I do really like and a lather well, but once I'm done with the pass, my face is almost like drywall dry and there's literally no slickness. And sometimes I even question if that's not user error in the fact that my pre-shave prep wasn't proper or I haven't properly hydrated the lather or my face.

What dulls blades most is failure to properly soften the beard before shaving.

An often overlooked quality of different shave soaps

Pre-shave prep. That is definitely a very important part of the process. Over time it is something I have definitely improved on and it has given me much better shaves, more consistently. And there is a lot to be said for what the shave soap can bring. More recently, it is something I'm paying a bit more attention to now as I use soaps/creams. It used to just be real simple for me. If I was able to get a really good lather, I figured hey how bad could the soap really be? But now I'm paying a bit more attention to how it softens my beard, how it helps the razor glide, and also residual slickness after I do a pass if I want to just go over a spot or two here and there. I have some soaps that I do really like and a lather well, but once I'm done with the pass, my face is almost like drywall dry and there's literally no slickness. And sometimes I even question if that's not user error in the fact that my pre-shave prep wasn't proper or I haven't properly hydrated the lather or my face.

I think of all the things that have surprised me most over the years is the lack of correlation of shave soap price to beard softening ability. It seems to be independent of price. I have had both inexpensive soaps that are good at it and expensive ones, and the converse is true as well.. It must be some ingredient in the soap that I have yet to identify. Someone here with a chemistry background probably knows about this. There must be a specific chemical compound that makes the keratin wall of the hair open up and allow water in. My guess is that it has something to do with PH, but that would make the soap harsh, right? Anyway, it is one of the key factors I judge a soap on, and you hardly hear anybody talking about it.

I have noticed that in old advertisements of canned shave goo they used to trumpet that feature.