March - Brotherhood Shave
Day Sixteen



I did quietly take a gander at the Osage today.

@Drygulch - Adam - thinking of you buddy!

Other than that...all is quiet in Colorado.

Have a nice Thursday.

Safe travels to you, Brian.

My #8 may not win, but I feel validated at a glance. Synthetics are awesome.

I love that movie.

Sorry we couldn't manage the meet up but my offer for some real STL BBQ next time holds. Pappy's here we come!

March 16 (Thursday) - EverReady 1914 SE and new soaps focus

EverReady 1914 SE / Gem PTFE ( 2)
Nathan Clark red Alluminati Envy White badger brush
Jeeves of Hudson Street Turkish Bath
Alum and PGS Black Willow Toner

My Busting NB'17 loot has started to arrive:. Monday it was the Alluminati brush, Tuesday my tubs of TOBS shave cream, and today it was my Jeeves of Hudson Street order - large tubs of Private Study and Turkish Bath. Naturally, I am having to roadtest it all.

Private Study is a great smelling bay rum variant, but Turkish Bath is a mix of exotic spices unlike anything in my soap cupboard, so I went with it for my first foray into Jeeves of Hudson Street products. The brush was of course my new badger.

I am going to have to play with these soaps for a week or two to get them dialled in correctly. My first try tonight was good but not great. The spicy scent was outstanding, but my lather was on the thin and slightly watery end of the "okay" scale. I swirled the damp badger brush for about five swirls on the soap before going to my bowl and adding water. I probably need to double that. The soap built lather quickly and soon started to get a nice consistency, but I wasn't getting the thick, creamy lather I got yesterday from the TOBS - and it feels like I should. My best guess is "not enough product". And maybe I need to move back to a familiar synthetic brush at first while trying the new soap.

Anyway, the soap did provide the good slipperiness, glide and protection I would expect from a quality tallow product as well as good skin feel afterwards.

The shave - was okay. I skin stretched carefully tonight while shaving lightly with the 1914, and even ended up trying an ATG pass. No fresh bloody areas but I did reopen a couple of yesterday's scabs. And the alum was like fire on my neck afterwards. Clearly that ATG pass was not appreciated by the peanut gallery. But the end result was at least DFS+.

I now know I can shave well with the 1914. I also know I don’t like it much. In particular, I dislike trying to open it to clean it (and it's best to do so since whiskers and soap scum gather on the underside of the razor blade). I always feel like I'm going to slip while operating the topcap tension catches and slice my fingers. Even though the topcap spring clip is less secure, the 1912 design is easier to open and close -- and as long as you remember to doublecheck blade alignment every time before shaving, the possibility of blade slippage is really not that big a deal. Which might be why the 1912 was produced into the 1940s, while the 1914 disappeared as soon as the 1924 back-catch design came along...

Anyway, I think my own 1914 is now going to disappear out of my rotation and back into my collection ... and tomorrow I will debut my 1924...

No Provel cracker pizza with lukewarm Busch out of a plastic pitcher? Keep it authentic!

(You know I can't pass that up.)

And what's that crazy pie/cake stuff in STL? It's "gooey butter cake", methinks.

I've done it all wrong. Should have been an STL cardiologist.

I just saw Nurse Ratchet naked.....you'd run screaming too!!!

Mine had a metal handle. But I know almost nothing about these razors, and have no idea if that is how it was supposed to be.

March Madness & Spring Cleaning!!

March 16

Razor - 1918 Gillette Old Style
Blade - (2)
Soap - Stirling Barbershop
Brush - BoS Omega 10066
Post - Alum

After last night's interesting run with the razor on a stick I went to the closest thing I have that approximates it. The 1918 Gillette Old. Honestly, this razor is aggressive enough it's nearly like going without a guard. This early Gillette was a huge improvement in feel and safety from a straight, but compared to the later Gillettes and a lot of moderns it's a beast. I love it though and it's in great shape. I'm thinking of looking for another one and getting it to Delta Echo for some love, but this one stays original.

Stirling Barbershop for the easy and slick lather. I'm still having fun going through Stirling, Route 66 and Soap Commander trying to convince myself that they are as good as the Fat and Tabac. They're all great soaps, no doubt about it and I love the scent on this one tonight. My wife suggested it smelled like talcum powder when she gave me my after shave kiss and.....well, yes, talcum was one of the ingredients in the old time barbersh0p that gave it that scent. I had to tell her about the big horsehair brush at the end of the haircut.....combination loose hair remover on the neck and talcum powder application. Mmmmmmmm good.

Two passes, WTG and XTG with a bit of Gillette Slide to finish the neck. It's near BBS and I'm perfectly content with that. The Alum was hot. As in HOT. I suspect that's a combination of last night's stunt and tonight's very comfortable and smooth but aggressive shave. As always, the Super Iridium was great as well. The only thing missing - I think I need some Fine Snakebite for a finish on shaves like this. Burn baby burn!

Cardiologists here do make a ton of money! I have actually never tried the "gooey butter cake". I'm not much of a sweets lover so that has never hit my plate yet. Imo's Pizza? Yep, I am a fan of that. Won't drink Busch beer anymore either since they sold. Schlafly Heffenweisen baby.

I know my local poison. Kidding aside, there's a great deal of tradition in STL, and some unique and quite good Sicilian and Italian foods. I am forever beholden to the N AL/S TN pulled pork and chicken with white sauce, but the STL preparation of a spare rib cut is the gold standard for that genre. I just can't get over Provel. It's awesome.

I remember the first time I had the Alabama white sauce. Yep, I'm definitely a fan. Some of the STL traditions that aren't food related are also unique and it takes a bit to embrace them. For instance - kickball leagues. Think adult softball, only it's kickball. Like we all played in school. A bunch of beer drinking older guys playing kickball. Or - the most unusual name for a game - Cornhole. Played with beanbags (filled with corn, or at least tradionally) - sort of like tic-tac-toe in the park, if you know what I mean. There are a few others too but those stick out in my mind. Oh, and the fact that the region was heavily influenced by the French when settled, meaning we have lots of street and place names that are French. And nobody pronounces them right. My first six months living here I was totally lost when people would say the name of some street and I had no clue what it was because I had been pronouncing it with the proper French inflection.

I had that same experience when I moved from Alabama to Houston. In HS I took enough Spanish (5 semesters) that even to this day, when I read Spanish words, my mind uses Spanish vowels. I had no idea what place names were being mentioned. In Houston, most Spanish names of public things are pronounced with English vowels and a TX syllable accent. My ears tooks a while to adjust.

Cornhole is a big bar/league game in the summer on downtown Denver bar patios and rooftops.

Oh cool. I didn't realize it was named that anyplace else. One advantage to playing on a rooftop - if the opposing player tries to cheat you can just toss him off!

March 16 (Thursday ) - evening shave part 2 - the bloody fiasco

Jeeves of Hudson Street Turkish Bath
Supply Provision synthetic brush
EverReady 1924 / Gem PTFE ( 1 )
Alum and Supply Provision Juniper Post Shave Balm
Styptic pencil
Washcloth, cold water, pressure, ointment, bandages

I was feeling bored so I decided to test lather the Turkish Bath using a familiar synthetic brush to see if I could get better lather. And I did. Much better. Stronger scent too.

Then I face lathered with it to see if the feel was better and to enjoy the scent and postshave feel even if I had already shaved.

Then I figured that I might as well do one light WTG pass and see how the 1924 was as a razor.

Well, to begin with, it was rattly. It felt like the blade was moving. I checked and the blade had about 1/16" forward and back play in the razor because the leafsprings that pushed the back of the blade forward into the blade stops were too compressed. So I fixed that.

The razor was no longer rattly but with a noticeable blade gap above the bar guard it was still extremely aggressive. In fact, my light WTG pass with careful skin stretching and a good slick tallow soap lather left me with NINE weepers on my chin. Cold water and alum pretty much stopped 8 of them; the 9th required the styptic pencil after the cold water rinse, alum, cold water rinse, and balm before it quit bleeding.

I decided this particular 1924 could go back in collection. And then, as I was getting ready to open it to remove the blade, I fumbled and dropped the razor and bounced the head off my thumb. Despite having the blade still locked down solidly in place, despite having the blade locked in blade stops that completely cover the corners, despite having the blade itself resting behind a safety bar, the wretched thing still managed to slice a triangular flapped gash in the tip of my thumb. It took about 15 minutes of direct pressure on the gash with a cold damp washcloth before the damned thing quit bleeding enough so I could wrap it in a tight bandaid without having the blood ooze through. Safety Razor, ha!

This 1924 is now back in my collection alongside the 1914 (both empty of blades, of course). I have a nice little nickelled 1924 in a metal travel case that I have pulled out instead. I'll see how it does tomorrow -- and if I continue experimenting with different models of Gem-style razors or end up quitting at 1912...

Good telling of a crappy shave. So maybe I missed it earlier: are you a fan of these style razors or just now getting to know them?

Just getting to know them.

I've used Schick injectors and a Gillette adjustable DE for years off and on (usually using an electric with occasional forays into wetshaving). I switched to wetshaving exclusively last October after finding the 30-Day Crew and learning from it how to make proper lather, apply it correctly and get good comfortable close shaves by doing multiple light passes, riding the cap, skin stretching, etc. My interest had been increased by then because I had come across the modern Supply Provision Single Edge injector and Rockwell 6s DE adjustable and had Kickstarted both - but I was still just using injectors and DEs.

I have owned some of the Gem-style SE razors for years in my collection. In fact, I think my first collector razor was a Valet Autostrop. But I didn't even realize you could still get blades for them until a few months ago. When I found out, I ordered a box of the Gem PTFEs a couple months ago and tried them out a couple times. I thought the razors were okay but nothing special. However, this month I decided to do a month Focus on the Gem-style SE razors to find out if I should put a couple in my permanent rotation - or just sell off that part of my collection entirely.

My first shaves with the EverReady and Gem 1912s were alright but really pretty ho-hum ... until I realized both razors had been "modified" (i.e. bent) by previous owners so the shaving head angles were way off factory spec. Oddly enough, they had been bent in opposite directions, so one shaved almost flat and the other at about a 45 degree angle... After ten minutes with a pair of pliers, they are both great razors.

I then moved on to the "improved" models of 1914 and 1924. As described in today's entries. If I had started with them, I would be sworn off Gem-style SEs for life.

There are some later pushbutton and tto models, I believe. I don’t own any. (I think they are referred to as the G-Bar and the MMOC.) I may go see if I can find one in a local junk shop to round out the month's focus. But if not, I expect I will be keeping some 1912s (including a Gem Junior I should try) and selling everything else.

So I am just learning them, and so far, I have two I quite like and two I absolutely hate...

They had two versions. One with a brass handle and one with the fat plastic handle.

Great picture, Mark!