30 Day Rule/Focus; June 2025. All Are Welcome!

SRS # 1308

Rating: 5 / 5

Razor: Wade & Butcher 13/16 “Bow”
Brush: CRD Patriotic Swirl 26 mm Synthetic
Lather: Declaration Grooming/Chatillon Lux Nefertiti
Aftershave: Chatillon Lux Nerfertiti
Additional Care:
Omega Alum
Dickenson’s Original Witch Hazel
Stirling Unscented Glacial Balm

Excellent three pass shave prior to this morning’s breakfast meet up with Joe, @Trigger . Once again we had a variety of topics to discuss for our monthly meet up.

Hope you all have had a great day

 

Thanks Joe.

 

Super straight razor shave Joe! Yes, it's always great getting together with you. Of course, being served by our favorite waitress just kicks it up a few notches.

 

fine start to the month Joe.

 

A nice theme shave there, Gary, while still sticking with Gillette -- today was German Gillette Gune, was it?

 

Thanks, Joe!

Yes, Jeeves of Hudson Street turned out to be one of the many mayflies in the artisan wetshaving world. Good stuff while it lasted though.

 

Thank you, Gary. I'm trying to stick with that pre-shave bar from R.E. for the time being. The woman there (DJ, I think she's called) said it was a good pre-shave treatment and wash.

 

Thank you, Joe. I confess that, being newest to traditional shaving soaps and brushes, I feel like I'm still playing around with saturation (hydration?) levels a bit.

 

Thank you, Joe.

 

A very nice shave, Joe!

 

I have other MdC soaps that I have used, although it's been awhile since I dipped a brush in one. From what I remember, they are triple-milled very hard soaps and a little on the brush actually goes a long way. I would do a few swirls with a wet synthetic brush and that would give me enough to prep for the shave. I don't think they lathered up enormously (the way Arko does, for example). Instead I would end up with a thin but wet lather layer that allowed the razor to glide smoothly.

As usual, it's YMMV, but my recollection is that with MdC soap, if I ended up with a lather that looked like Dagwood in the old cartoons - a thick white layer on the face - I had used too much product and not enough water and needed to thin it down.

It does sound like you had soap on your face that was a bit too dry.

Having said that, I haven't tried the new Absinthe scent -- and it's possible that whatever essential oils or other ingredients are used to create the new scent might have changed the performance of the soap. I think that's always a risk when tinkering with soaps.

Btw, thanks for the review on that soap. I have been curious about the new Absinthe scent but not enough to buy any -- and now I probably won't.

Also, I agree with Joe: the object of the lather in shaving is to trap moisture against your skin to soften the whiskers and to make your face wet and slick enough so the razor blade cuts whiskers but not skin. That's it. A big cloud of white foam covering your face "looks purdy" ... but it's the thin layer right against the skin that counts.

 

yes sir.thank you John

 

4 June 2025

2 ½ Days growth: late afternoon shave

Same hardware and software as on June 2

Thought I would go to a 3 day stubble and shave tomorrow, but changed my mind and decided on a late afternoon shave instead

Personna PTFE (2) in the Hydromagic. Bit draggy to start with. Thinned the lather from the Palmolive shave cream more and more, but it still felt a bit rough,checked the blade, yep, still seated nicely, so for the 2nd pass I improvised and added some Cyril R Harris solid soap which smoothed things out nicely

Super clean damage free shave but boy was the alum hot!!! It seems 2 successive SE shave is not what my face is used to

Burberry Hero: very strong woody notes all the way through

Looking forward to more variety this month

Have a great day everyone

 

More elegance! Like that bowl

Thanks Joe

No problem with dripping lather, so long as it lands back in the basin and not the floor! When my lather gets that runny I know I have pushed the hydration for that product a bit far, but that is still better than thick dry lather. If it is too drippy I just go back to the puck to thicken it up again, just a bit. Half the fun, improvising on the go

Well said as usual Joe

Sounds like another great meet up, two presentable and well shaved dudes debating various things

Ah yes, we haven't heard about her for a while!

Excellent comments. Somewhere in the back of my mind my brain said "Dagwood" ? I think I know that name from somewhere. Quick internet search and it immediately unlocked the doors to my ageing memory vaults: memories going to the drive in movies as a kid with my folks and hunting down some cool comics at the big "Intermission" Blondie, superheroes, Archie, Jughead et alia. Those were the days! Thanks for the memory jog!

 

Thank you Eoin.

 

Fine shave this morning. A little less than a minute at the Loading Dock. I couldn't quite get enough soap onto the Badger(or at least it looked that way), but it was enough. Maybe I'm still getting used to it. Clean, clear shave all around. No cuts, Knicks, Red Ball Sunsets, etc. I did better down at Cactus than yesterday. Very happy. Super Duper Outstanding. .

 

thank you Chris.the mug is from the 1940's-50's and was made by Dominion Glass in Toronto Canada.

 

fine midweek affairs gentlemen

 

-The-Midweek-Shave-
canadian service tech set
rubberset 200-3
fendrihan lemon soda
av sport



good morning gents
fine lemon soda lather built with the restored rubberset 200
smooth 2 passer with the canadian war tech,minor pickups
av sport to finish
awesome
have a fine day everyone
​

 

Thanks for the great feedback, John and Chris.

I will not discard that Martin de Candre, but will try some more lather creations with it. I've not tried their soap before, and don't want to write it off until I've taken your and everyone's feedback into account and tried again with different saturation levels. It's only a sample I got from Maggards, so maybe I won't get much but a couple or few test lathers, but it's a good learning opportunity. I actually have quite a lot of soap samples at this point. That makes it more challenging to 'stick with' a certain thing, but (and I apologize if I said this previously) I didn't care for hating a particular soap I got in my first order so much I just tossed the whole thing. So now I have possibly a couple dozen sample sizes of various things to try out here and there, interspersed amongst my Prorasso and LEA jars.