.

My dad never taught me how to shave.

At least I don't remember him ever giving me that talk. He didn't give me that talk either -- my mom did, with Marlo Thomas's "Free To Be, You And Me" as the visual aid -- and I remember that, so I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered my dad showing me how to shave. When the time came, I just took one of his disposable plastic razors and a can of foam, and spent the next twenty years hating every minute of it.

So when we took the kids and visited my folks last week for Thanksgiving, I decided to have that "cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon" shaving moment with my dad after all. Even if the roles were reversed, I still wanted that moment.

But the thing is, my dad's never given a tinker's damn about shaving. Lately he's been shaving with the godawful Schick Quattro cartridge razor -- I think he got it free in the mail and just kept using it out of habit. If you asked him what shaving cream he used, he'd have to go check the can. I know more about the kind of plastic baggies my wife buys for the kitchen than my dad knows about what brand of shaving cream he uses every morning.

Deep down, I kind of wish I was as unconcerned with this stuff as he is. Actually, what would make the most sense would be for both of us to come to the middle of the axis between caring too much about shaving and not caring at all -- my dad needs to be nicer to his skin, and I need to stop hunting down German patent archives from the 80s just to prove some dumbass shavegeek is entirely wrong about when a certain razor first hit the market.

We both need to grow.

I started upgrading my dad's shaving rig this summer. A $2 cake of Williams shaving soap to replace his generic foams and gels, and a Vulfix #377 Super badger brush to lather it with. And I gave him a Merkur HD safety razor -- the same DE I started wetshaving with, and the one pictured in the video still up in the righthand corner of this blog.

He loved the soap and brush but didn't like the razor -- even with a Merkur blade, he stil managed to nick himself enough so that he put down the DE and went back to the Quattro. Clearly, a less aggressive DE was called for here.

So for Thanksgiving I brought my dad a Gillette Super Speed and a box of 100 Israeli Personna blades. I can get a great shave from this rig, but it's also forgiving enough to let a newbie like my dad get up to speed with a DE without the fear factor.

The Gillette worked like a charm. My dad gave himself a great shave Thanksgiving morning with his 1940's Super Speed, his Vulfix #377 Super badger brush, and his cake of Williams shaving soap in the bottom of a coffee mug. He liked the Super Speed's shave so much he used it all week long, and even told my mom that he actually looks forward to shaving now, for the first time in his life. You have to know my dad to know what a big thing this is. Kvelling, I was! Lots of kvell.

So I finally got my Harry Chapin shaving moment with my dad! I waited many, many years, but I got it, and it was great.

Now, my own little guy's got a good fifteen years before he needs to start shaving. The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe it's not such a bad idea for Beloved Wife to explain the wang dang doodle to him after all -- I still laugh at words like "penis" and "rhythmic", probably moreso now than I did sitting in class during sex-ed.

But I'm definitely going to make sure he knows how to shave properly, with a good brush, some good cream, and a gleaming metal safety razor. And we'll have our moment, and it will be one of the great days.

And then he can come back in twenty-five years and tell me I'm doing it all wrong, too.

When I visited my parents in Dallas this summer, I noticed that the Simpson Chubby #1 brush I brought with me in my dopp kit wouldn't lather worth a damn. Even if I soaked the bejesus out of it in hot water and used double the usual dollup of Taylor's Rose shaving cream, by the time I came up for my 2nd pass, the brush had no usable lather left.

And to make matters worse, the shave itself was off. Not bad, but definitely a little off. I brought my trusty travel tube of Taylor's Rose cream and my vintage Injector loaded with a cut-down Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade -- a rig that usually shaves like a dream -- but no matter what I did, the blade skipped and stuttered on my skin, making it impossible to get the smooth, unbroken stroke that makes for a perfect shave.

I've never really liked this Simpson as much as my Vulfixes, so I chalked my lather problems up to the Chubby. And sure enough, as soon as I got back to the East Coast and my beloved Vulfix #2234 in Super badger, I was rewarded with the kind of easy, no-brainer, overflowing cornucopia of lather I always get from this excellent and affordable lather king.

So when I packed my dopp kit for Thanksgiving this year, I chose my brush carefully. I've been really enjoying the Dovo travel brush lately when I shave at the gym -- it's like the James Bond version of the little Vulfix travel brush I usually use on the road, except it appears to have a higher grade of badger hair and is a bit more stiff as well.

These German Dovo/Merkur brushes kind of get lost in the shuffle with all the hoo-hah over the English brushes, but the two I've got -- this stainless steel travel brush in a tube and the "Vision" brush -- rank right up there with the best brushes I've tried. I like the heavy metal handles and the somewhat stiffer bristles compared to the Vulfix brushes. Both of these German brushes can build way more lather than I ever need from just a swipe of the tips through my favorite shaving creams (lately, Nancy Boy). And I'll take either one of them over the much more expensive Simpson in a heartbeat.

So there I am at my parent's house last week, in the bathroom in my sister's old room where we've set up camp with the kids, and the first morning I catch a shave I find that somehow the Dovo brush can't lather worth a damn either. And I brought one of the very best lathering shaving creams extant -- Taylor's Avocado. You can get good lather from this stuff if you use a chicken bone, but for some reason I could not get a decent head of lather to save my life. I had to add more cream to the brush for the 2nd and 3rd passes! I never have to do that when I shave at home.

The thing is, the water's different where my parents live. And now I finally get it. I finally get why all these seemingly moronic shavegeeks who bitch and moan and whine about how they can't get their shaving brushes to lather are having such problems.

I always figured these guys were just pinheads. Probably some of them are -- you can't just toss that possibility out. It wouldn't be right. But now I understand that some of these guys who have problems making decent lather with a top-shelf shaving cream and a top-shelf brush aren't dullards after all -- they just live where the water sucks.

Where I live, the water that comes out of the faucet is so lather-friendly that all I have to do is soak any decent brush (even a $10 Omega boar's hair) in hot water for a few seconds, barely swipe its tips over the surface of a tub of any decent shaving cream, and swirl it around in my other hand for five, maybe six revs. I do that and I've got so much goddamn lather I can barely keep it in my cupped hand -- enough for seven or eight shaves easy, and I'm not exaggerating.

I have to admit that this discrepancy between my own dead-easy lathering and the endless whining and soul-searching on the shavegeek forums about how these guys just can't seem to get it together, which leads them to drop some seriously demented coin on gigantic, super-high-end brushes and all kinds of extended rigmarole like using electric hot pots to boil the water they shave with, and big ceramic bowls to stir the lather in, has been one of the main reasons why I've held the geeks in such low regard. Now I know that some of them -- not all of them, but certainly some of them -- can pin their lathering difficulties on simply being geographically challenged.

It also slams home a truth which has taken me this long to learn: how well a brush, or a shaving cream, or a razor, or even a blade works is as much a product of where you use it as how you use it. I see that very clearly now. This trip I brought with me a tube of Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and my trusty Gillette Super Speed DE razor loaded with a fresh Swedish Gillette blade. This combo shaves me as well as anything else I've ever tried, and far better than most. It's as perfect a shaving rig as I could ever hope for -- as long as I use it in my own bathroom at home, or a few miles away at the gym.

But take these same products and try to shave with them at my parents' house in Dallas? It's a disaster. I can't get nearly the same close, comfortable shave. The blade hops and skips along my face, and I can't get an otherwise excellent brush and an otherwise excellent cream to build enough lather for two stinking passes.

I guess what I'm saying it, all this stuff is totally subjective. There are no objective truths when it comes to anything, but this goes triple cherries for shaving. My killer brush is your suck-ass brush if you happen to live in an area with water that's too hard or soft. Your incredible shaving cream is my I'll-stay-away-from-this-stuff-forever crap if my water isn't as good as yours. And you're sure as hell not going to get the kind of awe-inspiring shaves from a Featherjector or a Super Speed if your water is anything like what's coming out of the faucets at my folks' house in Texas. Tastes fine, showers fine, but boy does it make a monkey out of my favorite shaving rigs.

So all shaving product reviews are suspect, including mine. Nobody can predict how well a brush or a cream or a razor will work with your local water supply. All anyone can do is try these products, live with them for awhile, and post their opinion. If you try the same product and it performs similarly, chances are we've got the same kind of water in our pipes at home. And if you find that my recs fall flat when you try these products, maybe your water is quite a bit softer/harder than mine.

All I know is, from now on, I'm only shaving in the blue states.

(Editor's Note: the following entry was submitted by a Shaveblog reader of the feminine persuasion, and by that I mean an actual female, not a shavegeek who simply acts like a nancy boy, and by that I mean a guy who gets hissy and pissy about shaving issues, not the excellent line of men's skin care products of the same name.

Actually, women make up a surprisingly large part of Shaveblog's readership, which only makes sense since they shave a lot more real estate than men do. This shavette really gets it, and by that I mean she understands what all the fuss is about, not that she has sex a lot, although who knows, that's not really my purview, and by that I mean area of focus, not me purring contentedly from my secret spying perch outside their bedroom window.

So please join me in welcoming Beth D. for the first guest Shaveblog -- enjoy! -- CG)

First off, I'm a woman. Let's just get that clear right off the bat. And in case you're taking it two steps further, I am not a woman who currently needs to shave my face. I just wanted to get that out in the open.

I have a husband, yes, who was very much influenced (with my help, of course) by this new shavegeek movement introduced by Corey, and slowly but surely, he's moving into neophyte shavegeek territory. (He's still a tad nervous about the metrosexual aspect, but once I convince him that smooth is sexy, he'll be just fine.) I don't know the specifics, but I do blame Corey for suddenly creating a man in my life who now has smoother skin than I do. But I digress.

In the interest of the upcoming holiday season (and the upcoming holiday panic for finding gifts), I was browsing this fabulous shaveblog.com website, reading all about the amazing fabulousness of creams, including the Proraso Eucalyptus, and thought "Hey, isn't that the beat up tube of goo that's in my husband's side of the bathroom cabinet?"

So this fine evening, inspired by this self-same site, I opened the top of the tube and took a sniff. Yep, there was the slightly menthol, eucalyptusly-fresh, not-quite-musky scent that's not-too-manly, and not-too-floral that I love from my hubby's face. Not too bad, I must admit. Next... take a spot and spread it on my hand. Uninteresting, when you really get down to it. Honestly doesn't feel much different than the slightly stale soap that my grandparents keep in their guest bathroom.

Until I add a touch of water. And suddenly this unassuming opalescent paste turns into a film of slick lather with tiny bubbles... Oooh, okay. I might be catching on to why you guys like this stuff so much.

Okay, here goes! In the name of fair play and just plain nosiness... Larger dab (not enough to qualify as a dollop) onto my hand, add water, spread and lather my own face... Hey, I believe in equality of bathroom goods! Yep, forehead to chin, cheek to cheek... Rinse... no need to repeat, and wow! Niiiiice. A mild tingle, but fresh and smooth feeling. I think I may finally get an idea of what the big deal is here! Clean, soft, and happy healthy feeling... I have to write and say... watch out for the women in your lives, gentlemen, because if your wives (or whatevers) get a whiff of what this stuff can do for their skin, soon you'll see Proraso Eucalyptus re-packaged in overpriced pink bottles at expensive department store counters and the only way you'll get to use it is to sneak it out of my face-cleaning bag every morning.

Oh, but never fear... you're more than welcome to use my Nair any time. After all, fair is fair...

-- Beth D.

One of the nice things about shaving with a safety razor is the sheer number of different options you have. If you go with a traditional DE, there are dozens of razors to choose from -- vintage Gillette adjustables (long or short handles, stainless steel or gold), vintage Gillette non-adjustables (both twist-to-open and screw-off models, as well as open-comb and safety-bar), modern Merkurs (as well as all the razors that use Merkur heads on fancy handles -- Edwin Jagger, Trumper, et al), old (and even new) Wilkinsons, Schicks, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.

Speaking of Schick, if you decide to go with an Injector-type safety razor, the company made all kinds of different versions -- the oldest pre-Injector magazine repeaters in solid brass, the bakelite and celluloid handled 1940's models with the gold-plated brass heads, the plastic handled 70s and 80s models (some with tennis racket style handles and stick shift knobs), the adjustables, and the final version that still sold in Japan until very recently. Schick even made ladies Injectors (as did Gillette with its DE's) in several styles, with long handle, short handle, and no handle.

So with all these choices for what type of razor best suits each individual, you'd think even the most quarrelsome and obtuse shavegeek would recognize the lunacy of the very notion of a "best" razor, as well as the lunacy of arguing with others that they're idiots for not agreeing with him.

And you'd be wrong.

It's really quite a fascinating phenomenon, this shavegeek fascism. There's one geek in particular who I'm fairly certain is really just an auto-bot -- a line or two of code some prankster dumped into the shavegeek forums like a virus that pops up and spits out the same hostile text every time certain keywords are posted:

1. IF "feather" THEN "Feather DE blades are the best blades and make everything else look like a joke, and if you don't like them then you don't know how to shave because I've been doing it for 40 years and you're WRONG!"

2. IF "gillette" THEN "Gillette DE razors are cheap toys compared to Merkurs and you obviously don't know what a great razor is because I can't get a good shave with a Gillette and I've been shaving for 40 years and you're WRONG!"

3. IF "futur" THEN "The Merkur Futur razor has been around since 1965 because I got one in 1965 and you don't know anything so why don't you shut up because I have proof that the Futur existed in 1965 because here is the one that I have and I got it in 1965 and I've been shaving for 40 years and you're WRONG!"

The last line of code is particularly amusing, given that Merkur itself says it introduced the Futur in the 1985, there isn't a single record anywhere on the Web of this razor ever existing before that date, and other wetshavers who've also been shaving for 40 years don't recall ever seeing this Merkur till the mid-80's, when the company says it first hit the market.

Normally I cut guys slack with dates because I'm bad about them myself, but twenty years off? Can someone really confuse 1965 with 1985? The Beatles with Ah-Ha (the only group ever to have their tour sponsored by Agree Shampoo)?

None of this really matters except that it's funny, like someone peeing their name in the snow and getting a letter backwards. You chuckle and then you give that guy a wide berth, because he might not be through marking.

Anyway, back to reality. I couldn't bring myself to shave with that Wallace and Gromit shaving foam I wrote about yesterday. Just couldn't do it. Wanted to. Thought about it. But once the nostalgia of that foamy scent and the theme music from "The Way We Were" faded away, I remembered that razor burn I used to get from this kind of stuff back in the day -- that scrapy, scratchy kind of shave that left me red and stinging, and led me, finally, to seek out the kind of high-quality shaving creams I get much more comfortable shaves with today.

So I lathered up with Trumper's Violet cream on a Vulfix #2234 brush, loaded a fresh Swedish Gillette blade into my 1940s Gillette Super Speed DE, and got one of those easy, comfortable, perfectly close shaves that this rig tosses off so nonchalantly.

I swear, this razor has completely up-ended my views on wetshaving. Whereas a year ago I was cranking my Merkur adjustables all the way up for the most aggressive shave possible from these beasts (and beating my face up), now I'm getting consistently closer shaves from a little old Gillette non-adjustable that looks like it's barely showing blade.

Wallace and Gromit are big at our house. We've got the three classic short films on DVD, we went to see "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" as soon as it came out this summer, and my daughter thinks all cheese is called "Wensleydale!".

So when I found this Wallace and Gromit shaving kit on eBay while searching for W&G stuff, I had to have it. For the kids, I mean..

These kits were made for the UK pharmacy chain Boots, which was also responsible for the Homer and Bart Simpson shaving kit I yoinked awhile back. The Wallace and Gromit kit came with a cheap disposable twin-blade razor (I replaced it with a vintage Gillette travel razor, without a blade so the kids can play with it) and a can of "Wallace's Shaving Foam", which is where things got weird.

I say weird because one whiff of this stuff and I almost lathered up and started shaving right then and there. Godammit I miss the smell of shaving foam inna can.

I know, I know, we're shavegeeks, we use expensive English shaving creams scented old-school -- lavender, voilet, rose, sandalwood, lime. We howl in derision at modern drugstore dreck like shave foam and shave gel, because they don't lather and lube nearly as well, and they've got all kinds of crap like butane and propane and god knows what else that messes up your skin. We make fun of proles who shave with this dime-store garbage and feel superior to them when we see them suffering through another painful, irritating shave with that lowly mentholated crapola.

Still...

Man does this stuff smell good! It's got that classic foam inna can thing going on. Every foam I ever shaved with -- Gillette Foamy, Barbasol, Noxzema, Brut, et al -- shared that certain olfactory note that's driving me crazy about Wallace's Shaving Foam. I don't know what it is exactly that I'm smelling -- maybe the butane? -- but it's like a time machine taking me back to all those years of canned shaving pleasure. I cupped a handful of this stuff to my face and huffed it in like a kid sniffing glue out of a brown paper bag. Honestly, I figured once I got this shaving kit in the mail I'd toss the can of foam along with the plastic razor, but I took a sniff for old time's sake and it knocked me for a loop.

So now I'm thinking maybe I should catch a shave with this stuff. How bad could it be, really? I shaved with far lesser foams and gels, I'm sure, for many, many years, and with horrible razors to boot. As long as I use my Gillette Super Speed DE, what's the worst-case scenario? Nicks and cuts galore? Nawww. I bet I can get a decent-to-excellent shave with Wallace's Shaving Foam, as long as I use a good safety razor in the usual shavegeek manner.

I want to try it. I need to try it. Maybe tomorrow, after I've had a bit of Wensleydale.

Now, far be it for me to call another man's bathroom shaving shelf psychotic, but really, what is going on here, I ask you?!

I count seventeen shaving brushes, twenty-five assorted shaving creams, soaps, and assorted poultices, forty-two straight razors, and one bottle of amyl nitrite.

Seventeen shaving brushes. Just saying it leaves me speechless. Seventeen! I mean, forty-two straight razors is some seriously sick business, but seventeen shaving brushes strikes me as far more psychotic. Because seventeen is too few brushes for it be a collection. I know shaving brush collectors. Famous Peter, the guy on the shavegeek forums who's famous for having something like 500 shaving brushes, buys seventeen brushes on his way to the corner store for some more tulip bulbs.

That means these brushes are in some sort of daily rotation. I've seen this sort of thing before. Shavegeeks with a large, embarrasing display case holding way too many brushes, razors, creams, etc., and every morning they stand there in their white Raddison robe thinking, "Hmm, which combo shall it be today? Horn-handled brush with Col. Conk soap and the Dubl Duck razor, Omega boar brush with Proraso cream and the Dovo razor, or Feather straight, Shavemac, and Trumper soap?"

Why can't guys just hide their embarrasingly large collection of shaving crap in a dresser drawer out of self-loathing shame, like I do? Then, at least, you can tell yourself it's not really a "collection", per se, but a junk drawer. With a junk drawer, you can add to the pile indefinitely and never shame your wife when company comes over and uses the bathroom. "Well, that certainly is an...interesting, er, collection your husband has built a custom wooden display case for...(whispering) is he hurting you? Do you want to come away with us, to a safe place where he can't find you?"

Seeing this photo of seventeen shaving brushes got me thinking about downsizing. I have too many brushes. Not counting the little travel brush I have in my dopp kit, I've got five Vulfixes, a Simpson, an Omega, an Edwin-Jagger, and a Merkur. Nine brushes. The Omega almost doesn't count, being ten dollars and all. So really, eight brushes.

We've got two bathrooms where I like keeping a shaving rig -- cream, razor, brush, and post-shave poultice. So really, I just need two brushes. That leaves six I should get rid of. I never felt like I needed to get rid of any brushes till I saw this picture, but now I'm scared of what might happen to me if I don't downsize TODAY.

The little Vulfix #2234 is a keeper, that's for sure. I've been using it for a week now, with the excellent Nancy Boy shaving cream, and it's become my favorite brush. Big enough to make gobs of lather for 3 or 4 passes with plenty left over, but small enough to go under my nose without getting lather in my mouth. Also, I never make a mess of the sink and bathroom with the #2234 the way I do with larger brushes that fling lather everywhere.

I need to figure out which of the remaining brushes to keep, so I can bundle up the rest and get rid of them. Honestly, that photo is tripping me out. I feel like I've got spiders crawling under my skin. I've got to make some changes.

Every once in awhile, a shaving product comes along that gladdens my heart and warms my cockles, mainly because I know it will deeply disturb the turgid schnooks on the shavegeek forums for all the right reasons.

Nancy Boy is a store in San Francisco's Castro district, aka "The Gayest Place On Earth", that sells its own line of men's cosmetics made with natural botanicals and scented with the lavender, peppermint, and rosemary that the founding partners Eric and Jack grow in their herb garden at home (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Nancy Boy's got all kinds of skin and hair care products, as well as a wicked sense of humor -- the two colognes they offer are called Butch and Fem, for shavebloggers and forum geeks, respectively -- and their links page is one of the most best I've come across. But the product they're best known for is their amazing Nancy Boy shaving cream.

Chris Fisher, shaving product hunter extraordinaire, was the one who hipped me to Nancy Boy. Here was a high-end shaving cream in a tub meant to be lathered with a brush, scented with lavender, peppermint and rosemary essential oils, and priced at half what the vaunted English creams cost. The only catch, of course, is that the tub says NANCY BOY, and has a baby blue flower logo instead of a manly coat of arms and "By Royal Appointment Of Various Well-Born Inbreds" emblazoned on the crest.

I was in love. You might even say I was "buy-curious".

I mean, who knows more about skin care -- gay men, or pasty-faced shavegeeks yakking about pipe smoking and Churchill? You ever see pictures of Churchill? The guy never exfoliated a day in his life. Sure, he saved the world from tyrrany, but hel-LOOO, would it have killed him to moisturize?

So I went online and bought a 6-ounce tub of Nancy Boy shaving cream for the princely sum of 15 clams. That's half what Trumper, Harris, and Coates shaving creams cost, and just a buck and a half more than Taylor. I even joined "Club Nancy Boy" to get my 15% discount and free gift (travel size Nancy Boy shampoo, nice stuff).

The shaving cream arrived in a few days, and I cracked the lid to check it out. Nancy Boy is a much lighter-loafered cream than the standard Brit stuff, smooth and creamy versus thick and goopy as with Trumper, Harris et al. Of the various traditional style shaving creams I've tried, only Taylor's Avocado is as light and creamy in texture as Nancy Boy.

What-ever. You don't make butter cows with this stuff, you shave with it. So I soaked my Vulfix #2235 badger brush in hot water, gave it a little shake to reduce the water it held to just the right amount, and swirled the tips in the Nancy Boy's glistening white cream.

The lavender/peppermint/rosemary scent hits you hard, the way you like it. The peppermint definitely dominates, but the trio of essential oils blends for an especially natural and pleasing scent that smells better every time I shave with this stuff. Taylor's Avocado -- my favorite of all the Taylor's shaving creams -- also has hints of lavender and rosemary, and wouldn't you know it? Nancy Boy happens to have avocado oil, just like the Taylor's cream. A very good sign.

Nancy Boy lathered up like a champ with a brush, just as thick and rich as the best English creams, and the shave I got was FAAAA-BULOUS! Really, it was just like using an expensive upper crust English shaving cream, only better, because it smelled nicer than many of them and at half the shekels to boot. What's not to like? My Gillette Super Speed glided over my skin like I'd laid down a lather of the finest creams Trumper and Taylor have to offer, and after a perfect DE shave, my skin felt just as smooth and moisturized as when I shave with Taylor's Avocado. I've been using Nancy Boy on and off for over a week now and I like it more every time I use it.

There is, of course, that niggling thing with the Nancy Boy brand name, and the pale blue flower logo. Not exactly the kind of manly-man accoutrement the typical repressed shavegeek craves when he swings the medicine cabinet door wide.

Me, I have no problem with it. Beloved Wife looked bemused when it arrived, and raised an eyebrow when she found me perusing the links page on the Nancy Boy site the other night. But then I showed her the link to a site featuring guys who like lolling around naked with party balloons, and I think even Rick Santorum would agree that one of the fundamental building blocks of a healthy man/not-a-man marriage is sharing.

I get a lot of "modern" shaving products sent to me for review, and unfortunately that usually means some kind of brushless, oddly-scented wonder goo that takes all the fun and pleasure out of the gentlemanly ritual of shaving, in the name of speeding things up so you can race through your morning like a crazed mongoose.

But this Nancy Boy shaving cream is the real deal. It's essentially an English-style, brush-type shaving cream with a great peppermint/lavender/rosemary scent, hyper-pure botanical ingredients, and a price that's half what comparable English creams cost. It's high-end stuff, iconoclastic, and on my short list of the very best shaving creams I've used.

Normally I'm up to trying just about anything when it comes to shaving. But when my English pal Andy who lives just outside Llandewi Breffi and is the only wetshaver in his village raved about the new King Of Shaves brushless shaving gel, I have to admit that my unconditional willingness to try anything Andy says rocks (he is, after all, the Father of the Featherjector, the King of Shavers, the miracle that is a vintage Schick Injector razor loaded with a clipped-down Feather disposable straight razor blade) was offset by the fact that I hate shaving goo.

The whole wetshaving trip -- 100 years of tradition, every manufacturer and dealer of safety razors and old-school creams and badger shaving brushes, this blog -- it all stands for something, and that something is YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE GOO WHEN YOU SHAVE.

I used goo for years. Cheap, came in cans. Didn't care what kind of goo it was, just gimme that goo. I'd squirt a stream of that translucent orange jizz in my palm and watch it turn white and foamy around the edges as the air got to it. Spread it on my dry puss and scraped a blue plastic disposable hither and yon till I bled equally on all quadrants, and that was my morning shave circa most of my life.

Most newly converted wetshavers blame their old razors for the lousy shaves they got before they wised up. I blame the goo. Because if you just swap some good English shaving cream for that goo and change nothing else about the rest of your rig, you'll get a vastly better shave. But use the very best safety razor in the world and drag it across a layer of goo on your face, and you'll be very, very sorry. The goo is the linchpin, or linchgoo, of the entire shaving experience.

King Of Shaves is a UK company specializing in shaving goo in stand-up plastic tubes. The company does a lot of promotional marketing featuring master barbers chosen for their shaving skills, and you've probably seen their tubes of goo in the men's shaving section of your local pharmacy, next to the Adidas deodorant and the Michael Jordan aftershave -- you know, the quality stuff. The stuff used by guys with glossy hair who work in cubicles and dream of making the O face someday.

I've never had even the slightest interest in trying any KOS goo, because to me, goo inna tube is no higher on the food chain than goo inna can. But Andy said this KOS goo called Alphaglide ALS (for Advanced Lubrication System, not Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig's Disease) was different. Newer, better, faster, stronger, more advanced, filled with tiny micro-ball-bearings of lubricating goodness that set it apart from all other goo.

Ah, but the Alphaglide ALS isn't available in the US, I told Andy. Dodged that bullet!

"No problem, mate," he didn't say (I put that in there to remind you he's British), "I'll mail you some!" And so it was that a few weeks later I had a tube of this orange goo in my hand, and an enthusiastic fellow shavegeek on the other side of the pond waiting for me to try it.

I hemmed and hawed and avoided it the best I could. I made excuses to myself for not trying it -- a new razor I had to try first, or the Swedish Gillette DE blades, or a new brush, or that Spanish Leather shaving cream concoction I whipped up. Anything to forestall the shave I knew I had to catch sooner or later with a layer of this orange goo on my face.

I finally ran out of excuses today. So instead of lathering my wet face up with a nicely scented English cream and my favorite badger brush, I flipped the KOS's plastic fliptop up and squeezed a splooge of Alphaglide into my hand.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Kind of a minty toothpaste scent, with tea tree oil mixed in there as well. And sure enough, the Alphaglide ALS has tea tree oil, as well as aloe vera, vitamin E, and something they call Lubrinyl-12, which sounds like a sperminator but is actually just a lubricant which KOS says "behaves like a micro-thin layer of ball bearings on the skin which converts the high drag sliding friction (seen in regular shave gels) into smooth rolling friction that virtually eliminates razor drag and gives optimum razor glide".

Andy said to really rub the Alphaglide goo into my skin to activate the little Lubrinyl-12 ball bearings, so I rubbed and I rubbed, but I'll have to take it on faith that I accomplished anything because the KOS goo didn't lather up one iota. It just spread around my face, translucent and gooey, without any state change at all. I didn't try using a brush because frankly, I didn't want to get any orange toothpaste-smelling goo on it. I just followed Andy's and King of Shaves's directions and then I shaved.

I used my Gillette Super Speed DE and a Swedish Gillette blade on its 5th shave. I'd like to take a moment here and thank Andy for turning the shavegeek community onto these excellent DE blades, because he's the one who first hipped me and Gordon and everyone else onto these. That's another notch on your strop, Andy -- keep 'em coming!

Back to the goo. The shave was weird. The goo was slick beyond compare -- this is easily the slickest, most slippery shaving stuff I've tried to date, slicker even than the amazing Cremo Cream -- but there was very little feedback from the razor as it slid across my skin. With regular creams and hard shaving soaps, I can feel and hear the difference when my razor is cutting whiskers and when it's going over cleanly shaved skin. Not with the Alphaglide. It felt for all the world like I'd forgotten to put a blade in the razor.

Nothing at all about the shave was pleasurable. The smell was a cross between Crest and tea tree oil, the translucent orange goo was, well, translucent orange goo, and the shave itself gave no clues that anything at all was getting done. All told, it was the least pleasurable shave I've had since I switched to wetshaving.

So how come the shave was so brilliant?!

C'mon, you saw this one coming. As much as I disliked its smell, physical appearance, brushless application, and lack of sensory feedback, the shave I got from the Alphaglide ALS was world-class. As good as any cream I normally use. It makes no sense, but there it is. This Alphaglide goo shaves like a madman! I hate to admit it, because I'm loathe to praise goo, but -- god, can I even choke out the words?

This is good goo.

Now the question is, should you run out and get some? Ah, here's where it gets interesting. Because you can't. Not yet, at least. For some reason, King Of Shaves isn't selling this stuff in the US yet. You can't even order it on their website. The only way to score a tube of this stuff is to have a pal in the UK mail it to you.

But do you want him to, is my question. Look, I'll try anything Andy sends me -- the bloke knows his stuff. But to my way of thinking, the Alphaglide will only be of interest to a guy who:

1. Hates using a brush (which to me is the best part of wetshaving);

2. Doesn't mind the smell of toothpaste and tea tree oil wafting into his nostrils for 5-10 mins;

3. Doesn't mind that he's got a layer of translucent orange goo on his face.

I know lots of guys have very sensitive skin and can't use soaps without issues, so for them, this KOS goo would be a good alternative to the heavily soaped-up English creams. It does shave like a demon, just as Andy said it did, and it's got lots of aloe vera, tea tree oil, and vitamin E to make sensitive skin happier. So for guys in this boat, the Alphaglide ALS could be just the ticket.

I don't know when or if King Of Shaves will bring this Alphaglide ALS goo to US shelves. if they do, they might consider changing the name to something that doesn't share its initials with Lou Gehrig's Disease, though. Just a thought.

Will I use it again? Um, well, you see....

No really, I'll probably give it a go again someday. I didn't like the scent, but the shave is fantastic, and I'm a sucker for pragmatic performance. I don't like the pina colada scent of Cremo Cream either, but I keep a tube of it handy at all times because it's miraculous stuff and I like to use it every once in awhile. It'll be the same with the KOS goo. Actually, Beloved Wife may be giving this a try shortly on her gams, and if that happens then I may never see this tube of goo again. It seems like the perfect gam goo for gals.

And speaking of gals and goo, do you hear that strange whirring sound? It's the grave of Sir Winston Churchill, spinning at 78 RPMs over the first shaving cream ever to come from San Francisco's Castro district, otherwise known as the Gayest Place On Earth. I'll tell you nancy boys all about it tomorrow.

I'm not big into cologne-scented shaving creams. The ones I've tried tended to irritate and burn my skin when I shaved with them -- I have much better luck with floral scented creams like Trumper's Violet, Taylor's Rose, Avocado, and Lavender, and Proraso's Eucalyptus.

But I love the smell of some of these cologne-based shaving creams, especially Taylor's. And even though I've got more than enough creams in my rotation to keep things perpetually interesting, I've been itching to find a cologne-based shaving cream that shaves great and doesn't burn my skin.

I had the idea awhile back to mix up some Trumper's Spanish Leather cologne in some unscented shaving cream, to see if that would work well. It's my favorite of Trumper's many excellent colognes, but for some reason, they only use it to scent one other product -- a bath soap, not even a shaving soap. Between Trumper, Taylor and Truefitt & Hill, there are enough cologne-based English shaving creams to choke a goat, but no Spanish Leather, which is the best cologne to my sniffer that any of these companies makes.

So I bought a tub of Taylor's unscented shaving cream and went to town. I microwaved the tub of Taylor's for about 20 seconds just to loosen it up a bit, and then I poured eight tablespoons of Spanish Leather cologne on top of the cream and mixed the hell out of it with the handle end of the tablespoon. Screwed the top back on and stuck the whole thing in the fridge for an hour, for what reason I don't know but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, works for Jello, right?

I shaved with this concoction for the first time on Friday and got a fantastic shave. Smelled amazing, too, though maybe 8 tbsps. was a bit much -- you almost don't have to wear cologne after you shave with this cream. But lucky for me it didn't irritate my skin at all, and the shave was just as great as with Taylor's regular creams.

But I've learned that when it comes to creams and soaps, it takes several shaves in a row to tell whether something new is going to burn. So I shaved with the Spanish Leather shaving cream on Saturday, and then again on Sunday, and both times I got great shaves, with an Injector on Saturday and a Gillette Super Speed on Sunday. I have no idea why this stuff doesn't irritate my skin when so many other cologne-based shaving creams do, but maybe I just lucked out with a cologne that doesn't happen to react badly with my skin.

Next time I want to try making some shaving cream scented with Creed's Green Irish Tweed, another one of my favorites. Beloved wife once bought me some Creed GIT shaving soap that smelled wonderful but didn't shave all that well, so I wonder if mixing some of their cologne in with the unscented Taylor's cream will work as well as Trumper's Spanish Leather did.

I picked a hell of a time to mix up some custom shaving cream -- I just got some interesting creams and soaps in for review, and I want to get to them as soon as possible. But this Spanish Leather shaving cream is working out better than I'd even hoped for, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. If Trumper made this stuff for real I'd buy it on a regular basis.

I can get a great first shave with almost anything -- Feather DE blades, Tabac shaving soap, hell, I even tried shaving with just tepid tap water like Lee Marvin and it worked pretty well.

Once.

It's the second shave, though, that tells the truth. My face seems to put up with most anything once, but if a product isn't compatible with my skin, I get hit hard on the follow-up. Feather's DE blades shave me like a dream the first day and nick me the next. Tabac shaving soap lathered and shaved as well as my favorite high-end creams on the first try, but stung my skin the next morning.

So I was especially curious about these Swedish Gillette DE blades I got several 5-packs of from Auravita.com. The Swede shaved shockingly close in my old Gillette Super Speed razor on the first try, but just as smoothly as more forgiving blades like Merkur and Personna. In fact, shaved like a Feather but without the slight sting when your shaving gets sloppy and the blade angle gets too steep.

Tuesday I caught a follow-up shave with the Swede and got just as nice a shave as the first one. If anything, it was better. I usually notice most single-edge blades like DE and Injector blades shave better after a few shaves -- maybe they dull a bit and become smoother-edged, who knows? What I do know is that so far, the Swede is sweet.

One of the sad ironies of wetshaving is that Gillette, the most important company in the history of safety razors, today makes what many consider the very worst DE blades on the market.

I've tried the Gillette DE blades you can buy in drugstores and online here in the US, and they're awful. Rough, raspy, not fit for shaving at all. And to make matters worse, they're the most expensive DE blades you can buy. Some shavegeeks have even opined that Gillette grinds these blades lousy on purpose, to make the company's modern multi-blade Gillettes like the Mach3 seem better by comparison.

Me, I'm not much into conspiracy theories. A better bet is that Gillette's done the research and concluded that superior quality DE blades aren't a growth category in this country, much as the record industry abandoned the vinyl LP over a decade ago even though a small number of diehards still listen to them (yes, by all means ball up your fists and scream at your monitor that LPs sound better than CDs and DVDs -- after all, what do I know about sound?). So it doesn't make sense to put much effort into a product that doesn't sell even fractionally as well as the Mach3 and soon, the 5-bladed Fusion.

Meanwhile in Europe, where the people are smarter, traditional wetshaving is alive and well, because men there understand that it remains the very best and most comfortable way to shave your whiskers. And Gillette, maker of the worst DE blades sold in the US, sells a very different DE blade to its European customers.

My pal Andy in the UK first hipped me to the Gillettes sold over there, and how they were much, much better than the ones Gillette sells here in the US. The DE blades Andy buys at his local shop are made in Sweden, while the Gillette safety razor blades we get here in America say they're made in Russia but are said by some to be manufactured in India and Pakistan.

The two blades look identical. They even come in the same plastic dispenser. The only way to tell them apart, aside from the cardboard packaging (which, naturally, is blue for the Swedes and red for the Russkies), is that the Swedes come in 5-packs and the Russkies come in 10-packs.

But shaving with them is another story entirely. I ordered some Swedes from Auravita, a UK site with very reasonable shipping to the US -- when all is said and done, you can buy these Swedes for maybe a penny or two more per blade than the excellent Merkur Platinum DE blades sold by pretty much every wetshaving vendor listed in the links section.

Andy'd raved about the Swedes, and then Gordon raved about the Swedes, so I had to try them. And am I glad I did. In my 1940's Gillette Super Speed DE and with some Trumper Violet shaving cream, I got an incredibly close, incredibly comfortable shave. Of course, I said the same thing after my first shave with a Feather blade in this rig, so I'm waiting to see how shaves 2-7 turn out. But so far, so great.

These Swedish Gillettes are excellent, excellent blades, as good or better than any DE blade I've tried. That includes Merkur, Feather, Wilkinson, Personna, who am I forgetting? Those cheap Indian Zorricks. Okay, I haven't tried those yet. You got me. But I've tried everything else, and these Swedes are right at the top of the pile.

Are they the best? Hard to say. I can get as good a shave with Merkurs and Personnas, but it takes more passes with the razor. The Swedes shave as close as the Feathers but a lot smoother -- in fact, they remind me of a Merkur in their forgiving, easy shave. And yet somehow, they also shave closer. I don't get it. Can you really have both? Seems you can. These are the first DE blades to do it for me.

Like I said, this was shave #1 with the Swedes. The real trick is to shave like this for a week without issues. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile I'd like to point something out. Even ordering these Euro Gillettes from the UK and incurring shipping charges to mail them to the US, I still paid less for these Swedes than if I'd gone to my local drugstore and bought the Gillette DE blades sold here. It's beyond nutty.

I have a love-hate relationship with Feather's DE safety razor blades.

On the one hand, these Japanese safety razor blades are far and away the sharpest I've tried -- even in a mild-mannered razor, these things'll peel your skin off and leave your face feeling like you're four years old again.

But every time I've tried the Feathers, in every DE from Feather's own plastic DE razor to Gillette adjustables to the Merkur Vision, l wind up swearing I'll never touch these blades again. Because they're just too damn sharp for my skin. I know, I know, a blade is supposed to be as sharp as possible, to get all the whiskers and leave your skin feeling like a baby's butt. But there's sharp, and there's sharp. These Feather DE blades are sharpity sharp sharp.

The same thing happens every time I shave with these blades. The first shave is amazingly close, and I faceturbate (the stroking of one's face throughout the day after a particularly great shave) like a madman. But then on the second shave, everything goes to hell -- a nick here, a nick there, red dots on my neck, and my skin feels raw for the next few days.

I decided awhile back I just wasn't a Feather DE blade guy, so I went back to the Merkur Platinum blades I'd been using since I got my first safety razor. The Merkurs are plenty sharp but they're much smoother and more forgiving than the Feathers, and suit my skin better.

But of course, I can't let sleeping blades lie. And since I've been catching such amazing shaves with the Gillette Super Speed razor, of course I had to haul out the Feathers to see how the two of them got on. Why should I enjoy more than a week's worth of perfect, uneventful shaves without trying something potentially stupid? How much shaving bliss can one man take?

The Super Speed, being a non-adjustable DE, is quite a bit mellower as a shaver than Gillette's adjustable DEs, or especially the more aggressive Merkurs. It shaves close, but never too close, and you can go for as many passes as you like without beating your skin up. So I figured if any DE could tame the Feather blades into something I could use on a regular basis, it had to be the Super Speed.

The first shave with the Feather blade in the Super Speed was amazing. Lathering up with Trumper's Violet shaving cream and a Vulfix badger brush, the shave was nutty good. The clean swath this duo left in its wake was incredible. The scary-sharpness of the Feather blade, couple with the Gillette's mild blade exposure, was a match made in heaven, and I got the best shave I've had in weeks. Could the Super Speed be the One? The Tamer of the Feather DE blades?

'Course not! Sunday I shaved with the exact same rig and felt the sting of defeat. The shave was plenty close, but the skin did pay. A nick here, a nick there, redness on my neck, and a feeling of rawness that lasted through the entire Sunday Times and even the frenzied Google search the Style section sent me running to the Web for that turned out to not be a real product at all, dammit. I would've paid serious money for one of those.

I know some guys can shave with these Feather DE blades every day of the week and never miss a beat. But I can't. My skin can't take it. I wish it could. Because these blades are ungodly sharp, and in a class of their own. I don't like not being able to shave with the sharpest DE blades out there. Doesn't sit well. Sticks in my craw, frankly. But such is life.

The good news is, Saturday I got a package in the mail from Auravita -- the Swedish Gillette DE blades recommended by my pal Andy in the UK, the celebrated father of the Featherjector. Andy swears by the Swedes in his DEs, and now he's got Gordon hooked on them too, so it's time I gave them a serious try. The Gillette DE blades sold in the US are horrid, but the Swedes are made in a different factory and are said to be another animal entirely. This week looks like a perfect time to try them.

I've had many shaving brushes over the years, from The Art Of Shaving, Omega, Savile Row, Taylor, Trumper, Merkur, Simpson, Edwin Jagger, and probably a few others I can't recall. But my favorite shaving brushes of all are from Vulfix, the 15-employee brushmaker on the Isle of Man (pop. 75,049), nestled in the Irish Sea midway between the coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

Vulfix is the world's largest manufacturer of high-end shaving brushes. In fact, those Taylor, Trumper, and Savile Row brushes I've owned were all really relabeled Vulfixes -- the company makes brushes for most of the traditional English wetshaving firms, who put their own names on them.

I love Vulfix brushes because they're by far the best value on the market in a high-end shaving brush. Hand-made in the traditional manner, with the finest materials and to the highest standard, the Vulfix brushes also happen to be shockingly affordable compared to other top-shelf English brushes like those from Simpson, Kent, and Rooney.

But it wouldn't make any difference how moderately priced Vulfix brushes are if they didn't lather as well as other high-end brushes, and that's where the whole game gets upended. Because they're actually better than any of the other brushes I've used. Even the pricey Simpson Chubby I bought, whose mytho-iconic glare can blind any lovestruck shavegeek careless enough to gaze directly into its breach, sits in my drawer unused these days because I vastly prefer using Vulfix brushes that cost a third as much.

Wetshavers have been buying their Vulfixes from Ray DuPont at Classic Shaving for years, because he carries every brush in the line and has the best prices to boot. That's where I bought my Vulfixes, and that's where I refer anyone who asks me where they can get the best brush at the best price.

Now Vulfix has launched its own site, and they've begun selling brushes direct from the factory. This is big news for shavegeeks, for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, now you can learn quite a bit more about the company and what goes into its brushes, because its original site is pretty low on the meat meter and won't let you order anything. And of course, now you can buy brushes straight from Vulfix, which presumably means you'll get the lowest possible price.

Or does it? Comparing the same #377 in Super badger hair I bought from Classic Shaving last year, the Vulfix website charges a customer in the United States $110 and $19 for shipping, for a total of $129. The same brush ordered from Classic Shaving's site costs $89 with $5 for shipping, for a total of $94. Even if you happen to live in the UK, a stone's throw from the Vulfix factory, you still get a better price if you order from across the pond. How long Vulfix allows this situation to continue is anybody's guess.

But beyond the new website itself, Vulfix has another bombshell to drop -- they're now making and selling many of their classic brush models with genuine Silvertip badger hair, the rarest and most expensive grade of badger there is.

That thud you just heard is the sound of several dozen shavegeeks fainting and falling ass-backwards into a pile of dirty barber towels. To a true shavegeek, Silvertip badger is the Holy Grail. An entire mythology has grown up around this most hallowed of all badger bristle grades, fanned into a roaring fire by countless dealers and collectors who hold Silvertip up as the very best performing badger hair there is, and the only kind any self-respecting brush should have if it truly wants to be considered high-end.

Me, I say this: I own a genuine Silvertip brush. Two of them, in fact. And while they're certainly fine shaving brushes that lather as well as you'd ever want, they don't do a single thing better, in any way, shape, or form, than my least expensive Vulfix, a little #2233 in Super badger that cost $55, or about a third what a Silvertip version would.

Silvertip hair looks and feels different than Super (aka Best), Fine, and Pure grade badger. It's snow-white for most of its length before turning coal black at the roots (some brush manufacturers that are less honest than Vulfix call their brushes "silvertip" too, but if you see a dark ring about midway between the handle and the tops of the bristles, it's not Silvertip). And it's a little bit stiffer than the softer Super grade Vulfix brushes, with bristle ends that have a "prickly" or "pokey" feeling on your face. Some like this sensation. Me, I prefer the softer caress of a Super/Best badger brush. It's my favorite part of the entire shaving trip.

But in the end, a shaving brush only has one job, and that's to mix hot water and shaving cream into a rich lather, and then spread this lather on your face and neck in preperation for a shave. And on that count, I don't find my Silvertip brushes to be even infinitesimally better than even my least expensive Vulfix Super badger. They look and feel different, but they don't improve the experience, or the shave, in the slightest way for me.

That said, Silvertip is the top of the foodchain when it comes to shaving brushes, and it does have an undeniable shavegeek cachet about it. And if you prefer its looks and feel, and don't mind spending 2-3 times what the Super grade version costs, now you can buy a genuine Silvertip Vulfix direct from the factory. There isn't a better brush to be had at any price, but then that's also true of the far less expensive Super grade Vulfixes (good god I've made my point, why can't I shut up already?).

I'm glad to see a major wetshaving company like Vulfix launch such an informative website and begin selling heretofore unattainable high-end brushes to the public. I do wonder, though, how this will affect Vulfix's dealers. I'd love to see both parties prosper, but any time a manufacturer starts selling its products direct, it becomes a competitor to its own dealers, and that's a hard circle to square. If you've been thinking about ordering a Vulfix brush from Classic Shaving to take advantage of its lowest prices on the Web, it would appear that now is the time to, as Hank Ballard once said, git it while the gittin' is good.

Well, I'm back to shaving with my beloved 1940s Injector again, so I guess I can tell the story of how I came to start shaving with the "mystery razor" I've kept company with lo these past few weeks.

It all started when I was in Japan on a shoot last month. I'd taken along my roll-up wetbag packed with my travel shaving rig -- bakelite Injector, shortened Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blades, Vulfix travel brush, a tube of Taylor's Rose shaving cream, and a bottle of Trumper's Lime Skin Food -- and I was looking forward to some ungodly close shaves for the on-camera work I was doing (the better my shave, the less TV makeup I have to wear, which is always a good thing since I'm not Ace Frehley though I may wind up looking like him one of these days).

But for some reason, my shaves sucked while I was in Tokyo. I got nicks galore, even with a fresh blade, and the underside of my chin -- the dreaded "billy goat's gruff" which is the bane of my shaving existence -- became more raw with each day's shave. By the time I got back, I knew I needed to take a break from the Featherjector. Though I'm addicted to the ungodly close "skin peeling" shaves I get with this rig, the 14 hour flights and the drier weather forced me to take a step or two back and revisit a kinder, gentler shave.

I knew I wanted to go back to a DE, because I find these safety razors less aggressive and easier on the puss than the Featherjector, or even an Injector with the standard Schick or Personna blades. But which DE?

All my Merkur and Gillette adjustables were out. I can never stop dicking with the settings, and I always wind up nudging them to a higher settinng than's good for me, which is exactly what I was trying to take a break from in the first place. And even my non-adjustable Merkurs, like my favorite Merkur of them all, the mighty "Hefty Classic" (aka the HD), are more aggressive than the kind of easy breezy shave I was looking for so my skin could settle back down again.

Which left the non-adjustable Gillettes. I've never really taken a shine to the fixed-head Gillettes, because none of them seemed to shave very closely, at least compared to the adjustables. They're also, I don't mind saying, a little dinky looking -- when you finally wise up and graduate to a safety razor, you want a big, meaty steel job, not a slim-handled number that looks like a toy.

I wound up with a lot of these vintage non-adjustable Gillettes while winning large lots of razors on eBay. If a group of razors had three or four desirable models like the shorty Gillette adjustables and the bakelite Injectors, it usually also had a slew of these non-adjustable Gillettes as well, both the very early all-brass razors as well as the later "TTO" (twist to open) silo-head razors with the red (aggressive), black (fair to middlin'), and blue (what they gave to guys on suicide watch so they couldn't cut themselves) twister knobs on the bottom to tell you what kind of shave you were going to get. I'd clean them up -- I don't think boiling the germs off and then obsessively scrubbing an old razor you never plan to use with Bartender's Friend and a Radius toothbrush makes anyone a shavegeek, does it? -- and toss 'em in the drawer, with vague plans to unload them back on eBay someday.

But now that I was looking for a gentler razor after the Featherjector beat me up, I found myself rummaging through my razor drawer till I found the perfect little number for a fun, no-strings fling while I was on the rebound. I knew I wasn't going to get as close of a shave as I'd grown accustomed to with the Injector, but that was the point. I needed to slow down and take it easy for awhile. I wanted to get away from the high-maintenance cutting-edge and just shave like a regular guy again.

I settled on a slim-handled Gillette non-adjustable silo razor from the 1940s that's about as basic and undermasculinated as a safety razor can be. All you can do is twist the knob to open the silo head, drop a DE blade in, and twist the knob back the other way to close the doors and tighten the blade into place. You can't ogle this thing, you can't admire its heft in your hand, you can't leave it outside your medicine cabinet without visitors to your home wondering if an elderly relative is visiting. This old Gillette DE is about as cool as a brown cardigan. I know, because I own one, and oddly enough I get far less tail than Sinatra when I wear it around town.

The first time I shaved with the Gillette I popped in a fresh "no-name" Israeli Personna blade and my expectations couldn't have been lower, but damned if I didn't get a truly excellent shave. It was not only closer than I'd expected given the razor's almost sheepish blade exposure, but it was just about the most comfortable, irritation-free DE shave I've ever had. Normally I hit my limit with three passes from DEs, but this non-adjustable Gillette felt like it could go all night and never so much as raise a shave bump.

I started off lathering up with my usual English creams, but as the days passed and the shaves kept amazing me, I tried moving to a hard soap to see if its closer cut would work well with the milder DE. I found Classic Shaving's soap to be an ideal match with the Gillette -- a combo for the shavegeek ages. I did find myself going over areas of my face more times with this razor than I usually have to with a more aggressive DE or the Injector, but it didn't faze my skin a bit. This Gillette's so easy going it didn't matter how many times I swiped it over my whiskers.

Many's the time I've read comments by Gordon, the eminence grise of the shavegeek forums, where he's explained that it's the lower, less aggressive settings on an adjustable razor which ultimately give the best shaves. Of course, this advice is routinely ignored, as the geeks chase after the most hellishly aggressive razors trying to scrape their way to a baby's butt shave, and I've been right there with 'em. It just didn't seem logical to me that a mild-shaving razor could shave closer than one showing more blade.

But it can and it does. Much, much more comfortably than you're probably used to. You just have your technique down. Which this kind of razor will really help you learn if you don't already have it.

Okay, enough mystery. It's the Super Speed. And the days when you could pick up one of these razors for a song on eBay are officially over. Happy shaving.

Edwin Jagger is not Mick's nephew who's a CPA living in Coral Gables. Edwin Jagger is one of the UK's leading manufacturers of high-end razors, brushes, and traditional shaving accessories -- chances are you've seen its brushes at your local Crabtree and Evelyn (if you look at the label, you'll see "Made by Edwin Jagger").

Unlike many of the old-line English brands which have been around for centuries, Edwin Jagger is a relatively recent addition to the English wetshaving industry, having been established in Sheffield in 1988. This may explain why it's still very much a family run business, with more Jaggers running around the premises than rabbits in the Wallace and Gromit movie.

EJ is probably best known on these shores for its aftermarket Mach3 handles, which are much heavier and vastly more elegant than the stock plastic Gillette handle. And like it does for Crabtree and Evelyn, Jagger makes razors and brushes for quite a few other brands as well. Recently, Edwin Jagger sent me several of its products to try -- a faux-marble handled Mach3 razor, a Chatsworth DE safety razor, and a Chatsworth Super badger brush.

I've long since given up on the Mach3 -- it was the sustained beating my face took from this triple-blade razor that drove me to the traditional safety razor in the first place -- so I can't report on the Edwin Jagger aftermarket handle except to say that if you like the way the Mach3 shaves and you want something that approaches the timeless elegance of a classic safety razor, this EJ handle is a great solution.

I did shave at length with the Chatsworth safety razor and brush.
And what I found, to my surprise, was that far from simply being cosmetically different from the usual Merkur razor and Vulfix brush combo, these Edwin Jaggers actually have their own uniquely different "feel" when it comes to wetshaving.

The razor marries a stock Merkur DE head -- the same interchangeable head found on Merkur's Classic, Travel, Long-Handle, and 1904 safety razors -- to a heavy brass handle replete with hand-friendly curves and plated with blue-white chrome (gold, copper, and nickel finishes are also available). The brass handle is the biggest difference between this Chatsworth razor and the all-steel Merkur DEs. Brass is quite dense and heavy, but it's also a much softer metal than steel, which may explain the very different experience I had with this DE compared to the Merkurs. More on this in a minute.

The Jagger brush is a medium-sized, hand-knotted, Super badger brush roughly equivalent in size to a Vulfix #2234. EJ posts no specs, but I'd estimate the bristle knot to be 22mm, same as the Vulfix. It's a gorgeous looking brush, and a fine match for the Chatsworth razor -- this is gear you want to hang on a stand on your bathroom sink, not hide in a medicine cabinet.

I caught several shaves with the Edwin Jagger combo and came away intrigued by how different their character is versus the safety razors and brushes I usually use. The brush, in particular, has far and away the softest, most flexible badger bristles I've ever lathered up with. You think a Vulfix is a "soft" brush? Brother, it's practically made of cactus needles compared to this Jagger.

I'm not a fan of the stiffer-bristled brushes at all -- I own a Simpson Chubby #1 in Best Badger, and while it's the most expensive brush I own, it's my least favorite, mainly because I find its bristles too stiff. It takes more heave-ho to build up lather with it, and it doesn't feel nearly as nice on my puss as my Vulfix brushes.

The Edwin Jagger goes even further in this direction -- it feels positively pamperiffic on the face, but I don't think it would be the best choice for someone needing a firmer brush to whip up lather with a hard shaving soap, for example. Also, if you dig that scrubbing, "exfoliating" thing that a firmer brush does, you won't get that from the Jagger. This is a shaving brush for someone who likes to be softly pampered, not loofah'd.

But the most interesting experience I had with the Jagger rig was shaving with the Chatsworth DE. This is a really large, heavy razor -- much heavier, in fact, than even the biggest Merkur. It's the biggest, heaviest DE I've ever shaved with. A Merkur Vision feels like a Bic disposable after you hoist the Chatsworth.

I found that shaving with the Jagger was very, very different from shaving with any other DE razor I've come across. Whether it was due to the increased mass of the handle, or the inherently self-damping properties of its brass construction, shaving with the Chatsworth was like driving my wife's Lexus --- it muted most of the audible and vibrational feedback I usually get during a safety razor shave.

Instead of "feeling the road" -- hearing that cutting sound whenever the blade cut its swatch through my whiskers, and feeling the tiny vibrations through the handle and on to my hand -- the Chatsworth buffered me from all of this feedback, and simply went about shaving my skin steadily, silently, and expertly. The shave was great, and I didn't really feel a thing till it was all over.

Which begs the question: Is that a good thing? I guess it depends on how you like to drive, or shave. I like feedback when I shave -- I like hearing whiskers when they're being cut, and silence when that patch is clean and it's time to move on to the next row. I like feeling the little scritch-scritch vibrations that travel up the razor's handle and into my hand -- with the all-steel Merkur and Gillette DEs, it's easy to feel whether I need to go over an area again or not, because the razor doesn't buffer me from the vibrations the blade makes as it cuts hair. You don't really get much of this with the EJ razor. You just move it over your face, and you get a great shave.

I used to think that all of the aftermarket DE handles that borrowed the stock Merkur shave head were just cosmetically different than a standard Merkur razor, but the Jagger is a whole other animal. Despite sharing the same head, it feels and sounds nothing like any Merkur I've shaved with, and I've shaved with them all. No, this Jagger is a very different kind of DE, and I was really surprised at how different it was from the Merkur an Gillette DEs and Schick Injectors I usually shave with.

The Lexus analogy is the best way to describe the Edwin Jagger vibe. The Chatsworth brush is the softest against the skin I've lathered with yet, and the DE razor buffers you from much ofthe sound and physical sensation of actually cutting hair, bringing an almost Lexus-like feel to safety razor shaving for the first time in my experience.

The Edwin Jagger brush and razor would be perfect for someone who's fed up with the harshness of a modern multi-blade catridge razor and wants to get as far away from that paradigm as possible. The Edwin Jagger Chatsworths offer a softer, gentler, more luxurious alternative to the usual shavegeek brushes and razors, and are recommended for anyone wanting to shave above it all, in high style.