You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk powered by Sharpologist.com where we’re dedicated to preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host Joe Borrelli and today is December 30th, 2024.

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Today on the Show:

Year In Review 

Happy New Year! 

What’s In-Store for 2025  

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Year in Review  

1/15/24: 

• The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving out on Kindle
• Shavemac Discontinued the Custom Shave Brush Option.
• Proof Razors, SE with a ½ DE Blade 
• Maintaining a clean beard 

2/12/24:

• Going down the rabbit hole in terms of collecting 
• Pear Flexi Razor ( Rex Ambassador clone) 
• Leap Year Restraints over at B&B
• AOS closing the last Brick & Mortar store in Florida

3/11/24

• Meet-up at Maggards 
• One Month with a Hart Steel Straight Razor 
• “How Failure Can Lead to Success” Interesting Article on Sharpologist 
• Superior Cuts 3-D Printed Razor. Is this the Future?
• St Patrick’s Day is Next Week . Get your Green On

4/8/24

• Happy Eclipse Day!!
• Bottom Dial Gillette Selling for over $2200! 
• New Bench Strops from Amazon
• Paladin Brushes Slowing Down the Pace 
• Cleaning Your Shaving Brushes… Do You Need to Do it? 
• One Month With Tabac Challenge! (For Me) 

4/22/24

• Barn Find Gillette Bottom Dial 
• Email: Are Simpson Brushes Worth It 
• May Is Dedication to Single Edge Razors Month
• A Month with Tabac comes to an End

5/8/24

• May Is Single Edge Razor Month !!
• How it Started: The First SE Razor Lather Catcher 
• Shovel Heads. How you can use them
• Not All Blades are Created Equal.  How to Choose the Right Blades 
• Gillette Double Ring ebay NOS 
• May Is Dedication to Single Edge Safety Razors

5/24/24

• May Is Single Edge Razor Month !!
• Auto Strop Razors and How They Work
• Injector Razors: Schick was a Major Competitor
• Modern Artist Club Style Razors 
• May Is Dedication to Single Edge Safety Razors

6/10/24

• Happy Father’s Day
• Single Edge Month Finale!  Modern SE Razors 
• OneBlade 
• Modern SE Razors 
• Father’s Day Gift Guide

6/24/24

• New Stuff From Wiborg Shaving 
• TI Glide Single Edge Razor 
• Old Soaps Worth Trying 
• Now is the time to Purchase on Ebay

7/22/24

• Return of the Sabre from Blackland 
• What Are “Frankenrazors”? 
• Trying Gillette Foamy with a Straight Razor? 
• Gillette Still Sends out a Free Razor on Your 18th Birthday

8/5/24

• Been Using a Boar Brush 
• New Double Edge Blades from Razor Emporium 
• Oliworks Hand Built Razors 
• WoolBlades Straight Razors 

8/19/24

• Rare Gillette in Big Auction (Techmatic)
• One Stone Honing the trusty Dovo 
• Brand New release from Barrister and Mann for Fall 2024!
• Fall Season is Coming 10/28/24
• Plant Based Synthetic Brush

9/4/24

• Fall is in the Air
• Top Pumpkin Spice Scents 
• New Article (Are Vintage Straight Razors Worth Restoring?)
• Alum Block  More uses than you might think! 
• Fall Season is Coming 10/28/24

9/23/24

• Best Shave Soaps under $10 Article 
• Modern Guide To Wet Shaving Now Available at Pastuer’s Pharmacy!!
• Murray Carter is Shutting Down His Ecommerce site
• Darkfall is Back

10/28/24 

• Fall Seasonal Special

11/11/24

• Fall Seasonal Special Recap 
• One Blade Safety Razor Blades  Finally An Alternative to the Feather FHS-10 Blades
• Traveling With Your Wet Shaving Gear for the Holidays
• Rocnel Sailor 2024 is Announced! 
• Year in Review Episode will be 12/30/24.

12/9/24

• Trip to Pasteur’s in NYC
• Holidays are here Choosing the right Gift!
• Traveling With Your Wet Shaving Gear for the Holidays
• Vintage Wet Shaving Ads

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What’s In-Store for 2025  

2025 is upon us.  I have a few plans for this upcoming year for the cast.

• More consistent schedule. Announcing in advance if there is a schedule change. 
• Dedication Episodes to Vintage and Modern Gear (This proved to be popular over the past two years) 
• Product Reviews
• 10 Year Podcast Anniversary!  Yes it all started in 2015! 
• Thank you all for the support and I look forward to delivering content in 2025!

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Our show is powered by Sharpologist.com, “What Your Father Didn’t Teach You about Shaving” 

Special Thanks to:

Mark aka Mantic 59

Most of All……….YOU!!!!

Don’t forget to check out my blog site www.shavestraightandsafe.com  for the tips and interesting wet shaving stories!

Please feel free to contact me at [email protected]  

Subscribe to my You Tube Chanel for videos regarding some interesting wet shaving content.

Don’t forget to check out my book “The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and at Pasteur’s Pharmacy in NYC. 

If you’re a vendor and would like to be featured on the show please contact me!!

Next Show: 1/13/25

Transcript (Machine-Generated)

You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk, powered by sharpologist.com, where we’re dedicated preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host Joe Borelli, and today is December 30th, 2024. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast on our final show of 2024. That’s right. This year is pretty much over and done, So it’s time to move on 2025. But before we do that, I always like to go over the previous year or the year that we’re still in and just do like a little bit of a recap year and a review episode just to go over all the shows that we had and everything has changed.

And it does impact a lot, or impacts me a lot when I do this show, because I realize how much has changed in 1 year. You know, if you go back at the first show in January, we had back on the 15th of January, and then you see what’s happened. So many things have changed, and so many different vendors and stuff. There’s so much different things that happened. It’s really fun to go through it and reminisce a little bit and go over it again just to see this whole year in a whole. It gives me like an outline of what I what the podcast has done and what to do for the next year and what worked, what didn’t work, and what we’re gonna work on moving forward.

So for this show today, we’re gonna go over every episode for the year, it’s not that many, don’t worry, it’s not gonna be that long. And then what’s in store for 2025? Like what are we gonna do that’s new? What do you guys wanna see? So I do encourage you to send me some emails and some feedback if you want, or some stuff you wanna go over, and I will definitely consider it. If not, go for it and run right through it, right? And go and find what that item is that you’re looking for or that vendor and do some research on it and find out some more stuff.

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the show. So just looking at the first show of the year, which is the 15th of January, we went over a few things, like example, the modern guide of straight razor shaving in my book was released on Kindle the first week of January, so that was big news for me at least. We talked about Shave Mac, I don’t know if you guys remember this 1. Shave Mac discontinuing the custom shave brush option and only going through retailers now for selling. Proof Razors debuted their SE with the half of a D blade, we talked about that, and then maintaining a clean beard and how to make sure to do it.

Funny part is, when this show came out, I had a beard and I no longer have a beard. So it’s funny, this is a real aha moment. It’s like, oh wait a minute, I forgot about that. About 2 months ago, 3 months ago, I took my beard off and I was really into like lining it up and making sure it looked good and trimming it every day. But now I don’t have 1, so that was pretty, that was a little bit of reminiscing for me, just on the first show of the year. The second show was going down the rabbit hole in terms of collecting.

That’s like, hey, When do you know too much is too much? The Pearl, excuse me, the Pearl Flexi Razor, which was the Rex Ambassador clone, that came out. We talked a little bit about that. An article on Badger and Blade from Leap Year Restraints. I thought that was really interesting how they were not gonna purchase things for leap year or use certain items, which was kind of fun. And of course, AOS, or Art of Shaving, closing their final brick and mortar store in Florida. That was the 1 in Disney Springs, and that was the final brick and mortar store they had, and they closed that around the second week of January, I believe, of this year.

So hard to believe it was not that long ago. Then we moved on to March where we talked about the meetup at Maggard’s, so that’s a meetup that happens every year at Maggard’s shaving up north in Michigan, which is something I hopefully I get to see next year. I hopefully I get to go. There was an interesting article on, excuse me, on Sharpologist that was about how failure can lead to success in wet shaving. I thought that was really cool. We talked a little bit about that. And Superior Cut’s 3D printed razor, is that the future?

So that’s a little talk about how vendors and some makers are using 3D printing to make razors and other items. And will that be the future of wet shaving? And just looking at this in the last 8 or 9 months, it doesn’t really look like too much has come up from it. So I haven’t seen too many producers come up. So I’m not sure if that is going to be the actual future for us in wet shaving. And then also we talked about St. Patrick’s Day, getting the green soaps and all the Irish spring scented products that are out there.

Example, like Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements has 1. There’s a couple other vendors that have 1. Just getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day. We moved on to April where we had Happy Eclipse Day, so there’s a major eclipse going on. We talked about Eclipse products, so you had the Eclipse Razor, a couple of soaps and stuff like that. A bottom dial selling for over $2, 200 on eBay. That was a good 1 because it just came out with a case, it was pretty, kind of medium priced for that item, and we talked a little bit about that.

Paladin brushes, this is another vendor that was slowing down the pace, and eventually just going to custom brushes instead of doing major drops and stuff. And then cleaning your shaving brushes. Do you need to do it? How often? What products can you use? And then I did my own challenge 1 month with tabac, which was fun, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. Moving along to a barnyard Gillette bottom dial. This is for the show on the 22nd of April. We talked about somebody finding a bottom dial and then sending it to me, asking me some questions about it and then selling it for a decent price on eBay.

Email, I received an email from a viewer, are Simpson brushes worth it? Which I do think they are. I think you got a lot of history and good quality with those brushes. And then we did a little, May is dedication to single-edge razors month. So I like doing dedication months. I think that you guys, the viewers, I get a lot of positive feedback from that. So I thought that went well. And we did about 3 episodes of single-edge razors, which was really fun for me to go through and research them all modern, vintage, different styles and stuff like that.

We did that for a few shows. And the month to tobacco comes to an end. Thank goodness moving along to the 8th of May Again single-edge razor months we talked about how it all started the first se razor the lather catchers are of the 1800s the first ones that came out and Then shovel heads. How do you use them? Those are those razors where you take the blade, you put it in the front, looks kind of like a shovel. There are different types and styles, mostly vintage, and that’s what we talked about, how to use them, how to load the blades.

And then not all blades are created equal, how to choose the right single edge blades because some of them are not very good, aka the ones you find at Home Depot, also known as those that could have the same name as some of the blades you know of. Don’t purchase anything unless it’s from a reputable shaving, wet shaving vendor. And then a Gillette double edge, excuse me, double ring was on eBay. New old stock, the first 1 I’ve ever seen. And we have pictures and stuff to show. I saw that on eBay, that was amazing.

It didn’t even look like it was used. Had no tarnish on it and the box was perfect. Our next show was on the 24th of May and we talked about auto-strop razors. These are razors on how they can actually strop them, putting the strop into a mechanism that’s on the razor itself, strop them and keep using them. A really cool concept. They’re around for a long time. We talked about them. Injector razors, that’s right, single-edge injector razors are, since there’s a Schick injector, there’s other injectors, a Tecmatic from Gillette, there’s a lot of really cool items, very valuable items in that area too.

And they were very popular as well, probably the second or third most popular shaving form for years, right? Up until the 2000s, they were still around, they’re still available now to buy in certain countries. And still a great concept, I love using them too. And then modern artist style club razors. Those are the newer ones such as the Mongoose, the Cobras that came out. Those are something that are more of the modern single edge razors that I think were really fun to collect, had a really good run there for about, from probably like 2013, probably more like 2015 to 2018, these things were hot.

Like they were going for 10 times retail, some of them. Everybody wanted 1, they couldn’t make enough, and now they kind of went to the wayside. But there’s still quite a few options out there. On our next show, which was the 10th of June, we said happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. So great time to talk about wet shaving. And the second most busiest gift-giving holiday for the wet shaving enthusiasts next to Christmas and and this month of December you have Father’s Day which is really good too. The single-edge month finale we talked about more modern SE razors such as newer items, new producers and like higher end stuff like the Wolfman and all that.

Also we did discuss the OneBlade so we can’t forget them. OneBlade is another new concept You guys know we’ve talked about it. It’s got a mechanism in it. It’s got a lot of research and development in it, and it’s been around for over 10 years now, and still strong. So I love my OneBlade. I used it the other day. I think it’s really fun to use, and a great addition and a great finale for the SE Razor month. And then we also talked about Father’s Day gift guide, how to give gifts. I like to do this kind of episode twice a year so you guys know.

And for your significant others or friends and family so they understand too. So if you ever have a family member that wants to get you a gift, highly recommend at least cutting and pasting that, sending it to them in a text or an email, and letting them see what to get you so they don’t get you the stuff that you don’t want. Example, like the stuff at Marshall’s or something like that’s no good. We moved on to the 24th of June now. We have new stuff from Warborg Shaving which was incredible because I thought these guys were kind of like, I don’t know, they don’t respond to emails, they don’t really respond to anybody.

I never see their brushes for sale on their site. Popular very about 10 years ago, they’re really popular. They still make great quality stuff. I just never see it for sale. They came out with some new designs and some new colors and stuff. So whoever got that, I applaud you because I’ve been trying to get a Warborg brush for well over 12 years and I have not been able to get 1. The TI Glide, the titanium glide single edge razor, that was 1 we talked about. Again, kind of missed that for single edge razor month, but we got that in on the 24th.

Our old soaps worth trying. These are vintage soaps that you may find at a yard sale antique shop We talked about how to get them to work. Are they worth it? And if you do get 1 should you use it and Now is the time to purchase on eBay because a lot of items were going down the pandemic express I like to call it the increase in everything for the pandemic is over so it looked like everything was kind of going down in value so it’s time to buy if you’re looking for a collectible piece.

Moving along to July with July 22nd where we’re talking about the return of the Sabra razor from Blackland. This razor was very popular for a few years from Blackland, kind of disappeared. It was re-engineered and brought back, so great to see that. What are Frankenrazors? Frankenrazors are razors where you mix and match parts from different makers and try to make your own razor. I think they’re really cool and fun. If you can get stuff to wear, and remember, a lot of stuff is universal. I showed a few examples of what I’ve done and what I’ve seen other listeners do as well.

And trying Gillette Foamy with a straight razor, does it work? I told you my experience with that and what I did and how it did work and it was actually pretty good. It wasn’t that bad. And Gillette still sends out a free razor on your 18th birthday. That’s right, they still do. They still send it out. I remember receiving mine on my 18th birthday. It was a Mach 3, I believe. My 18th birthday was in 2000. So I remember getting that, my parents giving it to me, and I remember it sitting on the shelf for quite a while because I was using an electric razor at the time.

And then we’re moving along to, well, using a bore brush. This is in the middle of, this is the beginning of August. I started using a bore brush for about a month. I told you my thoughts on it. It’s been some time since I used a bore brush and how they are still really good and still have their certain characteristics that are I think better than Badger and then some that aren’t. New double-edged blades from Razor Emporium. They came out with their own double-edged razor blade, which looked amazing, so really great to pair with their razors.

Ollyworks Hand-Built Razors talked a little bit about that company and how they’re building razors as well, new custom razors. And Wool Blade Straight Razors too, We talked a little bit about that. That’s a new straight razor producer, more of the custom side. On the 19th of August, a rare Gillette was on auction in eBay, which was the Techmatic, which I talked a little bit about. That was Gillette’s Injector Razor that never really made it. I think there’s about 2 or 3 examples out there. This is a cased model that went on eBay and went for a lot of money.

One-honed stone, excuse me, one-stone honing with a trusty Dovo. I talked a little bit about the dilu-clot method, which is where you add water to a stone and keep it slurried up, and that’s how you keep the blade sharp. Brand new releases from Barrister and Man for the Fall of 2024 were announced, and we also started discussing the Fall Seasonal Special, which was coming up on the 28th of October, which happened to be my favorite show of all time in the last 9 that we’ve done. And plant-based synthetic brushes and how they are performing, they’re becoming more popular, more abundant, and they’re very well-priced.

On the 4th of September, the next show, we talked a little bit about fall products, top pumpkin pie or pumpkin spice scents. A new article, are vintage razors worth restoring? We talked about that. That came out. A loom block, more uses than you may think. It actually not only works for Sealing cuts, but it’s also good for acne It’s good for getting traction with a straight razor and there’s a lot of uses for it. Now that I use mine every day and Again, we talked a little bit more about the fall seasonal special and we this for this show I added the links to the actual show notes so you can see them for previous shows.

The next show we talked about best shave soaps under $10, article from Sharpologist, I thought this was great, I got a lot of great feedback on this so it looks like We are all still looking for value soaps under 10 bucks. Not as easy to find anymore, but they are still out there. A really fun moment for me was the modern guide to sweat shaving to Straight Razor Shaving now available at Pasteur’s Pharmacy, so they have it. So there’s a first brick and mortar vendor to carry the book. And then Murray Carter shutting down his e-commerce site.

This was, Murray Carter was that guy that used to shave with spoons and weird stuff back in the day. It was my first and 1 of the few rare interviews that I did on the podcast, great guy, very, very talented, and he just shut down his site. Will only be selling through third-party sellers. So that was a little bit of a bummer. I saw that video and well, you know, Murray Carter’s still up there, still doing his knife-making school and stuff and still shaving with spoons and stuff I guess. And then Darkfall is back, it’s a Halloween scented soap for the fall that has been proved to be very, very popular and it’s made by Declaration Grooming.

On the 28th of October we talked about 1 the 1 and only fall seasonal special I did a lot of research this year and found a ton of great content there are a lot of vendors still out there making stuff and it is a little bit of I Guess a bit of a Nostalgia because you see some of the vendors shut down and are no longer with us a new vendors emerge So it’s great. So love doing that show. We’ll continue to do it and be on the lookout for the 10th anniversary What? Excuse me Fall seasonal special coming up which will be a 2 part series.

We then moved on to the 11th of November where we did a little fall seasonal special recap, just a little bit of the demographics of it, what we do with the contents. OneBlade Safety Razor Blades, finally an alternative to the FHS10 Feather Blade. So OneBlade came out with their own blades and they were doing very well, so it’s an alternative. So it’s great to see another maker of the same blade that they take. It was only 1 currently making 1 before that. The Rocknell Sailor, excuse me, the Rocknell Sailor 2024 was announced and pre-orders were in and sold out very quickly.

So that’s a, that was the first adjustable razor made in modern times with stainless steel parts. And every year they do, it’s a collaboration between 2 vendors and every year they do it, like a different version of it. Usually improved from the previous year or they use different types of material and stuff, but it’s really good. And traveling with your wet shaving gear for the holidays. That’s a big 1 too, you know, what to bring, what not to bring. Just really note is that don’t bring something that you can’t live without. And the last show we did was on the 9th of December where we talked about my trip to pastures where I did a book signing for the book that I wrote which you guys saw pictures of in the show notes.

Holidays are here, how to choose the right gift, so the gift giving guide, traveling, and then we discussed 1 more time traveling with your wet shaving gear for the holidays just to make sure we emphasize that again. And vintage wet shaving ads for the holidays as well. This is my favorite time of the year. I love seeing stuff like that. And I’m really, it does make it exciting for the holidays, cause you see some really cool vintage stuff. And of course like Santa Claus pictures and stuff like that. Didn’t realize until I really, I started reading into it this year, and I didn’t put this in the show because I didn’t know until recently, that Santa Claus was actually mainstream because of Coca-Cola ads.

Didn’t know that from the earlier, from the, for the century, turn of the century, when Coca-Cola was out, they started, they actually made, I don’t know if this is true or not, you can fact check me on this, I’m not sure, but I heard it from a couple of sources, and I did read about it, that Coca-Cola made the modern perception picture of Santa Claus being, you know, the guy with the big white beard and the hat and rosy cheeks and all that stuff. It was made, and Coca-Cola really mainstreamed it. So I like looking at the old ads, seeing like stuff like Coke and Coca-Cola and Gillette had a lot of really good ones.

The American Safety Razor Company did too. So great to see that. Really exciting to go through that. And there’s actually a couple videos too out there that are great as well. Non-American videos. They’re from I believe Australia or South Africa, but they’re still in English. So you can, if you, it’s easy to understand for us that only speak English and it’s fun to play it off and kind of like show your friends as well. So that’s it for 2024. That’s a wrap. Really happy to be able to continue doing this podcast year after year. You know, 2024 was a little challenging with logistics for me, you know, being working and all that stuff.

As every single 1 of you guys know, it can get into the schedule and make it more difficult to actually become, to get good content and to be on time with it, which is my main thing. So for the plans of this next year for the podcast, what do I have planned out? I have a couple of bullet points here of stuff that I’m gonna really try and work on. A more consistent schedule, announcing in advance if the schedule changes. So if I’m not gonna do a show, I’m gonna announce it a show in advance so you guys know.

And keep making it easier on me so that I don’t feel like when it’s a very busy time at work or if I’m traveling for fun or on vacation or something like that, I don’t have to really worry about doing a cast because I wanna make sure the content’s premium and not just thrown together. So I will definitely be more in advance about announcing schedule changes. A dedication episodes to vintage and modern gear. This proved very popular over the last 2 years. I think everybody loved the dedication months. So we’re going to start doing that a little bit more often, not every month, but probably 3 to 4 months out of the year.

Product reviews. A lot of people have been asking about that. I’ll definitely start putting some more product reviews and more articles on Sharpologist as well. The 10-year podcast anniversary. That’s right. It’s been 10 years. It all started in 2015, believe it or not. We will definitely do an anniversary show, a 10 year anniversary show, and if you guys have any nice messages you want to send that you want featured on the show, like hey, you’ve been listening for 10 years, or 5 years, or 3 years, or wanted to wish the podcast good luck, they will all be featured on the show notes for this episode and through like, if you want to send, you know, like a video or something like that, we can definitely post that too as well.

Like a cameo video of saying thank you or that you enjoy the show. I’d love to see that too. No, again, you don’t have to, but I would def, I’ll definitely share it on the anniversary edition. And thank you guys all for the support over the years. Really look forward to dedicating some more content and some more time to this in 2025 and continue going. It’s been 10 years. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years. A lot has changed in my life. A lot has changed in your lives, you know, in 10 years.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in. But we’re going to do a nice anniversary bit on anniversary month. And we’ll post notes from the first show all the way up to some of the more, I guess the more, I guess, memorable shows that were out there. I’ll post some links to that as well. So that’s going to take a little bit of time and see how the podcast has evolved over 10 years. So again, guys, I thank you all for the support and everything that you’ve done for me over the last year and continue and will continue to deliver good content and be here for all your questions and comments and all that stuff for 2025.

Remember our show is powered by sharpologists.com which your father didn’t teach you about shaving. Special thanks to Mark Mantic59 for everything that he does with the wet shaving community and most of all, you guys are listeners. Don’t forget to check out my blog site and always feel free to email me at joe.wetshavingnews at gmail.com. And also check out my book, The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving, which is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and at Pastor’s Pharmacy. Our next show will be on the 13th of 2025. Until then, shave straight, shave safe, and be safe.

Happy New Year.