The right tool for the right job: an important life lesson, to be sure - but does it hold true for shaving? It’s easy to be cynical and suspicious, because technique matters more than anything where getting a good shave is concerned. The manufacturers don’t want you to know that, of course - they’d rather you continue to shave any old way, so they can sell you the next big expensive “improvement” in razor-blade design. There’s no money to be had in telling people how to shave well, but it’s easy to get stinking rich by selling people the dream that your latest-and-greatest product will make it happen.

Do razors really matter? Yes - up to a point.
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There’s a certain fascination that can be generated old stuff, or at least antiques. Who owned my seventy-year-old safety razor before me? Where has it been? What have my 1930s Sheaffer fountain pens written? Where have they been? What have they done?
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It was a year ago this month that I first shaved with a low-tech safety razor, an event I wrote about at the time. In the intervening twelve months, I’ve learned a lot about what used to be a painful and unpleasant near-daily necessity for me, and which remains a burden for a lot of people.
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Now for something a little different; while people flock here to read about Fred Phelps, or about a military manual, about which I hope to post more in a few days, a little nugget of pearly wisdom I was reminded of this morning, while shaving.
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Back when I was ignorant about the finer points of wetshaving and associated paraphanalia, I accidentally bought a tube of Palmolive’s Lather shaving cream. What can I say, it was cheap. To compound my mistake, I didn’t read the instructions, and just assumed it was, you know, like every other shaving cream out there.

Um, no.
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