Sounds to me like the very dry winter was the main culprit.
Pré de Provence went from stellar to bad ...
- Thread starter cymric
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- #22
Cella is worth a try. It will likely end up in your top rotation.
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- #24
I hadn't used PdP in a long time, and when about two weeks ago I put it back into rotation all was again not well in the world. The final ATG pass scraped in a painful fashion, which I thought odd, as the lather felt fine: creamy, dense, smooth and certainly not sticky. Yet there it was: friction in the ATG pass. WTG was fine, XTG fine too, ATG was not.
After some head scratching I finally figured it out: when I test lather I rub some between my fingers lightly, and usually that's sufficient. But as I discovered PdP behaves differently when the layer of soap gets very thin: this is of course what occurs between razor blade and skin, but not when you rub your fingers together lightly. In order to test PdP lather for proper slickness, I had to press my fingers together firmly. If there was good glide under those circumstances, the shave would be great. If there wasn'tas in: friction, stickinessI'd better keep a good balm close at hand. In hindsight a really simple problem I should've figured out long ago.
I still can't properly explain what happened over a year ago, though, as I'd been using a different formulation of PdP, but I strongly suspect a similar issue. Since the operating window of PdP is small for me, I must've hit the exact spot by accident; and due to a combination of cold winter weather and growing irritation I wasn't able to find it again because I didn't know what I had to look for. If someone has a puck of PdP where shea butter is not listed in the ingredients and soybean oil is, and is not using that anymore, I'm interested in obtaining it.
In any case, PdP definitively reclaims its spot in the rotation again.
After some head scratching I finally figured it out: when I test lather I rub some between my fingers lightly, and usually that's sufficient. But as I discovered PdP behaves differently when the layer of soap gets very thin: this is of course what occurs between razor blade and skin, but not when you rub your fingers together lightly. In order to test PdP lather for proper slickness, I had to press my fingers together firmly. If there was good glide under those circumstances, the shave would be great. If there wasn'tas in: friction, stickinessI'd better keep a good balm close at hand. In hindsight a really simple problem I should've figured out long ago.
I still can't properly explain what happened over a year ago, though, as I'd been using a different formulation of PdP, but I strongly suspect a similar issue. Since the operating window of PdP is small for me, I must've hit the exact spot by accident; and due to a combination of cold winter weather and growing irritation I wasn't able to find it again because I didn't know what I had to look for. If someone has a puck of PdP where shea butter is not listed in the ingredients and soybean oil is, and is not using that anymore, I'm interested in obtaining it.
In any case, PdP definitively reclaims its spot in the rotation again.
