Mine was a little rough too...

March Madness
Day Three



Not my best day, a bit rushed. The alum and a couple of weepers reminded me to slow down next time. Osage calmed it down, but I did not get nuts with it. Other than that...all is quiet in Colorado!

Have a superb Saturday!

So no snowballs on the prairie tonight?

It was 67f today.

March of the Soaps Focus

C.F. Summer Storm, JR #130
Schick Type J1 & Chick blade
Alum & Pinaud Clubman AS


Second sample from the Pass-around. Great scent & excellent lather from this one. Billed as moist earth, oak moss, cut grass, pine needles, orange, lemon, ozone, white jasmine, lily of the valley, geranium and musk. That's a lot of flavor in one tub & it all comes together well. Did I mention I like robust full flavored products? A soft soap with 4 veg oils plus tallow and it lathered easily with a Maggard's synthetic knot in Jim @Jayaruh's one of a kind cypress handle. Change up in hardware brought out an injector that I haven't used in too long. Chris @Bama Samurai set me up with this, my first Schick. Intuitive angle like riding a bike, I made my three passes. Plenty of lather in the suribachi so clean up passes happened. My chin hasn't been this smooth in many shaves. Alum was cool as it gets, and the Clubman went on without any sting. A DFS DoublePlusGood.
Good Shaves Y'all!

April 1st will be bladeless shaves.

Damn, I'm going to be travelling then. The popsicle stick would have been easily packed but it's so last year. I don't think I can fit a bolt and nuts in my luggage.

I'll be traveling as well. Mine will be packed in an Altoids tin. You can do it

March 3 (Friday) - light touch focus

Fatip Grande / Voskhod (5)
1980s drugstore boar brush
The Eternal Tub of TOBS Avocado Cream ( croap )
Alum and Thayers Witch Hazel Aftershave

My faithful old drugstore brush whipped up a perfect lather from The Eternal Tub. I then shaved while holding onto the end of the Fatip Grande with my fingertips. I rode the cap with absolutely no pressure and the result was a very mild-feeling shave by this aggressive razor. The only difficulty was that the Fatip's fairly smooth metal handle became slippery and a bit tricky to hold. However I not only managed to do so through my usual diagonal passes but also did a followup ATG pass. I normally skip that step due to excessive irritation. This time, I felt no scraping from the razor and the alum was virtually silent afterwards.

I wasn't even trying to chase the baby, but I believe I caught it tonight, possibly for the first time ever.

The more I use the Fatip Grande the better I like it, especially when paired with a Voskhod blade.

I'm not sure what razor and blade I will use tomorrow -- I'm completely off my rotation by now and am just grabbing at random from the testtube rack of razors. Whatever I use, I now expect it will be a good shave.

Later this month, I will start playing with a bunch of new soaps (new to me anyway). I blew up my NB'17 today and the results should be showing up in my mailbox over the next couple weeks -- stuff like Route 66, Soap Commander, Stirling, Reef Point and Jeeves of Hudson Street. If the names sound familiar, they should: you vicious Crew of enablers with all your pictures and great descriptions completely destroyed my weak will and I fell off the shaving product wagon . But if you were all telling the truth about these soaps it should absolutely be worth it .

Oh, and Jared @PickledNorthern ... I hope those Nathan Clark Envy White brushes are as nice as you seem to think, because I broke down and bought one...

Have a great Saturday everbody!

I'm not so much the type for posting daily SOTDs. But for fun, I have decided to only use Fatip razors this month, after having used the Mühle Rocca razor exclusively last month. So that's what I have been doing for the past few days.

So far my observation still is that the Fatip OC razors require a bit more skill, which makes the shaves enjoyable for me. They feel more aggressive, and can "bite" you when you are not careful. In comparison, with the Rocca you really have to try to draw blood. Whether that makes the Rocca better is up for debate. What I can say is that it is very well designed.

Happy Birthday @Drygulch

March 4, 2017​

AlumiGoose V1 with Triad SS​

Feather Pro (7)​

Rudy Vey Rover with TGN Finest​

Reef Point Dragon’s Blood​

Floid Blue​

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A wonderful this morning. The Rover easily whipped up the Dragon's Blood into a rich slick lather. Sticking with a traditional 3 pass shave, I paid particular attention to my trouble spots as I went. This resulted less touch ups needed to achieve a near perfect BBS with one small weeper. I hope everyone has a great Saturday.

Wow! I thought my Wusthof knives were expensive. That must be one fine blade.

They are. If you were going to break a NB, it was a great choice to go out on.

You should see what some of the new customs go for. Just for fun, go to the Koraat website and use their razor builder to make something super cool.

Love that black background. That is just an excellent photo.

So the picks are closed, and listed below. They have been locked in the vault with the prizes.


1.) mrchick - #8, 92/100
2.) keithmax - #16 Kent BK12 87/100
3.) hodge - #5, 88/100 (#5 was an obvious pick for me.....see avatar)
4.) jtspartan - #4, 82/100
5.) clint64 - #5, 88/100
6.) ryx - #22, 90/100
7.) norcalnewb - #9, 82/100
8.) Fly2High - #3. Rudy Vey 28 mm Shavemac, 88/100
9.) NCoxSTL - #13 Maggard Synth 82
10.) Ob1page - # 11 Manhandled Woods Ubersoft II, 64
11.) Bama Samurai - #8 Jayaruh synthetic, 86/100
12.) Screwtape - #4 Nathan Clark Envy White, 80/100
13.) PLAla - #21, 81.7/100
14.) Linuxguile - #5 92/100
15.) Cmorris357 - #8, 89/100
16.) wristwatchb - #8, 89/100

Thinking about the overall lineup for the month I notice that Simpson got snubbed hard, with zero picks out of six contestants. Considering there are two of their synthetics and offerings from both of their higher end hair types, this is kind of an interesting development.

The lone Thater also didn't get any love. Was that strategic choice because of the plain black handle, or simply overlooking one of the softest silvertip knots available today?

It will be fun to see the scores roll in.

Thank you Jared.

Envy White knots are some of the finest available at any price. Good choice.

Day 3's delayed coverage:



*A quick caliper check confirms that the knot on this brush is actually set at 50mm, and not the 48 originally listed.

Sometimes a brush just jumps up and grabs a guy, says "Pick me, pick me", and that was the case with this one. When I look at the brush, with the look of the rod stock, the feel and heft of it, I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't turned actually from a chunk of jade. The handle is everything you would expect from a craftsman like Vey, not an imperfection to be found. The knot is a perfect bulb, and it's short loft pulls it in tight, giving it an extremely dense look when viewed from the top. The slight lack of contrast on the badger hair is the only thing it could be faulted for, and even that is a bit of a stretch. The handle is fat. Fat enough, it is at the very outside limit of what I would call reasonable for a natural feeling grip. A brush that stout almost needs a more pronounced shape. It fits the hand fine when loading and working up a lather on the face, but during a messy, sloppy lathering it is almost difficult to keep hold of.

The short tight bulb does a fantastic job at grabbing up lather out of a tub, and with some dribbling of water onto it between trips to the puck, easily fills itself with soap. A fairly easy splayer, the tightly packed two band combined with the short loft make it a seriously scrubby brush, but it is obviously some good quality hair because throughout three passes, there was not a single scritch, scratch, poke or prick. Like most quality, dense knots, especially those with shorter lofts, flowthrough is this brush's only weakness. But a knot so fat, it will hold enough soap to do its job, but you can't be cheap with your puck. I got three good passes out of it without working too hard, and was still able to paint on some touchups. It was still holding a lot of lather at rinse time, but if you wanted it, you were going to have to milk it out. So only its big boy size keeps it from being docked further than it is.

So the scorecard after a great face lather: