Sometime in the early 2010s, I was introduced to the double-edged safety razor, which consists of a solid handle, razor head, and extremely cheap double-sided razor blades. The hype was real, and although it took me awhile to find the right brand of blades to work with my skin, the shave is absolutely superior to popular, over-priced 3- and 5-blade razors (strangely enough).
But there was another product floating around as even more superior: the straight razor. Many were cheap, being such an old and simple technology, but there was a noticeable luxury market for these as well, with some costing well into the hundreds of dollars, featuring additional “strops” for sharpening that could cost well over $50.
The idea was that although the risk of cutting yourself was much higher, a straight razor, in the hands of a skilled beard artisan, would produce the absolute, highest-quality shave, and therefore, a true beard gourmand would embark on this path of face-nirvana.
In my curiosity of the luxury, I bought a $10 straight razor and a pack of 100 blades for about as much (insanely cheap!). Higher quality razors have the blade integrated into the handle, but these require sharpening, and I simply wasn’t ready for that, so I opted for the replaceable blades instead. When you get it right, it’s a pretty cool feeling, but even in the midst of what starts as a successful shave…yeah, you almost always cut yourself.
I went many, many years without using my straight razor, but finally tried again 3 or 4 weeks ago. It went well at first until I nicked my cheek, then also cut two points on my neck. The cuts have still not completely disappeared.
Straight razors are a simple technology, and are quite environmentally friendly if you have the skill to maintain them, as a good straight razor can possibly last your entire life and be passed on to the next generation. But this is only the case if you have the skill.
See, there are a lot of things in this world that would be great if you had the skill. There are a few rare people in the FIRE community who sew their own clothes from scratch, and they can pick absolutely any design they please and make it fit perfectly. But it requires a tremendous amount of skill to do this, and although simple alteration skills can be immensely valuable, being able to make your own clothes from scratch likely doesn’t have a very high ROI when you can spend $20 on a shirt that fits you 95%.
I’ve often lamented how formal shirts are either too wide in the arms or too tight in the neck on me, so it’s my long term goal to buy a tailor-fit shirt. I rarely eve wear them, but if I could spend a few hundred dollars for a shirt that will fit me for life, I would consider that worth it. Even then, learning to do it from scratch might only save you several hundred dollars, and so it is probably not worth it from a purely financial perspective.
A lot of these skills would be great if they didn’t cost so much in terms of time to learn.
This is why I’m starting to accept the fact that there are some things I will simply never be able to do on my car. It’s not that I can’t potentially learn, it’s not that there isn’t value in having those skills, only that the cost of learning is so high. Even just buying the tools to pull my engine or transmission would cost around $1,000, but this eats into any potential savings from the endeavor; moreover, these large tools then have to be stored, and space costs money, and that doesn’t consider the stress of learning, or the risks of trying it and getting it wrong. You eventually have to realize that for personal use, some skills simply have a relatively small ROI.
As for the straight razor, I don’t know how many bloody nicks I would have to endure before I reached true mastery. It really sucks having these cuts all over my face. I’m sure if you lived in the 1800s, you learned pretty early how to do it right, but that’s because you didn’t have any better options. My double-edged safety razor gets my face smooth 95%, with extremely few nicks. I could probably pull my cheeks tight to get that extra 5%, just a tiny bit of scruff under my cheek bones, but how many weeks or even years of cuts would I have to endure to get that 100% with a straight razor? I don’t think that’s worth it. And I mean, if store-bought garbage blades get my face 70%, and a double-edge safety razor gets my face 90-95%, what’s the price of getting 100% with a razor that slices my face up? (These being subjective assessments, of course)
Some people like the status of mastery. I’m human, too, I get it. But it comes at a price. Honestly, I’m just not as impressed with the endeavor, and I think it might be time to simply get rid of this straight razor. [I originally wrote this several months ago, and I did get rid of it last week]
Some might say, “oh, it’s because it was cheap! – you just need a higher-quality straight razor”, but then you start paying even higher amounts of money for something you might not be able to use, or that is just as likely to slice your face up. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to sample a new hobby, I don’t think buying the cheapest gear is the best way to try things out, but I don’t think straight razors are cheap because they are low-quality, I think they are cheap because they are simple technology that is easy to make.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good! The perfect often costs exponentially more in terms of time and skill.