Van Der Hagen Safety Razor

This would make an ideal gift for your friend or partner. The handle is well designed and has a comfortable weight and length. It comes with blades that are horrible and so you should replace those.

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Van Der Hagen produce a wide range of traditional wet shaving products, they appear to market mainly to beginners in the space with a good selection of gift kits. These gift kits have a good reputation, more importantly with a gift, you’ll want the packaging to be attractive. Whereas if you’re buying for yourself you’ll be less bothered about the packaging.

They sell two safety razors, a standard and a heavy duty model. In this Van Der Haden Safety Razor review we’ll be looking at their standard model which has decent to good reviews across a few different websites. We’ll judge the the razors on its appearance, price and performance. At the end, we’ll let you know whether we think it’s worth buying.

Van Der Hagen Safety Razor Design

Looking at this model it’s hard to tell it apart from any of its competitors, they is very little innovation in the safety razor market . Almost every safety razor is a sharp chrome color, this allows you to easily spot any discoloration or rust in the metal but isn’t very interesting.

Personally, we would have liked to have seen some more color at least on the handle. Some of the newer shaving companies such as Weishi, have darker and more interesting colors which help to separate them from their competitors.

The Van Der Hagen razor has a short handle, with the entire product only 3.5 inches in height or 8 centimeters. It’s not the shortest handle, but it’ll give you great control of the blades. For anybody new to safety razors, you can get short handles and far longer handles. If you’re a beginner then we would recommend a short handle like the Van Der Hagen has, shaving with a safety razor is different to a generic cartridge. It requires more control to prevent injury and so the shorter handle can help to improve your control, preventing any slips or excessive movements.

How does the Handle Feel?

The middle section of the handle it textured to provide enough grip for you to hold it tightly and the bottom is crafted to make sure that your hand stays in the middle of the handle. This bottom knob also twists the open up the butterfly opening, as is standard which the large majority of safety razors. Some models have a more textured and rough grip which can make for easier holding, but this one is fine.

At the top of the handle you’ll find the blade holder, this is designed with a butterfly opening which will allow you to more easily change out the blades. This is especially important for beginners because changing blades with non-butterfly openings can be a huge pain and might turn you off safety razors.

The Blades are Garbage

With the handle you’ll also get 5-ice-tempered stainless steel blades that you can use with the razor. They are coated with a layer of teflon which is the same chemical used in non-stick pans. This teflon coating should, in theory, help to prevent the blades from sticking to the skin or the hair and allow it to glide easier.

The blades themselves suck . There’s no real way to sugarcoat it, the blades aren’t good. They are outperformed by dollar store blades and you’d be best to just throw them away, replace them with something better and be on your way. They aren’t aggressive at all, they fail to provide a close shave and they rust very quickly.

But, we aren’t reviewing the blades in the article, we’re just talking about the razor itself and that has a brilliant weight and length for a beginner.