I don’t know how it happened to be so but over thousands of years of evolution, Asian males have developed a tolerance towards growing facial hair. From the northern reaches of Mongolia, to the outer edges of Japan to the southern boundaries of Indonesia, there’s literally millions of Asian males walking around who’ve never had [...]

When I came to Taiwan one of the major decisions I made was to bring my Surly Long Haul Trucker bicycle with me. This decision meant that I was left with less then 5kg of storage capacity, including the weight of my suitcase. Effectively I was left with about 2kg of carrying capacity for everything [...]

by scottfieldstein The purpose of shaving lather is to lubricate between a shaving blade and your skin. What I’ve found is, regardless of whether you’re using a shaving cream or soap, there’s a definite sweet spot you want to hit when mixing up your lather. This spot obviously varies between soap/cream manufacturer but once you [...]

One of the biggest dilemmas I had when I switched over from cartridge shaving to using a double edged razor was working out how to come up with adequate pre-shave preparation without having a shower. I cycle to work and I’m lucky to have shower facilities there so it didn’t make much sense to shower [...]

I was a bit nervous using the Merkur Super Platinum blade as I hadn’t read good things about them. Having used the one that came with my Merkur HD razor months ago for my first double-edged razor shave, I remember overall getting a decent shave but badly cutting up my lower right neck (my trouble [...]

The general consensus I’ve read on the Feather Platinum blades is that they are without question the sharpest blades available. The general recommendation I’ve heard is to use the less sharp blades first and gradually work your way up. After just over two months and the ability to get consistent clean shaves 5 days running [...]

I started wet shaving about two months ago and one of the first things I learnt is that shaving with cold lather is horrible. Cold lather undoes a good pre-shave preparation and can make the lather feel like slime on your skin. One morning after shaving I tried to describe it to a female friend [...]

There seems to be some confusion between Personna Platinum red blades (denoted by the red box) and another Personna blade more commonly referred to as the Israeli Personna as it’s made in Israel. From what I can gather the red variety I got in my Mensbiz sampler pack are made in the US. The blades [...]

From what I’ve read Astra Superior Platinum blades are supposed to be somewhat sharper then the Derby’s I’d previously used. Whilst this might be true so far the Astra’s have had the worst durability of any of the blades I’ve used. Astra Superior Platinum blades are platinum coated and made in Russia. If the platinum [...]

Derby blades were the first double edged razor blades I used after the pre-supplied Merkur Platinum blades that came with my Merkur HD razor. They are billed as having ‘chromium ceramic platinum tungsten and polymer coated edges’ (ie. triple coated) and are made in Turkey from stainless steel sourced from either Japan, England or Sweden.