Flask's newbie adventure

[flask28]

Pre-Shave: The Black Cube of Carcosa
Pre-Shave Brush: Semogue Owners Club Mistura Taj
Soap: Saponificio Varesino Flying Mango (2016 LE edition)
Brush: Mozingo ZT4 using a 26mm Alpha Titanium Outlaw handle
Razor: The second performance of the @Guido75 sourced English Flat Bottom Tech - Thank you good sir!
Blade: Vintage Wizamet Super Iridium (1) Thank you @Vesper!
Post-Shave: Cold water splash, Lucky Tiger Face Tonic and a dab of Mysterium Serum

In the last few weeks my shaves have taken a serious turn for the amazing.

This collision of FFFMM-induced technique improvement with an influx of gear upgrades has supercharged my shaving experience to a new level. This morning's shave, armed with a better feel for the ZT4 and lathering SV soap, using @Guido75's FBT (with few months of Tech experience under my belt) was easily the best shave I've experienced since I started here last September.

After absorbing the experience and the results over the workday, I felt compelled to come here and write an elaborate THANK YOU to B&B and all the friends and shaving comrades I've stood on the shoulders of to get to this point. But it's late and this will have to do . Thank you my friends. The difference in my attitude and success with shaving between last year and now can hardly be articulated.

@thombrogan, that scale you recommended came in and triggered an orgy of weighing and measuring in my bathroom; I can't stop weighing things now. I laughed pretty hard the first time I tried to figured out how much soap I was using per shave. I figured "easy peasy" right?

You're smiling now I'm sure, knowing what I'm going to say next. All the soaps weighed heavier after the shave! What the heck? lol.

It took me a few moments to realize that since I was loading directly from the soap I was getting more water in there than I was taking soap out and needed to wait 12-24 hours to get an effective measurement. Or use the soap every day for a while and measure it consistently hydrated.

About then it dawned on me, reviewing my measurements with a white lab coat on, that this 27mm ZT4 is a SOAP DESTROYER. A 20 second load pulled 2.1g from the puck of CSS. Woha! No wonder the brush had enough lather for all the The Pirates of Penzance. A 15 second load from MdC sucked 1.3g into the big fuzzy mushroom which felt like maybe five passes worth of lather in the brush. What the heck, that's 2x the soap the Jade boar loads in the same time.

My first thought was - Is the badger brush sneaking in later to eat more soap?

Based on what I've read here, and that I'm shooting for more of a SR-style thin lather, I'm going to try to dial in a .5-.7g load for these soaps over the summer with my boars and this growing cete of giant badgers.

The more I use the ZT4 the more I want to be TeenWolf and have to shave every six hours!

The LE 30mm SV brush would have gotten the nod today but I received a welcome email informing me the Athena will be shipping super soon. So we're back to the original plan and am plotting to unleash the Honkin' Harlequin like the Kracken and concurrent with the Athena's first shave. Which will be a shiny day!

 

[Guido75]

Fabulous review Adam! And I am super stoked that you like the FBT! And it is a great website mr-razor that you were able to find out which one it was. I apparently missed it. Great job by @Tanuki in cleaning.

And your weighing is informative too. That is a heavy loading brush for sure. I have never weighed any of my soaps. I am afraid to try. That will turn into a spreadsheet mania!

Enjoy my friend!!

Guido

 

[APBinNCA]

It took me a few moments to realize that since I was loading directly from the soap I was getting more water in there than I was taking soap out and needed to wait 12-24 hours to get an effective measurement. Or use the soap every day for a while and measure it consistently hydrated.

Just a thought from a guy who regularly shaves with a scale on the counter... put your soap on the scale, zero, add water, DON'T ZERO, load brush until the soap is dry. Ta da, your negative number is how much you loaded! The only catch is in the details. You need to sprinkle on about 1:1 water to soap, so you need to have an idea how much you are going to load. Some soaps need twice as much, but don't go over that or you won't get the water out! Second caveat is to have a wetted and shaken badger brush. If you use a synthetic, good luck figuring out how much to shake out. This can be very accurate, surprisingly!

 

[flask28]

Ah! That makes total sense! And is more accurate than the method I'm using right now for sure.

Part of me was thinking ok, let's get a data logging scale and we can track the dehydration in realtime as a function of weight. And you could figure for a running average weight over, say, three days. Super nerd action! I'm sure a data logging scale is cheap

I see why @Guido75 has avoided this so far, I'm already wanting to build a database and reporting dashboard for my soaps.

 

[Phoenixkh]

I load a specific amount of every soap, covering the bottom of my shaving bowl. I adjust from there. My goal is to have enough lather for 3 passes and touch-ups if needed and to still avoid rinsing out too much soap. I have a decent scale. I could easily take out the bowl via tare, weigh the soap, weigh again with water added, as Aaron suggested and do a final weight at the end after squeezing out the knot.

Will I do that? Not likely. <eg>

 

[APBinNCA]

On a side note, speaking of scale uses, it's a good idea to weigh your natural hair brushes occasionally at different suspected levels of dryness. You might be surprised how much drier your dry brush can get! Of course I check my rinsed and shaken brushes occasionally to make sure my procedure isn't getting lazy. I hate having unplanned, unaccounted for water. Yes, I have calculated the soap to water ratio for all of my soaps.

 

[flask28]

I load a specific amount of every soap, covering the bottom of my shaving bowl. I adjust from there. My goal is to have enough lather for 3 passes and touch-ups if needed and to still avoid rinsing out too much soap. I have a decent scale. I could easily take out the bowl via tare, weigh the soap, weigh again with water added, as Aaron suggested and do a final weight at the end after squeezing out the knot.

Will I do that? Not likely. <eg>

That makes complete sense Kim. That makes me want to move back to bowl lathering, just for the measuring ease. Or, perhaps, scooping and then just bowl loading, then proceeding to face lathering. That would keep from hydrating the soap at all. Perhaps that's the best of both worlds (for me).

 

[flask28]

On a side note, speaking of scale uses, it's a good idea to weigh your natural hair brushes occasionally at different suspected levels of dryness. You might be surprised how much drier your dry brush can get! Of course I check my rinsed and shaken brushes occasionally to make sure my procedure isn't getting lazy. I hate having unplanned, unaccounted for water. Yes, I have calculated the soap to water ratio for all of my soaps.

Dude. I didn't even consider weighing my brushes and tracking water retention there as well. You are some sort of BOSC evil genius.

<sounds of franticly adding spreadsheet columns>

 

[Phoenixkh]

That makes complete sense Kim. That makes me want to move back to bowl lathering, just for the measuring ease. Or, perhaps, scooping and then just bowl loading, then proceeding to face lathering. That would keep from hydrating the soap at all. Perhaps that's the best of both worlds (for me).

Yeah, I scoop the softer soaps and croaps. I have to flake Canada Shaving Soap due to its hardness.

I didn’t really have a name for how I apply lather to my face, but after educating myself here, I bowl lather, then face lather, rather than painting it on.

 

[Ligeti]

What a great post, so much information and soooo much fun!

 

[Guido75]

On a side note, speaking of scale uses, it's a good idea to weigh your natural hair brushes occasionally at different suspected levels of dryness. You might be surprised how much drier your dry brush can get! Of course I check my rinsed and shaken brushes occasionally to make sure my procedure isn't getting lazy. I hate having unplanned, unaccounted for water. Yes, I have calculated the soap to water ratio for all of my soaps.

Weighing brushes? And they call me a shave crazy! Master!!

 

[thombrogan]

I thought having a Zenith brush would be the perfect way to chase away anxiety and obsessive thoughts. Guess that’s a hard “no.”

 

[APBinNCA]

Weighing brushes? And they call me a shave crazy! Master!!

That’s an @lasta troll hug!

(I almost typed an apology for the Timeless post, but decided it was better to leave it alone)

 

[Guido75]

That’s an @lasta troll hug!

(I almost typed an apology for the Timeless post, but decided it was better to leave it alone)

I know - I am a fan of the Trolling Hug.

What’s up with the Timeless post? Did I miss anything?

Edit: ah I see, the Phoenixkh post. No need to apologise at all. I am hard to offend so don’t worry. I was just saddened not by you dissing the Timeless, but by the fact that unfortunately you were unable to get a great shave with it. In general I got stellar shaves with my Ti95. Occasional love bite, but nothing major. I believe she is actually quite mild - but maybe there is a difference between the Ti and the SS version? I was very fortunate to have gotten the Ti95 so I only have that as a point of reference.

Guido

 

[APBinNCA]

I know - I am a fan of the Trolling Hug.

What’s up with the Timeless post? Did I miss anything?

You frowned it and I felt bad because I forgot that it was one of your favorite razors. I could have just deleted everything except the first paragraph, but I never know when to stop!

 

[Guido75]

You frowned it and I felt bad because I forgot that it was one of your favorite razors. I could have just deleted everything except the first paragraph, but I never know when to stop!

See my addition to my previous post above.

 

[flask28]

Pre-Shave: PAA The Bowl of Cube
Pre-Shave Brush: Omega 40033
Soap: Grooming Department Ousia II (Kairos SE Base)
Brush: Mozingo ZT4 using a 26mm Alpha Titanium Outlaw handle
Razor: @Guido75 sourced Gillette English Flat Bottom Tech
Blade: Vintage Wizamet Super Iridium (5)
Post-Shave: Cold water splash, Lucky Tiger Face Tonic

I picked up this jar of GD Ousia II because I wanted to try out a Kairos SE base after reading so much about it here and elsewhere. I got it at a bit of a discount from The Razor Company and it's from the fall 2022 release so it's not ancient.

I wasn't too sure about the scent description: Fennel, Crystallized Mandarin, Ginger, Immortelle, Tobacco, Incense Accord, Vanilla and Vetiver as incense-forward scents are typically not my bag. Baby. But I decided to give it a shot anyway, mostly to just check out the base. I just hoped I wouldn't hate the scent but I wasn't needing it to be a top favorite either.

Off the puck it's not "get your co-workers mad at you" strong, 4/10 or so. The fennel, mandarin and vanilla notes are strongest at first, but soften to let the sweetish tobacco and incense gain prominence during loading and while all lathered up on your face. The mildness of the scent belies it's longevity which was longer than any other soap I have second only to B&M Melange.

But where Melange evokes a WWI Pine-Sol gas attack, Ousia II feels more like experiencing a pleasant late afternoon at a outdoor café in Qatar. I didn't love it at first but I didn't hate it either. Now a few shaves in it's growing on me, moving into a tolerable 6/10 on the Does Adam Like It scale.

My first two lathers, using my normal technique, were complete failures. So much so I began to question myself and my lather skills, maybe I hadn't come as far as I thought I had?! Have I been doing it wrong this whole time? My technique changes a little based on the base of course but generally uses a dryish load with a shook out brush and a little blooming, then I add small amounts of water gradually while face lathering.

Lately I've starting painting the water on and adding more paint strokes while face lathering and that's been making a surprising difference in managing the lather structure, keeping it denser and lower.

But while that's helped fine tune the lather of other soaps, I never even got that far with this Kairos SE. No matter what I did it was structureless, soupy and weird. The brush was even acting strange, it seemed really dry no matter what I did, oddly so. All this happened again with a second try with a different brush.

I have my awesome scale now and figured out I was pulling 2-3g of soap per load, which sounds heavy but I realize now is sort of par for GD soaps. So that seemed on target.

So at this point I'm starting to consider chucking the soap and calling this base a big fat Hype Train I'm not going to get any more tickets for.

The thing is a ton of brothers I respect are big, big fans of Mohammad's work, @SgtCrppls primarily among them. It's got to be me, right? Somehow I'm just doing this wrong. Yesterday I did some searching about this base specifically looking for loading advice and discovered, yes, I had been doing it completely wrong.

I started the night before, taking the soap out and letting it air out overnight. Then, this morning I didn't shake out the big ZT4 at all after it's soak, which was a scary prospect really but my goal was to flood the soap right from the get go. Then I did a pretty hard 20 second load, which got super sudsy and sloshy in the jar.

Right about here I'd figured best case was I'd wasted a bunch of soap, worst case I'd ruined it

Without much expectation at this point, I painted the soap over my pre-lather and went to work. Right from the start it was a different, going in a more positive direction with signs of lather building that had been absent before. But wow it was runny, there was soap on the ceiling and even behind me somehow by the end of the shave.

The lather firmed up in about 30 seconds though and it was hard to resist adding water at this point, per my normal process. But I didn't, just kept mixing scrubbing and occasional painting strokes. At 60 seconds or so, the lather turned into something like what I'd read about: A dense but low structure lather.

I finished up painting a few drops of water on to give it a nice sheen and noticed the ZT4 looked totally full, the second pass was going to be no problem. Wow, ok, so far so good!

This is getting long so I'll punch here with the headline - This was easily the finest shave I've had since I started wet shaving. I'm saying that every week or two now, I'm at that stage in my Journey now I guess, but I'm not exaggerating here at all.

I was shaving on 36 hours growth and was anticipating a little roughness and loudness compared with a 24 hour shave, which would be totally normal for me. I was mindful in my preshave routine but not excessivly so.

After the first two strokes I actually checked to see if I had a blade in the razor, then, if it was cutting at all. It was as effective a stroke as I've ever made. What the heck is going on here!?

After the first pass, two big characteristics of this base jumped out at me. It is easily the most protective lather I've ever experienced. So much so I'm not sure I really understood what that term meant until now. The blade was cushioned, but not clogged up or blocked, in such an effective way that I felt like something was somehow wrong because it felt so different. And that was the other thing, the already smooth FBT/Super Iridium combo felt 2x smoother this shave.

The first pass was easily the most effective pass I've ever made and it was almost hard to test the post shave slickness because so little touch up was needed. But my first impression was a slickness that easily surpassed the other soaps in my den. The second pass was almost completely silent, and that's also a new experience for me. I've had a few silent third passes but never a so smooth it's silent second pass.

Again, I want to call out the superlative protection and cushion Kairos SE, when lathered correctly, can deliver. It's in a class by it's own. I felt so much more confidant in staying irritation-free in my third pass it was almost dangerous. I've not tried my Ethos F-Base soaps yet and I'm looking forward to doing that soon but I feel it's got a reaaaaly tough fight for top soap in my Den.

The trick may be finding a GD scent I love as much as the Ethos scents - the Sucess and Bay Rum I have are out of hand good.

So, yeah, I hate to say it but the hype is real. This base is something special compared to the other soaps I have and it makes me want to experiment more with them...maybe I'm not lathering them as well as I could. Or maybe this is just how good GD is?

More experiments to come.

 

[flask28]

Soap: Ethos Lavendar Supreme (2023 F-Base)
Brush: Mozingo ZT4 using a 26mm Alpha Titanium Outlaw handle
Razor: Gillette English Flat Bottom Tech from the man
Blade: Vintage Wizamet Super Iridium (6)
Post-Shave: Cold water splash, Ethos Lavendar Supreme

Finally decided to try the Lavender Ethos for a night shave. I won't write a book about this time, Ethos is a pretty known quantity here. The post shave is no joke. Better than GD? That'll be fun to explore. I have to work to do on refining my loading process, but you know, first try. The scent is strong and relaxing.

This FBT is smoother and more efficient than my pre-war Tech. I've used them back to back and there's a real difference. I feel the FBT likes to be a little more shallow, close to a neutral angle compared to the shallower angle I use with the Gamechangers or the steeper angle used with the pre-war.

I'm very happy with the X pattern I'm using on the problematic left side of my neck and the slow S-N ATG micro-stroke (with stretching) I use for this one section on the right that's like a slight valley. I found the X pattern right before FFFMM and was able to get it solidly into muscle memory over the March event - that was the final step to unlocking a real DFS shave for me in two passes.

I used the ZT4 today in salute to Brett Mozingo who I learned was hanging up his knot comb and closing shop after this ZT4 batch is gone. Makes me appreciate this fantastic brush even more!

 

[APBinNCA]

I'm very happy with the X pattern I'm using on the problematic left side of my neck and the slow S-N ATG micro-stroke (with stretching) I use for this one section on the right that's like a slight valley. I found the X pattern right before FFFMM and was able to get it solidly into muscle memory over the March event - that was the final step to unlocking a real DFS shave for me in two passes.

We must have had a Vulcan mind connection going because I got bored of my aggressive BBS shaves and decided I wanted to see what it would take to hit that is it DFS or BBS borderline in two passes, period. No touch-ups. Anyway, because I love my Gillette slides, and signature reverse slides, so much, I realised that I was making an X pattern and that could be optimised further! I am actually shocked how close of a shave I can get, and how quickly, without thinking about it. But it's not BBS technically.

 

[flask28]

<Adam and Aaron>

We must have had a Vulcan mind connection going because I got bored of my aggressive BBS shaves and decided I wanted to see what it would take to hit that is it DFS or BBS borderline in two passes, period. No touch-ups.

This is exactly my current quest. Although I'm coming up to DFS and you are "settling" for it so it's a little different. Ha! I'm inconsistently managing the "no touch up" element, maybe one out of four right now.

I've struggled with the crosswise direction of my growth on the left side and have experimented with a few different direction combos. I stumbled onto the the X pattern in that quadrant after realizing the N-S/S-W combo was never going to work for a two-pass.

This exercise has been all with a Tech so far. I'm wondering if the two pass challenge with the incoming Athena is going to feel like cheating after the months with the Techs.