May 2020 30 Day Rule/Focus Pix & Discussion

awesome shave and pic Clint,good morning..

 

Thank you, Gary! Same to you!
Good morning..

 

fine shave Chris..

 

cool razors Keith..fine shave and pics..

 

cool shave and pic..good morning..

 

Fantastic Bay Rum shave Joe.


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Great shave recap Tim. How much longer before the semester ends?


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Awesome Menthol Monday shave Gary. Love the colors.


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Thank you Gary.


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May 11th
Menthol Monday

Razor: Valet Autostrop
Blade: Feather FHS (10)
Brush: Simpson X3 Best Badger
PS: Stirling Mentholated Preshave (in the shower) & Proraso Green (at the sink)
SS & AS: Stirling Orange Chill

Started with 5 stropping stocks down and back. Notices the polished leading, but the first WTG strokes on my right check were a little rough. Stopped another 10 strokes and shined up the whole bevel. Following that the left check went much better. I'm somewhat confident I can stretch this blade out to 14 two-pass shaves with stropping, but I'm more than a little worried about shave quality after that. As I feel my face about 2 hours post-shave I can say my skin is loving the 2 pass shaves I am certainly DFS. Once this 1 month 1 blade experiment is over I'll be looking at my 3 pass shaves to see if I can find the middle ground. I like BBS, but I often go just a little too far.



As I said, I doubt this blade will last to the end of the month with stropping alone. So, I am looking for ways to survive this experiment with my skin intact. Basically, I can see four options:

1) I committed to shaving with one blade until my DIY blade is done. I made no promise to shave every day. I don't want to rush the final grinding and shaping my blade and crash right before the finish line. Shaving every 2 our 3 days follows the letter of the law, but I know anyone really interested in this experiment would be disappointed if I resorted to only shaving every 3 days.

2) Use a diamond spray on my strop. Probably the easiest option, but this will put additional wear on my vintage razor and I only have the one strop for my VAS. I'm not excited about this option. It's not creative enough.

3) I could make a jig to allow stropping/honing outside of the razor so I can refresh the edge just like I would refresh a straight razor.

4) I also have a Kris Kross blade stopper with a bad strop. The strop is not serviceable, but I'm not shy and willing to open it up and making a new strop I can use for refreshing with a diamond spray.

Option 4 will likely win the day. Option 3 would require me to design and build a new part which means reconfiguring my CNC machine instead of setting it up to precision grind the hollow on my DIY blades. Besides, my CNC is out of commission right now. The first steel blank I used was annealed 1095 steel and machined very easily. I wanted to have 4 blanks ready for heat-treating so I would have more to experiment with but my second order of steel is hot rolled, even though it was sold as annealed. Hot rolled steel is much harder and difficult to machine. I really wish I would have known that before I started. It was impressive to watch. The end mill bound and the oversized motor torqued up and the entire machine groaned and flexed before I could stop it. I managed to salvage the piece, adjust the gibs, and reset the speeds and feeds for hot rolled steel and start again. It was actually going okay but vibrations were a little higher than I like. After a few minutes, the spindle bearing lock ring vibrated loose. That's 2 emergency stops in less than 45 minutes. Obviously it was time to hang it up for the day.

Having the locking ring vibrate loose really isn't a big deal, but it does expose the bearings to debris. So, I'm cleaning and repacking the spindle bearings. The lower spindle assembly is currently on my workbench with just the bearings exposed. It's in great shape but it's definitely time to repack the bearings. The lube is dry and starting to darken. It's 1 to 2 hours of work rebuilding that spindle. So, that's likely all I will get done today if I decide to do anything at all.

 

Not very many folks have responded, leading me to believe that there’s not that much interest. I’d be glad to host it and send out invitations via PM. Thus far only two have expressed interest.

 

thank you Clint,

 

fine shave and pic Evan..

 

Wow, Evan. Quite the committment this month. Good luck moving forward.

 

Great razor! I have the same one with a Halo handle. Haven't tried Prolines in it, only Feather Pros. What are the Iridium blades you speak of?

 

Looks like a great focus, Keith. Have you tried Fine American Blend? Just wondering how close they got to that Rive Gauche.

 

Great looking gear, Jim. I really like SDM as well. It is one of the few soaps that irritated me, but a wonderful scent.

 

Wonderful combo, Clint. MdC sounds like it a top performer for you, no question. Hope your Monday isn't a Monday...

 

Thank you, Jason.
Too bad the soap irritates your skin, it is a wonderful scent.

 

Nice menthol Monday combo, Joe. I really enjoy Proraso lathers as well.