When I started shaving in the sixties we used safety razors with a single two sided blade. We would shave using one side and the other without noticing which side we were using. Soon the blade would get blunt and we would use a new blade. Then came pyramid power....



First a little history:

Before Mr. Gillette invented the safety razor, men used cut throats to shave and ladies did not shave at all. Men would sharpen their cut throats after each use and a good cut throat would last for ever. The problem was that you had to sharpen the cut throat each time and it was names cut throat for a reason, it would cut you very easily.

The safety razor was a great advance and was fantastic for Mr. Gillette as he could sell the blades for the rest of his customer's life. In fact selling the razors was so profitable that Gillette gave away millions of razors to soldiers in world war I in order to persuade them to use the safety razor. It was Gillettes patriotic duty and helped the companies bottom line to no end.

A few years later someone invented a razor blade sharpener which could allow you to use a single blade for a year or so. This would have cut into Gillette's profits and so the story goes, Gillette bought the patent of the sharpener and threw the invention away.

In the ensuing years there were similar machines built but they never caught on. In the sixties the idea of 'Pyramid Power,' was in vogue and people would put their razor blades in cardboard pyramids and low and behold after a while their blades would be sharpened by the 'Pyramid Power.'

Soon the fad like most sixties fad was over and no more 'Pyramid Power.' However, skeptics had discovered that if you left the razor in a cardboard cylinder it would sharpen just as easily as leaving it in the pyramid. Soon others discovered that just not using the razor for a few weeks would sharpen it again.

What was going on? The edge of the razor is crystallized steel. When you use the razor it becomes blunt (at the molecular level the crystals become deformed). If you leave a razor blade alone in a dry environment (no pyramids needed) it will resharpen (the crystal deformation go back to the original shape - the crystals have memory of how they should be). It is as simple as that.

No we have multiblade razors with very expensive blades. It is easy to save money. When your blade becomes blunt change the blade but do not throw it away. Keep it safe and later when the new blade is blunt you can go back to the original blade and be happily amazed to discover it is sharp again (not as sharp as when you first bought it but still reusable).

I rotate four or five blades and get about three times life from each blade than if I just throw them out. This way I save the planet as well as saving money.

For more about this and similar issues go to .