Razor that started it all.

The Muhle R89. It is a piece of jewelry. With a Med Prep blade I get the best shave ever.

Merkur 23C, and it's still my most used razor.

I was trying to decide between the EJ de89 and Merkur HD. I decided to check my local antique shop first and bought the only DE in the place for $2.50, Imagine my surprise when I got home and checked the web to find out I had a F-1 Fatboy. I never got the EJ or HD, but I have bought 2 more Fatboys!

Merkur 34c, now long gone. All my current razors are vintage Gillettes.

Feather Popular, it was a good little razor to start with. I don't use it much these days as the plastic handle makes it too light weight.

Merkur 34c with a pack of Wilkinson Sword blades. That was about seven DE razors and three straight razors ago. And I doubt I'll be stopping there...haha.

I guess my dad got tired of me using his bakelite injector and sent me down to the Rexall to buy my own. I bought a Schick Krona and Schick stainless blades, probably 1970.

Fatboy. Nuff said

I had got sick of buying expensive blades for cartridge razors and got a philips electric razor instead... but every time I used it I would get ingrown whiskers on my cheeks and neck. Then I heard about DE shaving on another forum and got myself a DE89L and never looked back. No more trouble with ingrown whiskers and a much more comfortable shave.

Cheers
Steve

Merkur 34c HD... still one of my favorites!!!

Merkur 38c, part of a starter kit

As I was looking for a new way to shave after using electrics for a long time, the commercial for the Micro Touch One got me motivated to try a De? So I stumbled upon B&B doing some brief research, figured out they were not the best choice, and bought a Merkur 34c instead.

I started hacking away at peach fuzz around 1979 using the relatively new disposables and canned goo. This Brazilian Gillette Tech was my first "proper" razor. I purchased it new in 1983 for about $1.00, more out of curiousity than anything. I used it continuously for the next 30 years, still using canned goo and whatever DE blades I happened to find.

The funny thing is that without having any "technique", blade or shave cream preference, I managed 30 years without a single weeper, burn, ... anything! Now that I've accumulated a bunch of vintage Gillettes and am experimenting with various blade brands, soaps, and brushes, my face has become more of a battleground, but I'm having a lot more fun shaving now! Go figure.

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The Gillette 195 - in 1958 or 59. I didn't even shave! I just wanted that adjustable. That was the "seed" of the start. My father used a Schick injector and when I started shaving a year or two later my mother bought me one, too, so she had to buy only one kind of blade. In 1966, I bought a 1966 Gillette adjustable and settled into that razor and Wilkinson Swords for almost 50years - until I stumbled across B&B (looking for info on restoring a vintage shaving brush), and discovered that the adjustable I wanted in the late '50s and the one I bought in 1966 were two different razors!
I still have that '66 Slim, as well as a couple of Fatboys, but have since fallen down the Gillette NEW Rabbit Hole, thanks to B&B.
PS - I restored that brush, too.


Tom

A Dorco DE starter set from Amazon. Decent razor for the price and it opened up an entire world to me. I never realized that shaving could be such a pleasant experience as opposed to something I just had to do.

Mühle R106. I picked it from the lineup at AoS. Good choice. I've tried others since. Everything from the cheapest YUMA to the most aggressive R41. I still have some variety in my travel kits, none of the razors have been a bad experience, but to the R106 I keep going home.

34c

Vdh

After seeing the video "Shave Like Grandad" on The Art of Manliness youtube channel, I decided that the beard had to go. And that I was not going back to the electric razor. After months of research, including much lurking on B&B, I decided I wanted to try a TTO and a three piece. So I ordered a Weishi 9306g from Amazon and a Rimei 2003 slow bloated from Hong Kong through eBay. Started with the Weishi for a couple months,then tried the Rimei for similar length of time. I've since acquired a ball end Tech which has become my much appreciated daily shaver, but still have the others.

I used to shave with a M3/Fusion but the razor that got me into traditional shaving was the Merkur 34C HD.