Rxiern: Save Money by Resharpening Your Safety Razors
Art by Colin Wells. Check out his Instagram here and his webcomic here!
There will be new images every day from now until the next story page on the 13th of January 2020. So, check in each day and be guaranteed to see something new! (We make no promises on the quality though we are at least trying to do our best.)
TL;DR version in advance: There’s easy ways to sharpen your disposable razors so they last much longer instead of throwing them away the first time they get blunt. No expensive equipment required!
Even just drying and cleaning them without resharpening them will still get you more usage per razor.
Either way, you save money and with more disposable income … well, if there was a webcomic you’d like to help out a bit more now …
OK, yesterday’s spiel got a bit longer than expected (you’d think I would have learned by now) but if you want to read a more detailed explanation, you can read it here and here but the upshot is that under the guise of some money saving tips for the reader and then asking said reader to consider giving us a fraction of that to help us with the making of this webcomic, we really would like to have a conversation in the comments about ideas to help us increase Exiern’s income.
Ideally, we’d like to at least break even but at the very least, reduce the deficit. So, please feel free to chime in with your ideas below!
Right, today’s income saving measure is quite a good one and from years of personal experience, it really does seem to work to some degree at least.
The idea? Instead of just throwing away a disposable razor the moment it starts getting blunt, there’s ways to extend its life by a quite a lot. As per our viewing statistics, there’s a chance our audience might potentially be using quite a lot of these on their faces (except for those following Time Magazine method Number #8 as per the link below – would you believe this is actually Robert Redford and not Zack Galifianakis? Yes, I was pretty floored too!).
(Now, as for women and razors, I’ve heard a scurrilous rumour that for a long time, razors for women are actually functionally no different than equivalent ones for men and are marked up purely to make more money than otherwise through cynical marketing strategies. I couldn’t imagine our corporate overlords doing such a thing but if true, this would obviously be an additional angle for savings at the initial point of purchase, you would think.)
Time Magazine does a better job of explaining all this than I could, so I’ll let them take it from here first, so click on the link if you want to know more, complete with very useful videos.
So, to summarise some key points from the above link:
Even just drying your razors alone will extend their life.
Cleaning the accumulated debri in a razor after each use will extend its life.
… and that’s before we even get to the sharpening.
I personally use a Razor Pit but the alternatives can be an old pair of jeans or even your forearm, apparently as per the Time Magazine link.
Basically, you just have to push the razor in the opposite direction to shaving along whatever you’re using to sharpening it on for as many times as it takes to have the razor no longer massacring your face when you use it again.
I’ve found it has extended razor blades to at least past a 6 month lifespan, eventually the sharpened ones aren’t as good as the brand new ones in terms of close they shave and how smooth they feel at which point, I just buy a new one when they’re on special.
Other things I’ve found is that it’s probably better to shell out a bit more initially for the razor because the resharpening tends to be more effective and especially repeat ones – for much longer at that. Also, Gillette Mach 3 razors seem to be good for about a year, at which point the handle decides to snap. Luckily, the blades are transferable. So far, the metal handle of the Gillette Fusion seems to be faring better for longer.
So, to recap – I think you can extend razor blade use from as little as a few to days to at least months by (in order of amount of effort required):
Just drying the blades
Cleaning the blades
Resharpening the blades
Now, with all that money you’re now saving thanks to this handy hint, if you feel like sending us an extra dollar or so, we’d be ever so grateful!
See you back here tomorrow with our next money saving idea!
I think the Time Magazine article missed a couple of options:
1. Use a razor *designed* to be reusable instead of disposable (not sure if non-“safety” razors can still be bought)
2. Use an electric razor (which might be a special case of the above option, and not really available in the Exiern world, but possible for readers) – I haven’t shaved my beard all the way off since 1996, but when I did, I used an electric.
I do own two twin-edged blade razors that are essentially self-resharpening by flipping the blade upside down regularly. I find it a good compromise between expensive, plastic-heavy “safety” razors and slit-your-throat-open-if-you-shave-before-your-morning-coffee fully resharpenable razors. These are still available by the way, just not in your average supermarket.
Well, they were called ‘Slit-throat razors’ for a reason 😛
As for the safety razors, they can be fairly easily ‘cleaned’ by using an old manual toothbrush to clean the hair and skin out from between the blades, just keep using them until the lubricant strip is gone