Merkur 180 long handle safety razor and a Dovo shavette.
If you had asked me what the best single-blade razor was, up until a couple of days ago I would have answered that the Dovo shavette was hands down the best single blade razor.
The Dovo shavette has the advantages of a straight razor, but doesn’t require the upkeep an maintenance of a straight razor such as stropping and honing. To shave with it you just pop in a blade and you are ready to go. The Dovo shavette doesn’t clog like a traditional multi-bladed cartridge razor. Since there is only one blade there is no other blade for the hair to get stuck between. On a side note, if you are shaving a couple of weeks of growth some hairs might get stuck between the blade and the insert that holds the blade, but these hairs are a lot easier to “un-stuck” than the hairs that become stuck in a cartridge razor.
The one drawback I didn’t like about the Dovo shavette was the mess it made. Now most people won’t have this problem since they probably don’t have as irregular of a shaving pattern as I do, and most likely would never shave their head with a shavette.
When ever I shaved a few weeks of hair growth off my head, the shaved hair would fall off my scalp and onto my neck and shoulders. Most of the hair I can manage to get it to drop into the sink, but I invariably end up with shaved hair all over my neck and shoulders. I just assumed that this was a cost of shaving my head with a shavette and hadn’t found a better way. The only alternative was to either buzz my head with clippers(makes a mess) and then shave it with a cartridge razor or take an extremely long time shaving with a cartridge razor(45 to 60 minutes.)
A few days ago I shaved my head for the first time with a safety razor. At first all that I noticed was that the hair was getting clogged between the blade and the guard of the Merkur 180. I was expecting this to happen, so it didn’t really bother me. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get the safety razor unclogged.
With the safety razor it only took 22 minutes to get 3 weeks of hair growth shaved off. When I did a second pass against the grain, it only took me 10 minutes to shave my head. That’s pretty good considering it was my third time ever shaving with a safety razor(face included), and first time ever shaving my head with a safety razor.
It wasn’t until after I was done shaving that I realized what made the safety razor slightly better than the Dovo shavette: lack of a mess. Since the hair gets caught in between the guard and the blade, there isn’t a chance for the hair to fall off of my head and onto my neck and shoulders. As a result, when I was done shaving my head all of the shaved hair was in the sink and no where else.
Add to it that the blades are extremely cheap(anywhere from 4 to 50 cents a blade)and will last for multipe shaves, and I think that is cause to make it the best single-blade razor when you take into account everything.
What do you think is the best single-blade razor?