Thread: Rinsing the blade

On Lynn's video when he rinses the blade he wipes it off. Before straight shaving, keeping the blade wet helps. I'm trying to figure which is best for me. Does anyone have insight as to reasons to keep the blade dry or not?
Thanks in advance

If you find a wet blade gives a better shave then I think you should keep it wet.

I used to feel the same way (old pre-straight habits die hard) but now I just wipe my razor lightly on a cloth wrapped over the edge of my sink to remove the bulk of the lather. I leave the very edge unwiped to protect it and leave a little lather to hopefully improve the start of the next stroke.

I think it's a personal thing, but if your razor rusts easily that may force your hand.

(Another thing is that if you oil your blade, water tends to bead up and run off of it, so wetting the blade isn't practical unless you clean the oil off.)

I rinse mine under the tap.

If it were easier, you could wipe the lather off of the
blade onto your palm, which you could then dispose of
however you wished.

Giovanni at razorandbrush.com used to stock this cool
rubber dish made for removing lather from a straight
blade... I wonder if anyone here has tried it before?

- Scott

I rinse and wipe. Sadly, I learned the hard way to rinse with the spine facing the faucet. It's not that I'm too lazy to just wipe the blade to remove the soap, it's that the warm blade feels nice against my skin. I do, in fact, wipe the blade after rinsing to get rid of any remaining soap residue and excess water.

I just rinse between strokes. I think there is way to much agonizing over these details, just do what works for you and stop worrying. Be careful and you won't damage your blade, and there is no way it is going to rust in 15-20 minutes, so just make sure you dry it off after you are done.

fcce,

Finally, the voice of reason is heard.

Just about any method of removing the lump of suds from to blade will work just fine so long as you don't damage the edge in the process. Worry about wet once the shave is done.

We need to agonize over more critical things like: are we sure strops don't have feelings too, or is my lather really happy.

Thanks for the replies.
Bruce, if PETA gets wind of your comment I'm sure they'll try to introduce legislation against stropping due to the "living conditions" of the strop. lol
FCC is probably right about a lot of things we tend to get anal about.
One thing I learned right away is not to rinse in a filled sink. Thats how I pretty much shaved before as I run out of hot water easily. So I'd heat up some water for the shave. Needless to say I rinsed being careful as I can and still touched the sink with the blade. So I just deal with what I can get out of the tap. Funny thing is that when the shave is over and I'm cleaning up the water seems to get a bit warmer out of the tap. No more old houses for me (:

Many posts here caution about damaging your blade when rinsing under the tap. I think that I have an easy fool proof solution to that problem. Here in Calif we are getting ready for heavy water use restrictions so I fill my sink with hot water and rinse my blade in the sink BUT, I always leave a wash cloth in the sink and water so there is little likelyhood of the blade hitting any thing but cotton.

I think the important thing is to make sure you don't have water dripping or running all over the razor - into the jimps, pin area, etc. Sometimes I wipe the razor down after rinsing, sometimes I don't.

Jordan

mkevenson, thats a good idea. Probably helps keep the water in the bowl longer as mine doesn't seal 100%.
jnich67, I have an all stainless wapi. I'm sure I have a bit of leeway on getting water on the scales but not sure about the pins etc. I still try to avoid getting into a bad habit about that though.