Monday March 4 - Menthol Monday, Mixte and "M" Products for March
Prep: Hot shower with Aleppo olive oil soap with 20% bay laurel oil
Razor: Supply matte black stainless 2.0 injector with SE comb plate / vintage US-made Schick Plus Platinum (11)
Soap: Mike's Natural Soaps Hungarian Lavender
Brush: APShaveCo Elegant Emerald handle w/ APShaveCo 24mm APLuxury bulb knot (badger-boar mixture)
Lather Bowl: Jason's (
@jtspartan) maple bowl with walnut rim and maple "lather buttons" in bottom
Post: rinse, alum, rinse, Jeeves of Hudson Street Mountain Rain splash
Last shave: Tuesday February 27 -- 6 days
No photo today. Very heavy snowfall here (12+ inches) is causing internet connectivity and speed problems. I will probably use the same setup for my next shave and will post a photo then -- the lather bowl in particular is a nice piece of workmanship.
I managed to work up a decent lather from the very hard soap by swirling the damp brush for quite a few swirls on the puck, then dribbling water into the lather bowl and working it there for a minute or two. I then added water to the brush, went back to the puck for further loading, and repeated the process. I found the brush did want to retain lather.
Despite that, I got a decent coating on my face and found that the tallow/lanolin/kokum butter soap provided good glide and protection. One pass gave me an error-free cleanshaven appearance.
I only did one pass because the "luxury" aspect of the shave could best be described as "Meh" -- today's overwhelming scent profile was "Barnyard":
When I first received the Mike's Natural Soaps tub in Hungarian Lavender scent, it had a lovely strong lavender scent. That was over five years ago, and sitting totally unused in my soap cache has done absolutely nothing for it. Today, the soap is Unscented with a very strong overlay of Tallow.
As for the brush, when I swirled it past my nose, I found it had the backbone of boar combined with the softness of badger -- and a powerful animal musk scent of both.
The only part of the shave that did provide a pleasant odour was the aftershave. The "Mountain Rain" scent is precisely that. It provided excellent skin care with a nice light menthol kick. Pity Jeeves of Hudson Street is no longer in business...
Any useful tips for de-scenting strong smelling animal hair brushes?
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