Slantember (Used to be September) Is For Slants! | Version 4 | 2021

[alin]

Ikon x3 Slant razor
Astra Superior Stainless (31)
Tabac Original (tallow)
Aftershave Windsor Alpa + Floid balm

 

[EMG06]

September 18
Weekends were just made for the Razorock Wunderbar!

 

[Atlantic59]

Saturday Slantember Shave:

Fatip OC Slant w/ wenge wood handle
Gillette London Bridge blade (4)
Semogue SOC Finest Mistura brush
Haslinger Schafmilch as stick + RR Don Marco shave soap
Dickinson's witch hazel w/ Pereja limon kolonya
Prep unscented aftershave balm

Very nice DFS+ shave using the smooth London Bridge blade.

 

[NCGent]

Slantember Shave #18

Razor: RazoRock Wunderbar
Blade: Voskhod (3)
Brush: RazoRock Synthetic
Cream: Palmolive Menthol
A/S: Proraso Green

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

It is not misnamed.

Saturday's Wunderbar shave.

Happy shaves,

Jim

 

[InkStainedWretch]

SLANTember 18

I enjoyed shaving with a Shark Super Stainless in my Fatip Open Comb Slant so much yesterday that I used the same combination today. The soap today was Razorock Orange Sunrise, face lathered with my Yaqi Sagrada Familia (synthetic). I used this blade throughout ShARKO August, so it's got well over 30 shaves on it - it may be time to retire this blade. Nonetheless, a fine shave and no blood.

 

[hrossroth]

My only slant, a Parker semi slant, was returned today for being defective sadly leaving me slant-less. The finish on the post was beginning to get discolored and chipping.

I had fun posting shaves at the beginning of the month. This thread inspired me to dabble again with slants after having a bad experience with the original ikon slant when it was released years ago.

Now trying my hand with open combs with great results so far.

You all keep up the slant-tastic work!

 

[Tanuki]

On the road again...

Maggard slant head, RazoRock stainless Halo handle
Rapira Platinum Lux (1)
Omega 10086 'bigger bambino' boar
Ach. Brito Mogno in a tube

I got off the road after 5+ hours. Brush not quite broken in, poor lighting in the luxurious 'master den', the Maggard head reminded me why I love the Wunderbar and FOCS so much...

Bottom line, we are settled in and relaxed, family is all here, Mogno is a marvelous scent and solid performer, Rapira PL is a favorite blade. Long drive, but we saw the valley get rain from towering cumulus, followed a whitewater river up to the pass over the Cascades, took a sketchy route that led right by a big llama (alpaca? guanaco?) herd in the desert. Forget the small stuff, it was a very enjoyable day and a relaxing shave! Life is good and attitude is everything.

I was too busy (and too self-indulgent) to run the numbers for the half way Slantember statistical summary. It has been a very active thread with some interesting sidebar conversations!

We'll miss you @hrossroth .

 

[Invicta]

Mercur 37C + Astra SP #4.

 

[EMG06]

September 19
Wunderbar weekend continues. Went for the 3 pass shave today and got BBS (for the price of 2 nicks). Sometimes the soap/lather is just feeling and smelling so good you keep going even though your brain knows you should probably stop after two passes. Oh well.

Brush: Shavemac Beagle
Soap: SV Felce Aromatica
Lather: Face lather
Razor: Razorock Wunderbar
Blade: Wilkinson Sword (7)
Post: SV Felce Aromatica Dopobarba

 

[efsk]

Thought I'd start the month by lighting off a shave with the only single-edge slant out there.

Only MODERN single-edge slant

 

[EMG06]

Ok at this point, 2/3 of the way through Slantember I need to ask @Old Hippie a question. Back in the Tilted Picnic you mentioned:

to my somewhat critical eye many of the slants on the modern market are rather bland in the sense that they all seem to derive their genetics from the Merkur 37. Not to diss the 37, but getting the same excellent razor over and over tends to make the pool look a little shallow.

I was hoping to get a sense of what you meant during this month when people are shaving and showing their slants. But, it seems like most of us own the same set of slants (I think basically proving your point about the shallowness of the modern pool)! What sorts of features would you say define the different sorts of helical slants from each other?

 

[bigbrucefan]

Yesterday was another Wunderbar day with the second pass from the Gamechanger .84.
Both loaded with Astra stainless.
Brush was the RR Chubby.
Soap was Barrister & Mann's Classic Reserve. My girl says she loves the way it makes the bathroom smell.

 

[tehnothing]

091921

Second shave with the Fatip lo Storto Gentile.
Fresh Polsilver blade.
Smooth as butter. Need to learn this razor. CCS.

 

[InkStainedWretch]

SLANTember 19

I substituted in a Derby Extra blade into the Fatip Open Comb Slant; face lathered Proraso green with my Yaqi Moka Express badger. This brush is absolutely wonderful. The Derby triggered a bit on the first (WTG) pass, but then delivered a smooth shave.

 

[NCGent]

Slantember Shave #19

Razor: Maggard Slant
Blade: Personna Red (1)
Brush: RazoRock Synthetic
Cream: LEA Menthol
A/S: Skin Bracer

 

[Tanuki]

I think that @PLANofMAN would not describe this bottom of the barrel Leresche razor as his favorite to wantonly destroy. He did a meticulous job.

It was probably 'marketed' to Frenchmen who had forgotten their good razor on a trip, or to shavers who were down to their last few centimes. Leresche did not put their name on the razor.

The handle is skinny as a twig, threaded at 4.5 like a Fatip. The cap is well-plated, but quite thin.

The comb is aluminum alloy, of a thicker gauge but probably a lower grade than aluminum foil. It is easily bent by hand or by mistake. Before shaving, I spent some time aligning a few of the rough-stamped teeth that had gone crooked since last September.

Wanton Leresche / Rapira PL (2)
Arko travel stick / Omega mixed midget
That's all folks! Low end CCS, but no issues, or even discomfort thanks to near-zero pressure. Happy Slantember!

 

[efsk]

Today first shave with the ATT X1. Impressed.

 

[Old Hippie]

I was hoping to get a sense of what you meant during this month when people are shaving and showing their slants. But, it seems like most of us own the same set of slants (I think basically proving your point about the shallowness of the modern pool)!

I did have the impulse to say, "My work here is done." But no. My work here is just starting.

As a shaver who more and more concentrates on slants, the first thing I have to acknowledge is the incredible amount of knowledge that has grown up over the years on this forum. I've been digging ever deeper into it. Some things are very well "hidden" in the sense that you won't find them with a fairly general search -- but a general search won't turn up the keywords that lead you to the gems, so it's rather a Catch-22.

The second factor is that we have layers of niches: Wet shaving is possibly a more popular activity now than pre-pandemic, but it is still a niche market compared to "carts-and-goo." (Which are themselves a niche of the overall shaving market if we include various electric shavers, but we have to draw a starting line somewhere...) On the one hand even a quick glance at the main forums page will tell you that DE wetshaving is by far the biggest demographic in that niche.

That rather general category breaks down into more niches where hobbyists gather: Gillette or other specific brands, vintage, modern, lathercatcher and slant with sometimes further differentiation into OC and SB preferences. So slant razors are a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche. Those of us who also shave Gem or other ASR SE are in a similar situation, though maybe Gem is even "niche-ier" than slants.

That leads to an economic reality. In our current razor market nobody's making much money making slants. That also means not many companies are willing to spend anything on developing one -- even if what they're developing is an updated version of a classic design. So they can take a design that is already proven in the market and issue their own take on it, or else they can aim for something that they hope will capture a piece of the market that has heretofore stayed away from trying slants.

If you're in the mood for some amusement, scroll through a few years' worth of posts about various slant razors. People who seem to be unfamiliar with the concept use terms like "evil," "scary," "vicious" and others. There's no shortage on teh Interwebz of pictures of lathered-up guys looking fearfully at a slant razor. In the theatre world there is no bad publicity; bad reviews are still publicity. But there's a perception that slants are somehow scary aggressive and guaranteed to do an excellent job of peeling one's face or head like a potato. That's driven I think by makers who want to create the most aggressive razor possible and see the slant platform as one way to do that.

I suppose that's fine, but I'd like a bit more diversity in the market. Not everyone likes an aggressive razor; not everyone likes a mild one. So we come back to niches. The most successful modern designs (read "what you can buy today") almost all copy older designs that have already been worked out by the engineers. It's interesting to know the intellectual heritage of them, but many of them seem to be derived from just a few razors. Buy one Merkur 37C for about $50 and you've pretty much also bought a number of other razors that are more or less explicit copies of it. There is a middle ground. RazoRock's Wunderbar slant is justly famous, showing Mulcuto roots but also a large investment in updating the design and using modern manufacturing processes.

What sorts of features would you say define the different sorts of helical slants from each other?

An excellent and timely question! I'm tempted to answer -- only partly in jest -- "price."

Higher price can (though may not) equate to more thought put into the design process, better quality materials, or advanced manufacturing practices. I believe that one of the original intents behind the helical slant idea was to add additional stiffness to the blade, thus reducing chatter and skipping.

Gillette's (and others) idea to sell razors at a loss in order to get shavers to buy blades -- then to sell them better razors designed for the blades -- was a good one from the marketing perspective but left us with the legacy that paying "too much" for a razor is a bad thing. The market in higher-quality razors is a hard one in which to get a start, and is to some extent marked by the need to have continual innovation as a means to encourage what is really a niche group of buyers to keep buying the next latest and greatest.

In general the features that tend to define many modern slants for me are either the homage to a previous design, a desire to bring a quality product to market at a lower price, or else a designer is so in love with the concept that they will voluntarily put a lot of time and effort into designing and testing a truly innovative design knowing that it may be essentially unsellable in quantity. Only because I am familiar with some of the story, I can point to Above the Tie as one example.

The ATT G1 (although not a slant) was designed to very closely mimic the Gem 1912-pattern razor's mild and congenial quality. A design tour de force but it appeared not to be a critical success for a couple of reasons. I have one. Actually, I have three. I have come to appreciate that razor -- but there are relatively few people who would buy even one of them at list price. Not to look TOO much like the "economical" shavers who pointed out that they used to get 1912s for free with other razors so why pay THAT for one that's just like it, but the best possible design goes nowhere if people don't buy it. Thus the G1 is no longer made, and there was no "G2" with an open comb.

On the other hand, one of the most innovative slants in production is the ATT S series: S1 and S2. That design is getting on 10 years old now, and still attracting new converts and enthusiasts. The S2 is my perfect razor. Smooth, efficient, mild enough to feel "safe" and aggressive enough to leave a BBS behind every single time.

I'm very interested to see how ATT's X1 Artist Club SE slant does. It's designed to be milder than some AC razors. I'm hopeful that it will be enough of a success to prompt an "X2" open comb version with the same blade gap. Time will tell. What I really mean by underscoring this company is that they're one of the companies out there innovating, which costs money. Innovation is what drives evolution. We can't keep simply re-labeling the ideas of the past, or letting someone else pay for the development work and copying what they produce.

Two of the most wildly successful of the modern slants are the FOCS and its brother. They're offered at a price point that attracts a lot of entry buyers as well as more experienced buyers who appreciate the design. They also have their quirky aspects, like an uncommon but not unique stud threading -- but it's a razor that will give almost anyone a pretty good or better shave at a price that doesn't encourage too much worry over meeting the rent this month.

Personally I tend toward the quirky. There are some pretty quirky designs for razors, some of which are really amazing and others that are amazingly weird and not too effective. I have a strong attraction to "heavily helical" slants: the Fasan Double Slant, the PAA "Monster" slants (a very economical choice!) and the fabled Merkur "Super Slant." I've also appreciated tilted slants -- in fact Monday's shave will be the iKon Shavecraft 102, a very, very good tilted slant. Finally, I also have a "thing" about supporting designers who redefine the boundaries, hence the ATT S and X razors are also strong favourites.

See what happens when you put a nickel in me about something I've spent some time thinking about? Thanks for asking! I hope it was helpful.

O.H.

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

I did have the impulse to say, "My work here is done." But no. My work here is just starting.

As a shaver who more and more concentrates on slants, the first thing I have to acknowledge is the incredible amount of knowledge that has grown up over the years on this forum. I've been digging ever deeper into it. Some things are very well "hidden" in the sense that you won't find them with a fairly general search -- but a general search won't turn up the keywords that lead you to the gems, so it's rather a Catch-22.

The second factor is that we have layers of niches: Wet shaving is possibly a more popular activity now than pre-pandemic, but it is still a niche market compared to "carts-and-goo." (Which are themselves a niche of the overall shaving market if we include various electric shavers, but we have to draw a starting line somewhere...) On the one hand even a quick glance at the main forums page will tell you that DE wetshaving is by far the biggest demographic in that niche.

That rather general category breaks down into more niches where hobbyists gather: Gillette or other specific brands, vintage, modern, lathercatcher and slant with sometimes further differentiation into OC and SB preferences. So slant razors are a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche. Those of us who also shave Gem or other ASR SE are in a similar situation, though maybe Gem is even "niche-ier" than slants.

That leads to an economic reality. In our current razor market nobody's making much money making slants. That also means not many companies are willing to spend anything on developing one -- even if what they're developing is an updated version of a classic design. So they can take a design that is already proven in the market and issue their own take on it, or else they can aim for something that they hope will capture a piece of the market that has heretofore stayed away from trying slants.

If you're in the mood for some amusement, scroll through a few years' worth of posts about various slant razors. People who seem to be unfamiliar with the concept use terms like "evil," "scary," "vicious" and others. There's no shortage on teh Interwebz of pictures of lathered-up guys looking fearfully at a slant razor. In the theatre world there is no bad publicity; bad reviews are still publicity. But there's a perception that slants are somehow scary aggressive and guaranteed to do an excellent job of peeling one's face or head like a potato. That's driven I think by makers who want to create the most aggressive razor possible and see the slant platform as one way to do that.

I suppose that's fine, but I'd like a bit more diversity in the market. Not everyone likes an aggressive razor; not everyone likes a mild one. So we come back to niches. The most successful modern designs (read "what you can buy today") almost all copy older designs that have already been worked out by the engineers. It's interesting to know the intellectual heritage of them, but many of them seem to be derived from just a few razors. Buy one Merkur 37C for about $50 and you've pretty much also bought a number of other razors that are more or less explicit copies of it. There is a middle ground. RazoRock's Wunderbar slant is justly famous, showing Mulcuto roots but also a large investment in updating the design and using modern manufacturing processes.



An excellent and timely question! I'm tempted to answer -- only partly in jest -- "price."

Higher price can (though may not) equate to more thought put into the design process, better quality materials, or advanced manufacturing practices. I believe that one of the original intents behind the helical slant idea was to add additional stiffness to the blade, thus reducing chatter and skipping.

Gillette's (and others) idea to sell razors at a loss in order to get shavers to buy blades -- then to sell them better razors designed for the blades -- was a good one from the marketing perspective but left us with the legacy that paying "too much" for a razor is a bad thing. The market in higher-quality razors is a hard one in which to get a start, and is to some extent marked by the need to have continual innovation as a means to encourage what is really a niche group of buyers to keep buying the next latest and greatest.

In general the features that tend to define many modern slants for me are either the homage to a previous design, a desire to bring a quality product to market at a lower price, or else a designer is so in love with the concept that they will voluntarily put a lot of time and effort into designing and testing a truly innovative design knowing that it may be essentially unsellable in quantity. Only because I am familiar with some of the story, I can point to Above the Tie as one example.

The ATT G1 (although not a slant) was designed to very closely mimic the Gem 1912-pattern razor's mild and congenial quality. A design tour de force but it appeared not to be a critical success for a couple of reasons. I have one. Actually, I have three. I have come to appreciate that razor -- but there are relatively few people who would buy even one of them at list price. Not to look TOO much like the "economical" shavers who pointed out that they used to get 1912s for free with other razors so why pay THAT for one that's just like it, but the best possible design goes nowhere if people don't buy it. Thus the G1 is no longer made, and there was no "G2" with an open comb.

On the other hand, one of the most innovative slants in production is the ATT S series: S1 and S2. That design is getting on 10 years old now, and still attracting new converts and enthusiasts. The S2 is my perfect razor. Smooth, efficient, mild enough to feel "safe" and aggressive enough to leave a BBS behind every single time.

I'm very interested to see how ATT's X1 Artist Club SE slant does. It's designed to be milder than some AC razors. I'm hopeful that it will be enough of a success to prompt an "X2" open comb version with the same blade gap. Time will tell. What I really mean by underscoring this company is that they're one of the companies out there innovating, which costs money. Innovation is what drives evolution. We can't keep simply re-labeling the ideas of the past, or letting someone else pay for the development work and copying what they produce.

Two of the most wildly successful of the modern slants are the FOCS and its brother. They're offered at a price point that attracts a lot of entry buyers as well as more experienced buyers who appreciate the design. They also have their quirky aspects, like an uncommon but not unique stud threading -- but it's a razor that will give almost anyone a pretty good or better shave at a price that doesn't encourage too much worry over meeting the rent this month.

Personally I tend toward the quirky. There are some pretty quirky designs for razors, some of which are really amazing and others that are amazingly weird and not too effective. I have a strong attraction to "heavily helical" slants: the Fasan Double Slant, the PAA "Monster" slants (a very economical choice!) and the fabled Merkur "Super Slant." I've also appreciated tilted slants -- in fact Monday's shave will be the iKon Shavecraft 102, a very, very good tilted slant. Finally, I also have a "thing" about supporting designers who redefine the boundaries, hence the ATT S and X razors are also strong favourites.

See what happens when you put a nickel in me about something I've spent some time thinking about? Thanks for asking! I hope it was helpful.

O.H.

⬆ A post worth anyone's time ⬆

Just for the record: I've read that legend stuff about Gillette using their razors as loss leaders and making it up with blade sales. I've also read historical sources which I'm too lazy to find right at the moment which say otherwise. I know it's hard to fathom that Gillette made money selling such good razors at the prices they went for, but there it is.

The sources I've read could all be wrong of course.

Question: Is the FOCS modeled on in terms of its engineering or design previously available slants such that a very very similar previous razor was as successful as a shaver?

I don't have the slant experience you do, but I have used a lot of DE razors (and AC, and injectors, and straights). In my view of it, the FOCS is very hard to beat for its balance of qualities - smooth in feel, quite efficient, unlikely to bite you, inexpensive, real metal - not that it is as efficient as the Wunderbar.

Thanks for your great post, my friend.

Happy shaves,

Jim