Tuesday morning May Day shave - Mayday! I'm stuck in a rut!
Supply Co V.2 SE injector on plate #2 / Personna ( 17)
JR #276 white ash and boar brush
Little Horn Quaich shave bowl
Vitos Eucalyptus shaving cream
Alum and Osage Rub
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My first MAYhem shave looked much like my last two weeks of April shaves. I am sticking with the program to use the Vitos Eucalyptus shaving cream tub exclusively until the tub is empty and to use my injector non-stop for as long as the blade lasts.
Mind you, the program might not take much longer. I pushed the cream from around the edges back into the middle of the tub, and it has definitely diminished. I would guess maybe two more weeks tops.
As for the blade, instead of my normal two passes to a good DFS or two and a half to a BBS after an extra XTG pass under my jawline, today I ended up doing two and a half and a half passes to a so-so DFS. The blade felt a little rough and just did not mow whiskers as cleanly as usual. Even with four lathered passes in that area - and the alum feeling a bit warm there - I still feel rough stubble patches under my jawline. the shave isn't
bad but it's not up to my expected standard with this rig.
I played a bit in the Excalibur Club on B+B, where the guys try to push blades to their physical limits. The experienced ones say that after a blade has done its usual first "usable life", it shaves a bit rough for half a dozen shaves or so, then smooths out to buttery smoothness for anywhere from 20 to another 100 shaves. That's with DE blades. I don’t know if the same holds true for the thicker and stiffer SE and injector blades. More to the point, I don’t know if I am willing to put up with the several miles of potholed gravel before the next stretch of good pavement.
I suppose maybe, since this is MAYhem, I should push on with this blade for another few shaves "For Science"... Therefore I am tentatively declaring this Personna injector blade dead at 17 shaves but will see how long I can keep the zombie active.
When it finally dies, I will switch to my Fatip Grande to see if my technique has improved enough over the last year to let me use this aggressive razor as a daily driver.
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