December 2019 30 Day Rule/Focus Pix & Discussion

Mike, thanks for sharing your story, and Praise the Lord for the turnaround in your life. I am glad you are here with us! As you already know, the crew here is about so much more than shaving.

Now that you are "officially" (as if anything is really "official" here ) part of the 30 Day Crew, we can cheer you on as your technique continues to improve. You'll have to look past all the enabling and shenanigans. I've tried to get these guys to stop, but they won't. Do you like watches?

Merry Christmas, my friend.

Charlie

 

That's a pretty good description of our MAYhem shaves!

 

Dec 21
Ist 30DC Anniversary Shave
Shavette Shave #118
Dovo Shavette
Polsilver Iridium 1/2 DE Blade (3)
Rockwell Synthetic Brush
Stirling Bay Rum SS and AS
Nivea ASB not pictured
I chose this setup because it is the same when I first started straight shaving with the exception of the Bay Rum SS and AS and the Nivea. I had originally used Rockwell Barbershop SS, but I figured the Bay Rum is another type of barbershop scent. I made sure I got a great face lather to prepare my 50 hr stubble. My Dovo shavette has never failed me yet and on 2 passes got a great IBSS++ without any blood nor irritation. Trust me, I made sure that I wasn't going to have any incidents on this anniversary shave. Ended with the great smelling aftershave and then the Nivea.
Reflecting this past year:
I came to join this magnificent bunch of guys on Dec 21, 2018. At the time, I only had 2 months experience being a wetshaver with close to 50 straight shaves (traditional straight and shavette shaves). Although I had a good technique, my technique is so much better today. I learned about the different soaps and razors that make shaving fun. I learned to hone with lapping films, and use crox on the fabric side of my strop as an inexpensive way to maintain razors. I appreciated the advice as well as the good natured jibes given to me by each and every one of you. I have been shaving 45+ years and I never thought it was fun until I came on this forum one year ago today. Thank you guys for a great year! Have a great day!

 

Happy TSD anniversary, Joe! Great shave.

 

You've been knocking it out of the park lately with your shaves and photos, Andrew!

I have so enjoyed seeing the weekly photos of Declan and Logan. It has been fun watching them grow up. Thanks for sharing them with us. You and your Bride are indeed blessed...with more blessings on the way!

I recently started volunteering in a kindergarten class. I wish I could show a couple of the photos my friend, the teacher, has taken. The kids made me a turkey hat for Thanksgiving and invited me to be in their class photo. I read a Charlie The Ranch Dog book to them yesterday. We all sat on the floor. I wasn't expecting it, but the kids totally surrounded me. One little guy threw his arm around my shoulder. As you know being the cool Dad you are, life is good when kids are part of it.

 

Thank you, Perry!

That's a great feeling when the wee ones appreciate you.

 

looks like an excellent replate.

Many of us have come out of dark places in our lives, good you are here with us. You can start right away, just pick a brush, soap, razor and blade and start shaving. Keep things the same for a month. Check in and let us know how the shaves are going and the advice will just roll in.

Same for me, off for the Christmas and New Years.... plus the weekends.

I don’t feel so bad now I’m not doing 12 hour shifts and not on the weekend.

I picked up a pack of vintage old spice soap also, I have also very impressed with how well it lowers but it has lost all of it sent.

 

Saturday
December 21, 2019

Wolfman WR2 with WRH7 SS
Super Iridium
El Druida "Robo I" Manchurian
Nobel Otter Barr Barr
Stirling Barber Shop
Brooks Brothers 1818

​

 

Awesome retro shave Czar Neal. Thanks for heading up the Cartel. It has made the 30DC and interesting place. HAPPY anniversary!

 

Thanks Joe. As a teacher, I know you speak from experience.

I also volunteered to help with another classroom project this year. My friend "inherited" a 50+ year old classroom from a teacher (and one before that) that had accumulated a bunch of...junk...over the years. We're currently working on designs for a reading nook, a corner storage cabinet, and other types of modular storage. I enlisted a buddy to develop some CADD drawings (hey, we're engineers). I also volunteered to help with some general clean out and organization. We should be able to make some quick wins with a minimal amount of effort.

In the meantime, we'll be looking at the overall classroom layout and noodling on ideas to make things better for the kids. They deserve the best, in my humble opinion. We used a "Rooms" app on our iPad for some furniture layouts at our home, so I figure that will work equally well for a classroom.

 

Wow! That's fantastic, Charlie! I know that classroom will be top notch when the renovation is finished!

 

You've been a little bit "off" as long as we've known you, Danny.

Merry Christmas, my friend.

 

I'm keeping a photo journal. I'll share some before and after photos. I can't guarantee it will look beautiful, but I think we can eventually make it work better.

 

Excellent shaves, gentlemen!

@Trigger, congrats!

 

As I reported in The Stoylin Exchange, I just couldn't be "one" with the BoS fragrance. The overall performance and face&neck feel were fine, as expected by all the Stoylins I've used so far. The BoS soap&A.S. were PIFEd to me very generously, but I don't see myself making regular use of it. I'll hang on to it though....good for occasional use, but it won't be regular.

 

Thanks, Patrick!

 

Thanks, Daniel!

 

I happen to like the Stirling BoS scent, but would use it on special occasions.

 

December 21

I've been marching along on my December focus using my Single Ring, whatever brush strikes my fancy, and rotating through my Stirling BOS, Jabonman Eufros Wet Earth (nice way to describe mud that smells like damp leaves and grass), and Mike's Hungarian Lavender. I even threw in a few travel shaves with my Trac II and a Tabac shave stick. Verdict so far is (a) that both razors shave equally well...yes, my Trac II is on par with a DE, and (b) all the soaps are top-shelf, but Tabac reigns supreme by providing the slick, yogurt-consistency lather that I prefer. I'm gaining more skill and a new respect for my synthetic brushes.

I'd like to say that I avoided the end-of-year buying frenzy, but I have still managed to stock 500 Voskhods, a dozen or more bars of Stirling bath soap, a couple of bottles of Stirling body lotion, and four bottles of Thayers Lavender Witch Hazel. I've purchased some other odds and ends, but they were used to build shave kits for good friends.

I've been preoccupied with life the past few months, but I hope to get back to more routine SOTD posts. My Bride continues to do exceedingly well on her treatments. The cancer markers in her blood are down by about two thirds. The docs tell us she is making terrific progress. We'll continue on our current path of treatment until these "markers" plateau or become non-detectable. Then we go to the Mayo Clinic for the stem cell transplant. It will be a mostly outpatient procedure, and our home-away-from-home will be in a transplant house with other families taking similar journeys. We have our ups and downs, for sure. But family and friends have gathered all around us, and we are incredibly blessed. We see God at work at every turn.

We have house sitters/watchers, so we plan to spend January in a condo overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. We have treatments lined up at the local hospital. Depending on my Bride's continued progress, we are taking another short trip with my sister to San Francisco in late Feb/early March. We are staying a few blocks from the vintage watch district in SFO, so that will be a fun trip. I'm hitting the watch shops one day while the girls do their shopping thing. And that puts us back at the Mayo Clinic sometime around March for a few weeks. We hear the weather can still be rugged in Minnesota during March, so I'm having a new "deep cycle" battery installed in my car on Monday morning. I gave up on trying to pack my shaving supplies in my travel bag for the two extended trips, so I decided to fill a plastic tub with a full array of goodies.

I hope you all are well. I am thankful for my 30 Day FAMILY, and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!