2 Razors That Challenged My Preconceptions + A Brand Profile

Feb 10, 2021 2:34 am

Apologies if you received this email twice. I made an error at my email provider earlier today and this email wasn't sent out to the entire group.

What Your Father Didn't Teach You About Shaving

A Razor I Shouldn't Like But Do

I bought a Battle Brothers MkII aluminum double edge razor some time ago but it's been laying in its box until recently. I should have tried it sooner.

A while back I wrote about the most popular double edge (DE) safety razors, by sales (this is different than Sharpologist's"Best" DE razor list). My research included an examination of what razors were most popular specifically on Amazon.

One of those razors was the Battle Brothers MkII Double Edge Razor. It's an aluminum razor, made in the U.S.A (Grand Rapids, MI to be specific). For some reason looking at it on Amazon it struck me as more than just another clone DE razor so I decided to buy one

I received it and gave it a cursory visual examination. My initial reaction was "meh. Too light and it looks like it has too much blade exposure for my taste." So I put it up in my "try this eventually" drawer. Where it stayed.

For over a year.

When I finally tried it I discovered it's a razor that I shouldn't like, but I do: the specs say it's too light and too aggressive for my preferences. However in practice I find it quite pleasant!

Click/tap here to read more.

Castle Forbes

You've seen Castle Forbes sponsoring these emails and ads on the Sharpologist website. I've been wanting to profile the well-known wet shaving brands for a while now and since I have a great contact (like...the owner...) I'm starting with them.

This is the first installment of what I hope will be a series of articles profiling the major brands in wet shaving.

Click/tap here to read more.

The Leaf "Twig" Razor

Leaf's new Twig single edge razor that uses snapped-in-half double edge razor blades is now generally available after a very successful fundraising campaign!

I was involved with testing some Twig prototypes before and during the crowdfunding campaign. It had some really interesting design ideas and by the time the crowdfunding campaign was ready they had some real community buzz going.

The first thing that I noticed about the production Twig razor is the build quality. It looks good and "feels" substantial in the hand--noticeably better than any of the prototypes I tried.

The next most noticeable thing for me is blade loading. Loading a half DE blade can be a bit tricky since the blade is comparatively small. Loading a Twig may not be quite "stupid simple" but it's very easy: get the blade close to the correct position and the magnetic head base holds the blade so you can just use the tip of your finger against a back corner of the blade (opposite the blade edge) to move it into position (popping into a post on each side of the head base).

How's it shave?

Click/tap here to read more.

Be Sure To Check Sharpologist's Cornerstone Content

Comments