Razor Blades

[roadman65]

How long are cartridges supposed to last? I have found that after a week the blades lose their cutting capacity, yet my dad always got an entire month out of them.

[Scott5114]

Degradation tends to happen faster if water is allowed to stand on the blades. My guess is that your dad manages to leave the blades drier after he's done than you do. (Some people clean their blades with rubbing alcohol after use to displace the water.)

[Dirt Roads]

How long are cartridges supposed to last? I have found that after a week the blades lose their cutting capacity, yet my dad always got an entire month out of them.

Degradation tends to happen faster if water is allowed to stand on the blades. My guess is that your dad manages to leave the blades drier after he's done than you do. (Some people clean their blades with rubbing alcohol after use to displace the water.)

Agreed.  Clark Howard is famously known for being cheap with razors:  he uses 10-cent razors almost every day for a full year.  In my own cheap way, I've been trying to duplicate his efforts but never come close.  But I can get more than 3 months for each 10-cent razor (mine are so old that I actually paid less than 10 cents each).  My latest test is trying to see how long they last when using them occasionally.  The current set has been used once every three months, and it is now a bit rusty (I might still use it one more time).  I started this one just before COVID in January 2020.  I keep a small can of compressed air to use for both drying the blades and blowing out the heads of an electric razor (three-pack at Costco cost about 5 dollars on sale).

[kphoger]

I stopped using crappy plastic cartridges years ago.  Now I use a double-edge safety razor.  When purchased in bulk, each razor blade costs about 10 to 20 cents, and I can easily get five to ten good shaves from one blade.

My favorite blade, Gillette Nacet, sells on Amazon for about $12 per 100-pack.  If I shave twice a week and toss a blade after six shaves, that works out to nearly six years of shaving for those twelve bucks–at a cost of about two cents per shave.

Good luck finding even a 10-pack of Mach3 cartridges for that price.