Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I admit, I was skeptical when I first saw this advertised. Seemed like a gimmick. And I confess that I make disposable razor blades last a long time. I usually use them for one to two months, only changing when I feel like I am shaving with a microplane grater. But I am something of a knife sharpening geek. I have read several books on the subject and even reviewed one on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/An-Edge-Kitchen-Ultimate-Knives/dp/0061188484/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) so you will know that my review here is not some computer bot or company pawn. Let me sum up first. I bought this around father's day this year. I followed the instructions to the letter, starting with a new razor and using the blade buddy daily before each shave. Its now Aug 7 and the blade still shaves like new. At the 30 day mark, I compared it to a new blade, shaving alternate strokes while switching between the blade buddy maintained blade and a new identical blade and could not tell any noticeable difference. That to me was the proof. Thirty days of shaving (about 25 shaves) and I could still get just as comfortable a shave as I did with the new blade. Amazing. I will be sure to post an update when I finally change out the blade to let you know the max life span of a blade maintained by blade buddy. Now some thoughts on why this works and why I was skeptical. When you use a blade, think a kitchen knife, and you smack the edge of the blade down on the cutting board, the absolute edge of the blade, which is thousands of an inch wide, can begin to curl over from the impact. Blade steel in kitchen knives is made to bend a little and not break because a curled over edge is a lot easier to deal with than a chip in the blade. In short, the blade edge develops a microscopic bend, a little like the crest of a wave beginning to flop over. In knife sharpening, this slightly curled over edge is actually still sharp. But it's no longer aligned and pointing straight. In the kitchen, this means you get out the sharpening steel or ceramic honing rod. The point of quality steel is to push that slightly curled edge back into a straight position so it can continue to cut effectively. Steel is not meant to "sharpen" the edge as much as it is to realign the edge. My skepticism regarding blade buddy was two fold. First, I have no idea what kind of steel is used in disposable blades but my guess was that it was fairly brittle in order that it could be so thin and so sharp. Expecting it to be brittle, I wondered how well it could be realigned. My second skepticism is that a steel honing rod in the kitchen is obviously a lot harder substance than the squishy pad that comes on the blade buddy, so how could a squishy pad realign steel? I confess that I still don't know the answer on either question. I do know that you can use a leather strop as a finishing step in blade sharpening. But usually the leather strop is coated with a very, very fine abrasive so that there is an extremely fine polishing and sharpening that occurs. The strop makes only tiny changes to the final edge. Even a strop without the abrasive is going to do little more than polish and maybe clean off the last residual burr from the prior sharpening step. But whatever the reason, I think the blade buddy is able to realign the edge sufficiently to keep it pointing straight and allowing much longer razor life, or at least that has been my practical experience. I would love to put some of my old razors under a powerful microscope and see if I could see the edge curling a bit and then compare that to blade buddy maintained blades. That would be a great experiment. But until then, the results speak for themselves. I have seen other reviewers mention using some type of cloth to perform the same function as a blade buddy. Perhaps that would work also and for the same reasons. I don't find that solution appealing for several reasons. First, my bathroom counter gets wet and leaving some denim around to get wet and nasty and unravel seems like a lot of hassle. Second, I would not be surprised if there is some benefit to using a wet, lubricated surface. I rub my shaving brush over the blade buddy before I use it and that seems to keep the process working smoothly. And frankly this is not an expensive product. If a disposable razor lasts me 3 months comfortably, it will be well worth it. UPDATE: about one year later: Over the last year, I have used 3 disposable blades using the blade buddy, so I have to continue to say that it is working well. I switched in October and again in January. I have a couple of refinements to my usage that I think are helpful. First, I find it essential to press pretty hard when pushing the blade across the surface. A custom knife maker I respect, Bob Kramer of Kramer Knives, indicates in his honing steel instructions to apply about 4 - 6 lbs of force when honing. If you measure this using a kitchen scale, you will find it is a lot more than you are probably used to applying. Put the blade buddy on the scale, tare it, and then press the razor across and watch the scale to hold a steady amount of pressure. It requires much more force than you think. And the force should began to taper as you near the end of the 20 or so strokes. Don't forget to keep the surface lubricated. Second, consistency. I generally use the blade buddy before every shave. I don't think it can make large corrections to the blade edge so once the edge is to far out of alignment, further blade buddying seems unlikely to be able to realign. I use a gilette fusion razor and have the entire time I have used the blade buddy. So if you have this and have not had good results, I recommend trying again starting with a fresh blade and pressing down a lot harder if in fact you previously used more of a lighter stroke.