July 2020 30 Day Rule/Focus Pix & Discussion

Beautiful set up, Angelo! Using the President was a nice touch, sir!

 

Awesome shave Blair. Yes, we are a bunch of enablers in the group.

 

Like Spiderman's "Spidey Senses"--to bad they don't kick in 30 seconds sooner

 

Beautiful shave Andrew.

 

Fabulous photo! An overall great time of food and conversation. Then again, what would you expect from two Italians.

 

Two beauties

 

Wow! You can see straights and science simply radiating off you two like an aura! Awesome photo and experience, gentlemen

 

Yup! He's got a time machine, folks--it's the only thing that makes sense

 

Beautiful photo, and awesome way to start off the month, Jason! Super classy set up, and the Desert Vetiver sounds fantastic

 

Thanks Joe! The Drew Dicks were cool, especially the one with the Damascus steel. They were well balanced.

 

It's so true!

 

In the fridge? Man, things must be rough

 

Thank you Jason!

Thanks Joe!

 

Thanks Tim! We brought our best straights for our meeting. We went into many different topics outside of shave talk and that's what made it great! It's good to have a common ground, but that can only last so long. Being on the planet with 125 yrs of combined experience helps to move a conversation along.

 

Just One July Weekdays

Rating: 5 / 5

Razor: Razor Retro Shavette
Blade: Univinlions
Brush: Dogwood Handcrafts 26 mm Tuxedo
Lather: Razorock Stallion
Aftershave: Wholly Kaw King of Oud
Additional Care:
Barbero Alum Block
Stirling Tea Tree Witch Hazel
Stirling Unscented Glacial Balm

I am a big fan of Oud. It is such a woodsy masculine scent. Both the RR Stallion and thee Wholly Kaw King of Oud pair perfectly.

I have an abundance of soaps in my den. So I have been dwelling on which soap would lead off the Just One Weekday shaves. The decision to go with Stallion and KoO was solidified yesterday by the announcement of this month’s theme. Stallion is an artisan soap made in Italy, therefore perfect in my mind for “Shave Like an Emperor”.

The resulting shave was smooth, most likely I would consider it a DFS mainly because this was the fifth shave with the blade. Tomorrow, the razor will have a new Schick Proline P-30 to mow down the stubble. For the next two days, I will be in Oudland. The weekend will evolve around the soap I have been using the last 10 weekends, Stache Soapworks E Barber, in an effort to sink it and reduce the den. The decision will be whether or not to continue in Oudland next week or offer up another soap for Just One Weekdays.

 

July 1
The Emperor Strikes Back--”Empirical Shaving”

Sorry folks, this one is going to be a bit lengthy, but writing it out helps me internalize what happened. And today a lot happened. You have my permission to skip to the gear list and photo, and then move on.

Can’t think of a worse way to start off the month, btw. The shave was perfect. Epic even (@Keithmax, I’ll have my guys get in contact with your copyright guys to work something out). All kinds of breakthroughs today, and though it sounds wonderful, there is a bit of a snag--where do you go from there?

Gear

• Razor: Linuxguile Lupo--my newest and nicest razor is also my only modern one
• Blade: Polsilver Super Iridium (2)--even on its 2nd shave, the Polsilver wrings bad haiku poetry right out of me:

My reflected face
Shines from iridium shave
Mirror in mirror​

• Brush: The JOmegan Boar--the nicest brush I own is also my newest. Time to break in that Omega 48 knot--the boar funk is already gone, and that’s half the battle.
• Soap: one part Stirling Iced Pineapple & two parts Glastonbury, prepared and chilled with ice water (four Frost Drops added)--the greatest thing to come out of Mixed Up May for me. Starts chilly and Pineapple-y sweet, then fades into a deep, earthy, slightly-mutton-influenced fougere
• Menthol: Stirling Frost Drops
• AS: Pinaud Citrus Musk (2 Frost Drops)
• Balm: Stirling Glacial Unscented

The Shave
Before I get into the shave, I should probably list the things that I decided to work on this month:

• Supergoop from a big brush in a small bowl
• Linuxguile Lupo’s aluminum lightness

Yogurty Supergoop
when I saw Pierpaolo’s @ischiapp photo today, something suddenly clicked into place. His awesomely black soap was just blobbed at the bottom of the bowl. When I first tried loading and lathering from a bowl years ago, I started that way, but the soap moved around on me, so I pressed it in more. Not much at first, but gradually over the months I was spreading it super-thin around the bottom and sometimes even the sides. The brush seemed to just soak up the soap in no time, which seemed like a good thing. But it wasn’t.

I like a super-hydrated, super-dense yet super thin lather. A supergoop that is devoid of fluffiness. With all the soap soaked into the bristles, the only way to get it lathered out is to agitate those bristles, which in turn, introduces air into the lather, which creates fluff. A good supergoop builds a pre-lather paste that sticks to the soap and mug before getting truly worked into the lather. You can’t do that if the soap is in all the bristles.

Over the past few months I tried countering the bristles-think-they're-straws syndrome by keeping the brush insanely dry, but some days it still didn’t work, and even when it did, it took forever to lather without fluffing up. Get too impatient… get fluffy. Today I lightly pressed a blob of soap right into the bottom of my bowl, and just lightly started the loading process with a moderately wet brush… and got paste. Folks, if I can get paste, I can get a supergoop lather--and I did. Really cut the time down, too. With the perfect lather prepared, I was ready to focus on the shave itself

The Aluminum Lupo's Lightness
With the razor’s weight so negligible, you have to add a bit of weight on your own; I have heavy hands. Here were my preventative steps:

• Become a YouTuber--I used long, slow, "YouTuber" strokes in order to counter some of the over-shaving that often accompanies the short, choppy, almost buffing-like strokes I normally use. Those short strokes are a remnant from my early shave days anyhow (when I viewed shaving much like chopping wood).
• Keep it shallow--I decided to err on the side of shaving too shallow rather than for efficiency. Turns out I’ve been shaving at a steeper angle with the Lupo than I previously thought

Keeping these two ideas in mind, I did a simple 3 pass, minimal touch up shave--WTG, XTG, ATG. This will seem like a tangent, but it's not: almost all of my children had an alarming habit of hurling themselves from furniture so that I could catch them--whether I was paying attention or not. It was not uncommon for me to talk with the missus only to suddenly find a toddler who was previously on a bed suddenly clinging to my midsection as we both tumbled towards the floor. Today’s shave was reminiscent of those times. I wasn’t even thinking about the baby, but when I looked into the mirror, there it was. Even though the baby is only a metaphor, I still almost fell to the floor. Weird.

Happy End of Hump Day!

 

Joe, 126 combined years of experience. A wonderful time! You get two Italians, that talk with their hands, you are guaranteed to have plenty to talk about.

 

Thanks, Tim! In order to avoid ‘dear’, all I need do is shave an hour earlier while she’s in bed!

 

Awesome shavette shave, Joe--That Razor Retro Shavette is a looker

I am still uninitiated in the world of oud scents--that's a situation that I'll have to rectify at some point in time. I think Stirling's Agar is and oud-based scent. Hmmm...

 

Super shave and phenomenal report Tim. I am sure you will master the Lupo in no time.