Thread: Olive oil preshave

So for some time now I have been using plain olive oil as a preshave, works great. I have tried Art of Shaving but was put off at how expensive it was and the fact that olive oil works just as well if not better.

My only complaint is that olive oil lacks a pleasant scent, its kinda of a stale nutty smell. So just wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to add some scent.

Some drugstores still carry small bottles of essential oils. I got some clove oil 3 or 4 months ago at Walgreens. Some might mix ok.

Take care when buying: you need essential oils for dermatological use and not for ambient (sorry for my bad description, but I hope you can understand). Start trying concentrations of 1 to 3% and consider that 1 ml correspond to 20 drops.
You could choose essential oils correlated to our purpose (shaving), so lavender, tea tree, cedar (among others) are usefull.

Have you tried mixing the oil with a pleasantly scented (after-shampoo) hair conditioner? It will improve the scent and the whole will exceed the sum of the parts.

I have been using Extra Virgin Olive oil also as a preshave and I think it's better than any "Real" pre-shave out there. I can even do a whole ATG pass without lather using Olive Oil and get a smooth shave on my neck. The stuff is great for your skin also.

Anyone has any clue on how this effects your blade though? Does olive oil harm straight razors? Be nice to know. I mean, I do clean my razors anyway..

Shouldn't hurt the blade at all. Olive oil and a straight blade was all the ancient romans used.
And until Hadrian there were practically no beards or mustaches worn by romans.

Thanks for the responses guys! This should get me off to a good start. If I have any success I will let you know. Clavichord, I have really sensitive skin so thanks for the tip. Thanks again and if anyone else can chime in with ideas I would appreciate it!

Olive Oil... who would have thought? Oh man does it work well. Mine has just a trace of mint on it and this shave was really the most comfortable I've had yet. Thanks for the post guys!
Jeff

I use grape seed oil and I find it doesn't really have a noticeable scent. I don't know if it works just as well as olive oil, I've never tried it.

Any kind of vegetable based oil, including olive, grape, and camella oil, is actually a fat rather than an oil. It can be slightly caustic to steel, especially when exposed to water, when the oil breaks down and releases fatty acids. I never thought of this until hearing about it from Terry Knipschield (his knifemaking website is HERE) at the MN meet-up. He told me he had heard of that warning in the context of gun barrels but we speculated the same issue would occur with razors. Now, in contravention of my own warning, I used olive oil dissolved in isopropanol for over three years as a preservative dip for my razors and I never noticed any corrosion on any of my razors. However, after talking with Terry I switched to using mineral oil in isopropanol.

So the upshot is, there is a possibility that a vegetable based oil might contribute to corrosion of your razor, but I don't think it's very likely. I believe the risk would be much greater if the same oil were allowed to stay on the razor for months because that would give it a much greater opportunity for it to break down. If the razor is regularly being used, the oil is regularly being removed and replaced during each shave.