December 30 Day Rule/Focus Pix & Discussion

Thanks Patrick!

 

Awesome shave a great honest summery on the Carbon. The wood grain on the brush is gorgeous.

 

Gorgeous Carbon shave Jim!

 

Thanks Gary!

 

Lovely shave and I hope Mocha was just being lazy this morning. Have a great day Clint.

 

Awesome shave Gary. Great picture and another Chubby?

 

Thanks, Danny!

Sent from my SM-T510 using Tapatalk

 

Paul,

I'm an old production guy, and I can tell you that companies are very aware of their production costs. If a raw material (Oud, in this case according to @Primotenore) is costly, you can bet it won't show up in a discount consumer product. Established companies may then choose to synthetically replicate these scents at a much lower cost. The reality is that this will satisfy the great majority of their consumers.

For example, I recently introduced my sister to Stirling products. Her first comment to me was that she couldn't believe their low prices for the quality of the ingredients they used. She's used to paying "over the counter" prices for expensive cosmetics. I replied that the wet shaving market would generally not support the higher prices. There's simply too much product availability and competition in the market, not to mention that the market demographic is primarily a bunch of cheap male Baby Boomers.

Bottom line, use what you enjoy. A synthetic fragrance may be slightly different than the original, but it is not inherently better or worse. It's all up to you, your nose, and your budget.

 

SOTD WEDNESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 30, 2020

Another bright sunny day in the Philadelphia suburbs resulted in another brilliant shave! It’s always fun to shave with the first straight razor I ever purchased five years ago, my Dovo Special. After its touch up on the new Naniwa 12k Christmas present, it sailed through its duties in three, slow luxurious passes (WTG, ATG, XTG) leaving my mug smooth and clean!

The dome shave featured the razor I reviewed favorably shortly prior to its release several months ago, Fine Accoutrements’s SS New LC Homage, somewhat hyperbolically named, “World’s Finest Safety Razor”. The shave was every bit as good as my mug shave. The razor is quite efficient. And while not an OC like its namesake, delivered a very acceptable shave, no doubt in part due to the Proraso-produced C.O. Bigelow shave cream, really excellent stuff! I feel cool, clean, refreshed and smoothly velveteen!

RAZOR: Dovo Special 5/8 (Mug), Fine Accoutrements’s SS Safety Razor (Dome)
BLADE: Feather DE
PREP: Cold water rinse followed by a scrub with Argan Oil
BRUSH: MrEE Monster Tuxedo Synth
CREAM: C.O. Bigelow
POSTSHAVE: Cold water wash with Glyce Glycerin Soap followed by Humphreys WH and Osage Rub.

 

Great looking shave Joe. That sucks on having to pay for the Covid Test. Good luck with the test

 

Nearly the same deal on product reformulations, by the way. Products get reformulated for just a few reasons...raw material availability & cost (cost is king), regulatory requirements (more applicable to major consumer products), and to improve performance (most often based on consumer feedback). If your goal is to sell and make a profit in a target market, there's really no other reason (that I know of) to reformulate.

 

Thank you Blair. Mocha has been on a steady decline for the last 2 years or so. She's already well outside the average life span for her breed. Asha just sent me a text that she's refusing to eat. I might be going to the vet this afternoon.

 

Thank you Joe. I almost always try for a BBS shave but I just didn't have it in me this morning. I am lucky in that I am pretty much immune from irritation.

 

We are lucky here. I have not paid for any of my 5 Covid tests and I have never been asked for insurance information either

 

Thank you Danny

 

thank you Joe..was a fantastic shave..

 

Oh boy. Nothing but well wishes and prayers on Mocha.

If it helps....we crossed this bridge with our previous 13 year old JRT back in 2007/2008, don't remember which. I was able to kick start her through the cycle with some web searching after a vet visit. We worked through making a home made, whole food dog food that same day. Chicken, green beans, carrots, rolled oats, seaweed, bone broth. Sometimes I used fish, sometimes beef. All as a mix, done in a pressure cooker, the vegetables and meat basically 'mush' before adding in the oats, which gets it to a canned dog food appearance. She couldn't resist it, her old food she'd never touch again. We were able to keep her in the family til Jan 2009. I carried this over to the 2 JRTs we have now. Anytime I cook it, or any of those ingredients for us in a meal, the 2 JRTs go bezerk with begging noises and bumping us with their nose while cooking. We've scaled it back a little with them, it's now a mix of home made to Science Diet to make sure all the nutrients they need.

edit...Yesterday. Made sautéed fresh green beans for dinner. Dropped one on the floor as I was dicing them. One of our JRTs grabbed and made off with it to his bed before we could take it away.

Prayers for Mocha!

 

I have to agree with you on that one Charlie. However might I add to that. I am going to use an example as well to this if you don't mind. There are some cases where you might find products that use the real material at a discounted price. You don't see this all the time though. In my case, I will use one of my fragrances. "Layton Exclusif" one of the fragrance notes under the list is "Oud" as well. The price for the small 75 ML. bottle is roughly around $290 directly from Parfums De Marly.com. Now I can go to a discount website called Fragrancex.com and get the same fragrance in the largest bottle as opposed to the smallest bottle, for around the price that the small bottle goes for. $260 give or take. and the largest bottle is 125 ML. For me in my opinion that's a deal because the largest bottle retails for almost 400 Dollars! Of course sense your talking about shave soap, there is a big difference between a shaving soap and a pure parfum extract. Like you said, companies are indeed aware of production costs. So when you see something like "oud" as a listed scent and the price for the product is not pricey 9/10 there is not going to be legitimate oud but a synthetic molecule to mimic oud.

 

thank you Danny..Chubby's are great brushes..i know,pricey.i bit the bullet..once....now i know..very happy with it..