Thread: Cold water shave is the best & worst ever

It's been about a month since I went exclusively cold and I can't see myself going back. It was the final piece in the puzzle to getting an irritation free shave. I am sold. Don.

I really love cold water shaves during the hot summer but come winter I find myself going hotter with my water.

That being said I still do love a nice refreshing cold shave. Wakes you up like nothing else can in the morning.

Interesting thread. I've been away from straight razor shaving (and this forum!) for a couple of years, for various reasons. I started using a straight again about 2 weeks ago, and found this thread yesterday.

I thought I'd give it a try last night and was quite surprised to find that a cold water shave was actually very good, easily as good as a hot water shave. I'll certainly keep doing this through the summer, but may well switch back to warm/hot water shaves over the winter (as I was getting pretty great shaves with hot water anyway).

Hey Iwan, It's been a while indeed. What did you use during your sabbatical? Cartridge, DE, electric, ...?
welcome back!

Originally Posted by Bruno

Hey Iwan, It's been a while indeed. What did you use during your sabbatical? Cartridge, DE, electric, ...?
welcome back!

Thanks mate.

I have been using a DE during that time, well two DE's, an old 'Lady Gillette' with blue stars on it, and a cheap Feather DE with plastic handle. I was still using a proper brush and quality soaps though, Tabac, Proraso, Trumpers etc.

I made the switch for a couple of reasons, the main one being I started working all over the UK, living out of hotels etc, I was doing around 50k miles a year for my job the last 2 years. So a DE was just easier to cart around with me, and required no ongoing maintenance. The other reason was I had no money, so I sold my entire collection of straights, hones, strops etc.

Then a couple of weeks ago I was talking to a guy I used to work with. I'd tried to get him using straights back in 2007 and had sold/given him some gear to get him started, and asked how he was getting on. Turns out he'd tried it for a few months and decided it wasn't for him, then he asked if I wanted my old gear back - naturally I said yes if he wasn't going to use it.

I had no idea what he had, and last week a parcel turned up at my office containing: my first ever strop (an early Tony Miller 2.5" red latigo/canvas), an as-new 7/8 Henckels Friodur with custom handle, an old 5/8 'Carrara' Solingen, and 2x NOS 5/8 Wapi's. Only the Carrara was shave ready, so I was using that every day for the last week.

I felt guilty accepting this for nothing so I sent him some money, we were both over the moon!

Then I bought a Naniwa 3K/10K combi stone from a place in the Netherlands which arrived yesterday. So after 20 minutes work last night I'm now good to go again with 4 shave ready razors.

Though I might sell the Henckels in time as I'm leaning more towards smaller blades these days...

Anyway sorry for going off topic, thanks for the welcome back (it's good to be back).

Glad to see you back here.
Btw, hang on to those Wapienicas. You are probably a bit out of date on the going price for those
The times when we bought them at 9$ each are long gone. I've seen a couple with plastic handles go for 100$ each.

Tried the cold water today and it seemed as good as the hot as far as I can tell. One thing that seemed to be worse was the metal that was in contact with my face would drag more. I don't know if it's necessarily because of the cold water but just something I observed. I'll definitely keep trying both hot and cold and report back.

Going to try eventually (really spoiled by the warm lather from a Schwarzweisskeramik), but for now, going to try a bit of alcohol AS before the shave to see if I can get the same effect.

Two and a half years into the cold water shave ..... still enjoying it.

Tried it tonight and I have to say it was pretty good...so much so that I'm going to give it a try.
And this happens when I'm on shave #4 in a row of a new system for me, the Korean version of the Feather fixed blade w/Feather Pro Blade - not what you would call experimentation friendly area.
The time savings alone would get you to try it.
Kinda shocking when you think about it....