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SOTD "FREE WEEK" April 6th - April 12th, 2020

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Van Der Hagen shea butter preshave, Black Ship Grooming's Ghost ship soap, custom Badland's Shaving Company brush with APShaveco cashmere knot, Blackland Vector with Schick Proline P-30 blade, followed by the great smelling and amazing face feeling Black Ship Grooming's Ghost Ship aftershave!
Man, my face feels good this morning!
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• Prep: Proraso White (and I shave IN the shower)
• Brush: Simpson Duke 3 (Pure)
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE89
• Blade: Feather (4)
• Lather: Cella BIO
• Post Shave: Allum; Thayers and Cella Bio Balm


Lots of lessons learned with this shave; having finally just tried Feather blades (after the first blade, I just ordered a pack of 200), I learned that 2-3 shaves on the blade is the sweet-spot for me…pushing it to 4 turned it into a less smooth Derby. It was terrible, but it wasn’t as glorious as day 1.

I also used a new Simpson brush that absolutely smelled like badger butt. I have 8-10 brushes in the stable and while a couple might have had a slight ‘gamy’ smell, I never thought any of them really smelled when new. In fact, I read the occasional complaint that someone’s new brush smelled bad and just dismissed the criticism…until now. This was strong. This brush STINKS!

I washed it with dish soap, coated it with leftover SV on Tuesday, let it dry with the soap on it all night, cleaned it again, whipped up some Mr. Taylor’s, wash, rinse, repeat. It went from a 10 to a 6 on the stank scale. Sure, I shaved with it, but it wasn’t pleasant.

Lesson learned—if you have a stink brush, whip up a cream that you scoop out with your finger rather than swirling it all over on of your favorite croaps. I’m sure the scent it imparted on my soap will fade once I use it a few more times…the soap, that is. 😊

The brush was nice, but it compromised the shave, along with a 4-shave Feather. Lessons learned. (I would, however, still rate the shave an 8 out of 10, docking a point for each shortcoming.) 😊
 
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SOTD 04/09/2020

Another glorious shave with the new Colonial General V2 blade holder equipped with a Feather Super (4) on its last use. Rather than bore you with continuing paeans to the latter glories, I’ll instead focus today on some of the changes in software I made for this shave. Many of us look to our milled soaps - Martin de Candre, Mitchell’s Wool Fat, Creed’s Green Irish Tweed etc - as the platform for our shaves, but doing so neglects the shave creams. In Italy shave cream is the preferred latherer, according to Sharpologist. Some of my current favorites are Palmolive, Kapo, Gillette Pure, Proraso and Cella. I’ve always enjoyed a good variety of different shave creams, but one of my favorites is Bigelow. It always generates a great thick protective lather. The beautiful Boar brush Jayaruh crafted with its great backbone did an excellent job whipping it up beautifully in the scuttle. This lather seems every bit as good as that generated using my regular MWF. One and a half passes with this razor again put the baby to bed. I really enjoyed the shave; I feel clean, cool, and refreshed. What I most enjoy about using this razor, though, is that wonderful, soft, velveteen feel to the shave surfaces, and that wonderful smell from the Chatillon Lux Post-Shave Toner.

RAZOR: 316L SS Colonial General V2
BLADE: Feather Super AC
PREP: Cold water rinse
SOAP: C.O. Bigelow salted with 6 drops of M-Bomb
BRUSH: Jayaruh Custom Boar #343
POSTSHAVE: Cold water wash with brush squeezings followed by Thayers Lavender WH and finished with Chatillon Lux Pure Lavender Post-Shave Toner
 
This was the shave this morning. I called it Root Beer Thursday!

Brush - Jequil Corenveo in amber lucite (root beer bottle!) synthetic (Thanks, Scott!)
Soap - A very nice new soap sampler from Texas Handmade Suds. I ordered some soap from them last week and they were kind enough to send along a sample of their new shaving soap, still being formulated. I think it is supposed to be scented in a similar way to their "Southern Gentleman" soap, but the shaving soap has a stronger and very pleasant to me top-note of leather. It lathered nicely with the hot water and synthetic brush and produced a nice slick but not too slick layer on my cheeks and jowls. Very comfortable, and a very nice scent in my opinion.
Razor - A sentimental favorite, the old Gillette Ball-End.
Blade - Shark, third shave. Still sharp!
AS Splash - Old School 80's Halston Z-14 (in a brown bottle!) *humming along to a-ha's 'Take On Me*

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ajkel64

Check Out Chick
Staff member
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1) Germany: Pre-Shave Nivea Men Arctic Freeze face wash and shave gel.
2) England: Brush Progress Vulfix mixed Badger and Boar.
3) Germany: Shaving Cream Nivea Men Sensitive.
4) Greece: Razor BIC Flex 4.
5) Germany: Aftershave Lotion Nivea Men 2 Phase Aftershave Lotion.
6) China: Alum Block.
7) USA: Lather Bowl Captain’s Choice Copper Lather Bowl.
 
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