DE razor in baby oil?

njpaddy said:

For the price of that "razor guard" stuff you could buy 100-200 blades. After my shave I take the blade out, rinse and wipe down the razor, hand-strop the blade to get any gunk off the edge, replace and store. My blades get tossed after 2-3 shaves. I see no point in risking cuts and irritation to squeeze an extra shave or two out of a 10 cent blade.

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Given the oils and also the acidity of human skin, stropping on your hand could actually lead to rust. The instructions that the person in that video quoted were also when blades didn't have the coatings that modern blades have and were also made with different materials. So "stropping" a blade would make sense back then, but less so today.

DE Shaver said:

A simple and cost effective means of drying off your blades is to simply dip the head of the razor and blade into alcohol. It displaces the water, disinfects the blade and dries in seconds. I have a container with seal that holds the alcohol in my shave den.

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Alcohol doesn't "displace" water. Alcohol actually absorbs water. Since the alcohol will evaporate before the water, and also cool the solution preventing the water from evaporating readily, you will be left with more and more water in your alcohol. And there are also some virii that thrive in alcohol. Most vendors of those hand sanitizers won't mention the rhinovirii that like to live in alcohol. http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/12/08/cold_comfort/

Also, your alcohol(hopefully 91% or better) costs ~$1.00 per pint. A bottle of Barbicide that can make 2 gallons of hospital grade disinfectant costs ~$7.00. It would take 16 pints of alcohol to equal that, and it can't disinfect like Barbicide can, and doesn't contain anti-rust ingredients.

I've heard about this practice on the web and was also curious about it. I think the original use was on multi-blade cartridge razor, whose heads are more easily dunked in a shallow layer of mineral oil.

The idea is that microscopic oxidation of the blade's edge contributes significantly to the speed at which it dulls. By coating the edge with mineral oil, micro-oxidation is minimized or halted, prolonging the life of the blade.

I haven't tried this, myself, so can't speak to whether it works, but there are a lot of folks who report longer blade life. Dunking the head of a DE is problematic, however, as it's so much larger.

Incidentally, someone posted an article here a while back about a fellow who did a trial of simply drying all the water from his blades right after a shave, no oil involved. The verdict was that blade life was extended significantly. The idea was the same: that water on the blade accelerates deterioration of the edge if present through microscopic oxidation.

I believe this article was an investigative piece by a Chicago reporter who tried it out and confirmed the results. This writeup actually inspired my brother to try storing his DE razor head down in a container of uncooked rice, which is hydrophilic.

Here is the article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/yourmoney/chi-ym-spending-1104nov04,0,936147.story

K.T.

K.T. said:

I believe this article was an investigative piece by a Chicago reporter who tried it out and confirmed the results. This writeup actually inspired my brother to try storing his DE razor head down in a container of uncooked rice, which is hydrophilic. I will provide a link whe I find it.

K.T.

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I've heard so much about rice absorbing water, yet I notice that the sacks they sell it in are not airtight. If rice absorbs water, moisture, and humidity so readily, sacks of rice should be bulging at the seams on shelves. I tried an experiment where I placed a measuring glass in a jar filled with rice. After a few days, I re-weighed all the items, and there was no noticeable gain in weight of the rice, while the waters weight HAD gone down.

Also, wouldn't the hard rice grains affect the fine edge of the razor blade?

The only razor that is asking for a baby oil or Vaseline is my Qshave. The mechanism is turning with great difficulty after each shave, so I put some oil between the parts when it is fully dissembled, and works like a charm. The parts seem to dry out quickly even if the razor isn't in use.