With the old blades, I'd use a new one every shave.Ok, you wanted to hear from some old timers on how they shaved back in the "olden days" . . . Well, here I am.
I've been shaving for about 56 years. I can only tell you how I shaved, although, having been in the military, I've see other guys shaving and never noticed that they did it much differently. I used to make one pass, N-S for the most part, but this pass involved a lot of short, repeat strokes, and then another, touch-up pass in the areas that still felt rough.
In more recent decades, since blades have been much improved, I seem to have gone to a smoother, longer stroke; I think only because, with modern blades, each stroke is much more comfortable and doesn't need to be repeated so much to do the job of cutting most of the whiskers. My second pass nowadays is pretty much a full re-lathered pass XTG on the face and ATG on the neck,
In the last couple of years I've started to do a third, touch-up pass after all the lather is rinsed off using Thayers alcohol-free toner as the only lubricant. This Thayers pass allows me to achieve BBS, but this certainly isn't anything I practiced in my youth.
I attribute most of my change of technique on the improvement of blades back about 1958. Prior to that time, the sharpness of blades wasn't far removed from using the chips of flint that many people assume I grew up shaving with.
