On Electric Shavers

Thoughts and input on anything related to wet shaving or men's grooming.
Boyextraordinare

On Electric Shavers

Post by Boyextraordinare »

A few days ago, and without high hopes, I pulled out and performed a shave on my face with an inexpensive foil electric I had laying around.

To my surprise I had - with a LOT of effort - I got an exceedingly close, near BBS shave. The trick with these foil shavers, of course, is that the hair has to be stubble-length to begin with, and the passes, in order to be effective, need to be exactly against the grain.

End result: Near BBS. No irritation. No ingrowns. Quite impressive, on the whole, but time-consuming. Might end up using it on areas where I continuously get ingrows - if, with more practice (gentler touch) their occurance doesn't subside.

Now I've never used a rotary. How do they work?

The foil shaver is annoying because you really have to feed the hair to what lays beneath the foil. Hair gets lifted then sliced.

I remember liking the foil system for about a month or so a few years ago because I should shave easily and haphazardly, getting the closest results I've ever had. The problem was how long it took to perform a shave, so I switched back to one pass WTG shaving with Gillete Good News! disposables and Bic Sensitives, both of which in my estimation performed equally, but I prefered th Bic due to its significantly lower price.

Now if I can only go ATG without any problems...
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Squire
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Post by Squire »

Rotary works fine, used one for convenience about 40 years ago, as did my college roommates, except every three days or so we had to use a real razor to clean up the loose ends.
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bernards66
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Post by bernards66 »

The rotary numbers didn't work well for me, except when I was very young. After that the basic foil models, like you describe, worked better. I used a basic Braun for a number of months daily in the '90s. I had no real problems with it, but the shave was never as close as my usual DE shave, plus, it was excruciatingly boring and unsatisfying. I went back to my DE, brush, and soap.
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Post by CMur12 »

I can do pretty well with a foil-type shaver, but, as in Gordon's case, the rotary shavers have never worked for me.

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Post by notthesharpest »

I don't know what I was doing wrong, but the time I used foil shavers I got a lot of burn. If I use an electric now, it's a rotary. The shave is not close at all, more like a very short haircut, and I just live with that if I need to use the electric.
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Post by Occam »

My last foray into electric shavers was a Braun 360 with self cleaning dock... which I used for 6 months or so... good results but still the occasional low lying hair which would escape cutting no matter what... and it would irritate me... the vibration and sometimes nicks!
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Post by Gene »

Another classic YMMV!

I have owned and used foil and rotary electrics. I always preferred the rotary - less irritation and closer shave.

I seem to recal that the best rotary razors had a type of lift and cut (double blade action?) head style.

The beauty of the electric, as stated above, is that you can do any pass, in any order, that you like - and against the grain is the best method. Also - a slight circular orbit on your face helps (or at least it did for me).

But - I'm with everybody else on this - as close as it was I never got the sam BBS feel with the electric as I do with a DE.

Yesterdays shave a classic example - I have a pretty heavy beard - but my morning shave lasted fine all the way to bedtime last night - still resonably smooth!
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Post by BeatlesFan »

There's a good shave board about electrics: http://iavbbs.com/gflinn/

And nobody ever said a truer word than Gene about the YMMV. Wet shavers have all these individual preferences about blades, soaps, creams, etc. Likewise, for electric shavers, some guys swear by rotaries and some love foils. It's really hard to generalize, but my personal opinion is that rotaries are best for guys with curly hair and with a lot of swirls in their beard growth patterns. Foils (I think) work better for guys with straighter hair beard growth patterns, and for men with sensitive skin. But -- absolutely for sure -- YMMV. Nobody really knows what's going to work for anyone else, and the only way to find out is to test it.

Most electric razor companies have a 30 day trial period, so if you don't like it after testing, you can return it and get your money back.

I don't know anything about rotaries, but I understand that Norelco / Phillips is the leader in the segment.

Finally, I can get a good shave with a foil, but in the end DE shaving seems to be healthier for my face, and is certainly more enjoyable for me.
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Post by MadAussie »

I have a norelco phillips rotary, it has not been used in about two years? The thing I remember most, is I would have to really push it down on my skin to get a close result and that often gave back a dry skin feeling, rough, grated.

it felt like a very uncouth shave.. I used it for about 3 months..
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Post by AFG »

I could never tolerate electric razors of any sort. Never a very close shave and worse razor burn than I ever experienced with a blade. No, I'd much rather go back to using a cartridge razor than ever trying an electric again.
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Post by EverSharp »

I have both remington foil razors and a norelco triple head. As an experiment,I used then both alternately for a year before I returned to wet shaving which I have done with all razor types for too long to admit too.
The foil razor is generally recognized as the closer of the two types while the rotary is more comfortable and slower. The rotary with its lift and cut blades will inevitably lead to ingrown hairs especially on the neck. Though the rotary shaves the neck easier on a daily basis.

The reason I returned to wet shaving is that while I could get a BBS feel with either after some practice I would get shadows by midday. I use a straight razor exclusively now and my shaves look presentable well into the late evening. Additionally, a blade shave of any type leaves me with a much cleaner, refreshed feeling face.
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Post by IanM »

I used a Panasonic foil electric for my daily shave until I found this place!

It didn't give me any problems, but, similar to Squire, I needed to wet shave wth a Mach 3 twice a week to catch the bits I'd missed. Shaving also became a boring chore, so I decided to do somehing about it.

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Post by ichabod »

When I used an Braun foil electric I would always find missed hairs when I got to wrok. I would end up in the bathroom at work with my Sensor Excel, cleaning up what the foil missed.

I also found that once a hair reached a certain length the foil would miss it entirely. I used this to my advantage at places like the edge of sideburns.
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JP
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Re: On Electric Shavers

Post by JP »

Boyextraordinare wrote: Now I've never used a rotary. How do they work?
You might like a rotary shaver better. They are designed so that the cutting blades move over slots that are fanned out in a 360 degree pattern around the head. The real trick to using is to work with the design and shave with a circular motion over the skin. That allows the hair to get up into those slots better, resulting in a faster, closer shave.

My biggest problem with an electric is that dry skin is real must with them, otherwise they pull the skin which results in a really crappy shave.
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Post by Rufust445 »

I started shaving in the '60's with a 2-rotor Norelco while still living at home. Once away on my own, I found a foil shaver made in Austria on sale at Sears. Looked like a Remington foil shaver except for the color of the case and the Sears logo. I was able to get reasonably close with it, but found good prep to be an issue. Dirt and exfoliated skin tended to get under the foil, requiring frequent cleaning.

I received a 1967 Travel Tech in a travel kit as a gift. Tried that with some Schick Plus Platinums, and Wilkinsons in the early '70's, liked the results. I was able to wash my face and shave it at the same time. The only trouble was that I was working on technique strictly on my own, without the Web resources available today. Back then I had a bump on the upper left corner of my mouth, and one morning, in trying to get close on the upper lip, sliced a good portion of that bump off.

It hurt like hell, but healed OK and was cheaper than plastic surgery. By that time the Wilkinson Bonded Razor was advertised in the newspapers, which seemed like the latest and greatest in "high tech' back then. From there it was various Gillette, Wilkinson and Schick cartridge razors and disposables, until I was down to my next-to-last Mach3 cartridge, and railing at the price of replacements.


I discovered the Today Show segment on the Web earlier this year, found the travel kit with the 1967 Travel Tech and a 5-pack of NOS Wilkinson blades, and the rest is history.
Boyextraordinare

Re: On Electric Shavers

Post by Boyextraordinare »

JP wrote:
Boyextraordinare wrote: Now I've never used a rotary. How do they work?
You might like a rotary shaver better. They are designed so that the cutting blades move over slots that are fanned out in a 360 degree pattern around the head. The real trick to using is to work with the design and shave with a circular motion over the skin. That allows the hair to get up into those slots better, resulting in a faster, closer shave.

My biggest problem with an electric is that dry skin is real must with them, otherwise they pull the skin which results in a really crappy shave.
See, that's what I'm curious about the rotaries. Do they have blades in them that sweep 360 degrees? If so wouldn't that mean, whatever direction, you went with them, you'd cut hairs?

Every foil I've opened has something odd in it that I can't begin to describe. But the thing with the foil is it gives a top-of-the-range, near-BBS shave provided that I go directly ATG in every spot, which on me is a pain, as my beard pattern is all over the place.

That's why in the end I prefer razors. I can't get as close as I can with a foil (as of now) but the process is far far faster.

I also like foils don't cause exfoliation of the skin as I like to handle that on my own. I guess a super-light touch w/ a sharp blade could do the same, but not as well.

What I might want to look into is the Seiko Cleancut. It's a foil head, with a rotary blade inside - making me think it would cut in in any direction?
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Post by bernards66 »

BXT, The gents here don't use electrics, although many of us have fiddled with them at one time or another in the past. There is a strictly electric shaver forum if you want to get into the fine points of various models, etc. I can't remember their address off hand, but it's out there.
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Post by divotmax »

My Dad gave me an old flat-head Remington plug-in electric when I was about 16. The thing sounded like a helicopter engine winding up, and if the bathroom window was open when I used it, the neighbor's dog would bark. My Mother also used it to trim the lawn, I think. With any kind of a heavy beard, like not shaving for a couple of days, the beard would put a drag on the motor and it would slow down, doing more pulling than cutting. The foils then were not as thin as now, so you had to put some pressure on the head to get the whiskers to reach the cutting block; that's called dermabrasion now when it takes off skin also. It also had square edges, not as rounded and smooth now, so in a tight spot like under the neck, the thing would bite like a vampire. The head would also heat up pretty quickly, so you couldn't fiddle around with a shave, you had to keep moving before it could leave grill marks on your cheeks. I can still remember the jerk on television claiming that it "shaves as close as a blade." So will a belt sander, but there are other considerations. I stayed with a superspeed and Barbasol for a long time after that.
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Post by yowser »

I used one of the braun self cleaning dock electrics for a while, never a close bbs shave. The real problem I had with all electrics I used was I never liked shaving every day. If I would skip the electric would pull at most of the hairs on my neck. OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By far the most satisfying shaves I have gotten have been the last two weeks with the DE. I remember a friend in HS talking about using an old school razor and thinking he was crazy, now I think about him every time I lather up and break out the 55 red tip.
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Post by SirCur »

I used an electric for years. First, a Remington foil shaver - yeah, the one that shaves "as close, as a blade ...". Later, a Braun foil shaver (and another after that). All pretty good, but, a few comments. First, they will shave you nice and close, but it takes time. Second, they all heat up, and are actually quite uncomfortable. Third, you must clean them meticulously (I would clean mine thoroughly after each shave). Fourth, you must press down fairly hard to get a close shave. Finally, there are always a few, stray hairs that just won't be cut.

I didn't mind these when using them - just didn't have a decent point of comparison. Really, only 1 problem - ingrown hairs.

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