Stubbornness.

I couldn’t believe that was really a word when I looked it up. It just sounds like something a stubborn person would make up because he was too stubborn to believe it wasn’t a word.

I am that stubborn person.

It goes like this. About a year ago, I started to get peeved at having to continually buy replacement cartridges for my Braun Shaver system. You may not be familiar with it (especially if you don’t have manface hair) but basically it’s an electic shaver with a receptacle that lets you clean and charge it.

I’ve had mine for nearly 10 years and it’s been great - it’s not something I would’ve bought, but I received it as a gift. Before that, it was shaving cream and many nicks and cuts and little squares of paper to stop the face-bleed. Oh, that stings.

It’s a VERY popular system among the guys who like convenience, but it has one huge flaw that irks a lot of people. You have to continually replace the proprietary plastic cartridges filled with the alcohol cleanser periodically. At a price of between $18 and $20 for a pack of three plastic refills, or about $6-7 each, these are NOT cheap. They get even more expensive if you don’t use it as often, because the plastic is an OPEN chamber so the liquid evaporates over time.

I understand that you’d have to replace the liquid every so often because it gets dirty, but sometimes it’s like every month or so. And it would be fine if the liquid was some sort of special cleanser. However, it’s not: it’s just denatured alcohol plus some fragrance, and maybe a few drops of lubricant. That’s it. I was getting sort of pissed off having to pay 6 dollars for a few cents worth of alcohol.

There’s also the issue of waste - what a huge waste it is to keep having to buy these plastic tubs. Not too super for the environment, I’d guess. The equivalent wasteage in the computer world are those printer cartridge refills (which I’ve talked about here previously). I know you can recycle the darn things, but it just annoys me.

Of course, the companies love hooking you into a system where you have to keep buying this stuff monthly. They aren’t going to make any money off Cheaplanders who just buy one system every 10-15 years without having some sort of additional charge.

It just made me hopping mad. And it’s hard to shave while hopping. Try it.

So, I decided I’d try to refill them myself. Now, if you look right on the label of these tubs there’s a nice little drawing of someone pouring alcohol into the receptacle with a big red line through it. I take it to mean that they discourage this sort of thing.

Dear Braun Company - please take this opportunity to bloweth me.

I actually did quite a bit of “research” before attempting to refill one myself. Please note, my shaver is fairly old - if something catastrophic happened that rendered it unusuable, I wouldn’t be all that sad. I might even switch back to shaving cream and many nicks and cuts and little squares of paper to stop the face-bleed.

I found out a few things. Even if you decide not to try refilling the cartridges you can significantly extend their life by doing two things. One is to remove the shaving head each and every time you shave, and clean it with the brush provided BEFORE putting it into the cleaning system. It minimizes the amount of hair that gets into the cartridge.

Second, since it’s really easy to open and close the system to take the receptacle out, you can keep and replace the plastic cover tab on the receptacle between shaves. This minimizes the evaporation of the alcohol (remember, it’s usually open to the air when stored in the system chamber) and this is especially true if you aren’t a hairy bigfoot like me and don’t shave every day.

But if you decide to just HAVE to refill these cartridges like me, then know that there are so many opinions on what exactly you should put in it. The main ingredient is denatured alcohol, which I think is basically ethanol which has crap added to it so that frat boys can’t buy gallons of it to drink. That’s the basic definition - but there are a whole lot of types of denatured alcohol, some of which are TOXIC and not suitable to come into contact with your face.

Ok, that probably scared half the people away.

Truth is that if you buy it in bulk, like at Home Depot, it can be difficult to tell what you’re getting. So I haven’t gone that route.

Other people have sworn by using Everclear to refill their systems. This is, oh god, a 190 proof (95% alcohol) “beverage”. So what you do then is add a bit of distilled water to the Everclear, a few drops of glycerin or some other lubricant, and maybe fragrance. The point of using this really pure alcohol is that you want to minimize the water in your mix, because it may rust the shaving head. Or so the thinking goes.

It turns out that the “cartridge check light”, which tells you when you need to change your cartridge, is tuned to a certain conductivity of the liquid. They operate it like that so the system can tell if the cartridge water is too dirty. If you don’t get it just right, it won’t operate. So, strangely, you might have to dilute the alcohol anyway with water.

This seemed like an extra step - so I figured why not just use 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol that we have already, that is definitely safe for coming in contact with your face, and that you don’t have to slink into the liquor store for.

So, I rinsed out as much hair bits as I could out of the cartridge. I let it dry in the sun, and then I filled it up with isopropyl alcohol.

It has worked fine for 3 months now.

I didn’t have the problem with the “check light” coming on, so 70% must be ok. Yes, I know that this is not very good for the shaving head to have a mix that has that much water in it. However, I should mention that you are supposed to replace the shaving head every 6 months to a year ANYWAY. I think by the time that the shaving head starts to deteriorate, it might be time to replace it anyhow. I’m cool with replacing that - it’s the receptacles that annoy me.

I think the only potential problem is that I didn’t put any lubricant into the mix. I think people mentioned a few drops of glycerin should be sufficient, but I haven’t done that yet. I suspect that eventually you might need it. The only thing after that - I didn’t put any fragrance in. But I’ve been thinking of concocting some sort of “bacon and waffles” smell to put in. That would certainly get me going while shaving in the morning.

Yum. Bacon and Waffles.

[A disclaimer - if you decide to refill your shaver system on your own, you are ON YOUR OWN. I take no responsibility for you damaging your shaver or your face, blah, blah. I’d make sure to read up on other people’s experiences refilling their Braun systems before attempting it on your own.]