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
View attachment 229493
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!
Click to expand...
