Blades and Badgers

This is my second day without my beard. Hey, that's a lot of work shaving my whole face. I might have to let the beard grow back in. My fiance gives the thumbs up for that, so I may give in. But maybe not. I am my own man! (Yeah, right!)

So I said I would write about blades today, but before I do I want to talk about the Badger and Blade website and forums. For starters, B&B and other shaving websites can be a great source of information for the new wetshaver. I really appreciate the resources they provide, and I will highlight some of the things I like most some other day. I say that because what I'm going to say next is going to sound a bit negative: Don't believe everything you read. It seems to be a common practice in the B&B forums to pan certain types of products with no real knowledge.

Of interest to me tonight is the brush forum thread in this post. This is a post about a brush that I made as a custom brush maker. The original poster was enthusiastic because he has the awesome brush I posted about a few days ago. Others were congratulatory. And then we get the typical B&B know-it-all-party-pooper comment from thebigspender:

We've had these discussions here before and I don't want to knock anyone's custom brushes I have a few myself but what I and others here have found is that though these brushes are all gorgeous looking and would make a stunning display piece when compared to a quality brush from one of the well known makers they don't measure up in the performance department. I know mine are expertly crafted with a very dense badger knot of silvertip much larger than my Rooney or Simpson but the performance still doesn't match. Probably because the custom makers buy very generic ready made badger pucks.

Hmm, interesting. So thebigspender has apparently not used one of my brushes, or for that matter, the poster's brush, but he has an opinion about it's quality anyway. Okay, he says, it's stunning, but it's not a quality brush because it doesn't have a brand name on it. His custom brushes are expertly crafted, and large, but don't measure up to his Rooney or Simpson. I'm not sure what this means -- they are larger, but they don't measure up? They don't lather? They are scratchy? They are flexible? They are too stiff? What doesn't measure up?

Oh, I see now. The badgers came from a generic badger ranch in China instead of the designer resort badger ranch in China. That must be it.

The B&B logic goes something like this for me. I started out using a shaving brush as a 22 year-old Ensign on a nuclear powered submarine. We weren't allowed to have canned shaving cream on a sub (the propellant isn't recommended for breathing for long periods of time in a 285' sealed pipe) so we used soap and shaving brushes. I used one of the name brand production brushes -- an Old Spice boar hair brush. Big name, big manufacturer, we all had them because that is what the Navy Exchange stocked. I can tell you that the shaving brushes I make are way better than that old brush, and clearly they are better than all those other big manufacturers' brushes too.

Even in the middle of this rant I have to laugh at that last statement. Hey, that old boar hair brush was never a picnic. It did the job, but not without some daily abraiding of my tender 22 year-old face. I can't possibly paint all production brushes with the same brush as that boar hair nightmare. And you shouldn't make the same mistake with custom made wood-handled brushes.

Finally, some people actually like the feel of a boar hair brush. They might even prefer it over a Rooney or Shavemac, or a Mt. Tamalpais brush. Cool. If we all had the same brush, I'd be swamped! Awe, just kidding -- we wouldn't have our own brush at all. We would all have a barber shaving us of course.

Okay, enough of the badgering. Here's my blades:

You can see I use the red Personna blades. I'm a bit worn out after my rant, so I'll have to defer the blades topic to tomorrow. Maybe I'll even get to it...