Thread: Walk, Don't Run

Gentlemen: It's a lazy morning here in the province. Charlie Haden's recording Nocturne is on the CD player. It's a wonderful recording — tenor sax player Joe Lovano, guitarist Pat Metheny, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and a fine list of other player doing the honors. It's also the perfect morning to reflect on things in general, including the straight razor world.

When we start out, we hardly know anything about the world of the straight razor. Yet sometimes we amass piles of razors, in a variety of styles and sizes, some quality but many junk, with little or no thought about how our tastes and preferences are likely to change with time. After all, we've lived with ourselves long enough to know better: that our tastes will change. So we buy new razors, antique razors, and anything else that passes for a blade with a handle. We buy some because we like them and some because we think we should have them.

I am as guilty of this as anybody. Some years later we question our earlier purchases and sometimes regret having ignored our personality traits: that, yes, our tastes will change. I don't blame myself or anybody for running in the early years of piling up straight razors instead of walking. It's human nature to sometimes plunge blindly into a certain activity, be it a love affair, a friendship, a business, and on and on.

Also, because straight razor shaving is unlike many new encounters we face in our daily lives, we're pulled into it as if by a magnetic force. We wrap our arms around it with a deep thirst to learn everything we can, and experience everything we can. Within the first week some of us already think we know enough to not only shave with the straight razor, but to hone it, and to restore it.

And so time reels by and one day we realize how much our taste has changed, and that perhaps we should have put a little more thought in what we bought and what we should have bought instead. This morning as I shaved with my Wacker 6/8" 1st Edition Sheffield with the barber's notch, I was pleased with what I had bought. Then I studied some of the other razors in the rack, the 4/8" and the 5/8" hollow or extra hollow blades, and wished I had not bought them. Oh, they're gorgeous razors, and all great shavers, but my taste has changed as I have matured with the straight razor.

These days I have discovered a preference for the 6/8" and the 7/8" blades in the heavier grinds. I shave just as well with the hollow blades, yes, but they don't hug my face in the same way the heavier grinds do. I like their heavier weight on my face, and their balance in my hands. It's the difference between a conversation at a party and an intimate one at a cafe. Two different worlds. I like the heavier blades against my face. I feel more comfortable with them.

I dare say my shaves are even better with the heavier grinds. There is ample controversy on this: that the heavier grinds shave better than the hollows. Speaking for myself only, with my type of beard, and with my taste in razors, I know the heavier grinds work better me: in the shave and how they fit in my hand.

So, yes, I should have slowed down early on and bought with less compulsion and more thought. I should have walked instead of run toward every razor that caught my eye.