DEC 30 Day Rule/Focus Pic & Discussion Thread

...well under that criteria I guess I'm cooked already!

 

That's like a tank vs. a squirt gun full of cat urine.

 

Razor: Gillette Super Speed 1948-49 No Date Code
Blade: Gillette Platinum (1)
Brush: WDC-5 Silvertip Green Handle Whipped Dog 24/65
Soap: RazoRock Don Donato
A/S: Booster Iced Lime
Excellent 2 pass shave tonight. Back to Gillette for another week. RazoRock is a great soap and the WDC-5 boar is nicely broken in and loads up very well.

 

December Focus

The Twelve Blades of December!

Hard to believe we've almost put this year to bed. Wow. Where did the time go? But, here we are and as a gift to everyone here I'm offering up my shaves with twelve blades that have never touched my face, randomly paired with twelve of my DE razors. Two shaves with each setup to finish on Xmas Eve. So, sit back, get the fire burning and enjoy what I hope is an enjoyable month of further proof Technique Trumps Tools. I hope for that....my expectations aren't as optimistic.

December 7

Razor - Razo Rock TTO
Blade - (1)
Brush - Omega Pro 48
Soap - TSD Lanolin Bay Rum
Post - Cold water, Alum, Nivea

I'm just going to start this by posting the following.........


Now that the expectations are correctly set, let's begin. Monday and Tuesday are now my days off. So, I moved my head shave from Sunday to Monday. And that apparently upset the shaving gods. As well as every other god in the neighborhood, given how this day has gone. Set up for the head shave as normal, Merkur 23c, Astra SP(2), VDH Deluxe soap and boar brush. Notice, no Feather SS involved this week, so nothing deadly in my hands. Started above and around my right ear and everything seemed ok. Getting the usual result, no problems, no worries. Went to the left side, lathered around the ear and on the side, got the side done and went to go around the ear, starting at the neck and coming up as always and......I have no way to explain it other than to say instead of the blade coming around the ear as I turned it, it instead just slid straight toward the top of my head. I felt the blade slicing its way merrily upward right behind my ear. Never had that happen before. Ever. I stopped, grabbed my wet towel and put pressure on while I grabbed the hand mirror. Removed the towel and there it was. About a 3/4 inch slice bleeding nicely. Just merrily sending a red stream down my neck. How in the world......I really don't know. I'm thinking maybe as I went around the ear with my hand I didn't have quite enough pressure on the head of the razor and it slid instead of turning. Whatever, the damage was done. Took a 10 minute break with a cold compress, seemed to be mostly stopped so continued. Now, normally the Astra SP is very smooth and effective. Every stroke after that seemed jumpy or just wasn't as close as usual, or missed a spot. Simply a terrible shave. I had to go back over spots to the point my entire head was clearly irritated by the time I was done. The cut was mostly stopped, but I was as red as a beet all over. Sheesh!

Ok, not a great start. Hit the shower and found that the result on the head shave was atrocious. I ended up grabbing a cart just to smooth it out. It's still not a great shave but workable. Time for the face. Today's selection, the RazoRock TTO with the Dollar Platinum blade. Vidyut Metallics in India makes this blade and they also make the Super Max line so usually pretty solid. Lather was the Pro 48 and TSD Lanolin so great lather and the shave started out feeling very aggressive. Which, I know, the RRTTO is a more aggressive razor. The blade seemed to work fine, though, not really uncomfortable and I got a pretty good result from it. The aggressive feel seems more the razor's issue than the blades. And, as I went for the second pass I noticed that one of the scuttles on the razor looked different. Now, I've used this razor before on a number of occasions and never noticed that before, but clearly the cutout is not even on one side of it. I don't think it affects the shave at all, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for the razor. It's never been a total favorite, but that kind of quality control issue, even if just cosmetic and only visible to the trained eye, lessens my enthusiasm for them. Oh great, first a cut on my head, now my mood is taking a hit. Finished the second pass and was at DFS. Did a third pass neck only just to clean it up and go high level DFS and called it a day. Alum was pretty quiet on my face and neck. Just rinsed my head again with cold water and checked. The cut wasn't bleeding so that's a positive. I found myself, though, just in an overall bad mood after that. Between the fouled up head shave and the discovery on the RRTTO.....I should have gone back to bed.

But no, had to go get a prescription filled. Common medicine, easy to get except CVS didn't have it in 5 different locations I tried. And, when SWMBO and I tried to pay for lunch at Denny's the girl swiped the card wrong which ended up setting off a fraud alert at the bank, causing them to freeze my card until I got it unlocked on the mobile app. The only good news? Dispatch today from the Cartel. Maybe the day is salvageable after all. Here's hoping my Monday's off don't follow a pattern!

​

 

Sing it!

 

If not for a little rain, the sunshine wouldn't be near as enjoyable.

 

Nothing like a gift from a comrade to turn things around!

 

Well it was a delivery long overdue. Took over a month to arrive which is quite unusual. The package dropped off tracking as it left Moscow, which is normal, but never reappeared in the U.S. Then, when I took the notice to the post office to get it, they took 15 minutes locating it as they said it was "misfiled". Again, another part of this great and enjoyable Monday. Can we call it Tuesday yet? At least it was all there. 100 of a selection of the best Mostochlegmash has to offer along with 20 Sputniks from St. Pete's.

 

Vince, I think Chris's post is pretty self-explanatory. He is claiming victory. (Just ignore the ellipses. They don't really change the meaning of what he said.)

Of course that whole YMMV thing does come into play I guess. So who knows, maybe you will both be winners.

 

Well, big congrats on the turn of fortune! (and hopefully a long turn away from misfortune!)

btw - PSA for all the PIFsters and mail-order addicts amongst us this holiday season...

I had the same experience as the @NCoxSTL story. Not pointing fingers but, a "misfiled" or "lost" package was quickly found nearly immediately after my inquiry and the manager in charge (of the PO in the postal black hole of Texas) called me personally to let me know it was found and would be delivered the same day. My takeaway - Don't wait too long after the expected delivery date to put in an inquiry!
:mail:

 

Sorry to hear about your rough shave. Expected more blood from the unknown blades randomly matched with razors than from the head shave standard.

As for the cartel, glad you got your delivery! (You sure you want your address out there for this crew to know though?) I was supposed to get a delivery of Ladas blades over a week ago. Well they finally tried to deliver it today. Of course the cartel required my signature on $11 worth of blades and a couple "free gifts" so I will now have to pick it up at lunch tomorrow.

I think Boris is just trying to catch me and force me into using a pain stick.

 

Oh I wholeheartedly agree and saw through him as well. I was just attempting to give him points for posing good manners!

 

Yeah I recently had a total horror story trying to ship some razors. Mangled packaging, lost off the line and just total incompetence it seemed. USPS does not function well, especially during the holidays.

 

Yeah I was surprised my head took the brunt of it instead of my face. Well, Chinese blades are still coming so there's hope for a return to the right area of pain. As far as my address, I figure if it's out there I stand a better chance of getting those shipments from members who have razors they are tired of, right? Like Toggles, bottom dial Fatboys, you know....the ones laying around they can't figure out where to send them to. Well there you go. The cartel is very picky about those signatures. We can't have just anyone receiving merchandise without knowing where it's going. Russian blades and Walter White's sky blue......premium products that demand extra protection!

Boris should have been there by now. Great, now I have to send Yuri to find him. (sigh). Let's see.....list of vodka bars in your area..........

 

12/7/15

Gillette New LC
Rapira Super Stainless (4)
Vulfix Super Badger (660)
Mitchell's Wool Fat
Pinaud Clubman Original

Shaved this morning, but haven't been able to post until now.
Seventh day with Mitchell's Wool Fat and the Rapira Super Stainless in the New LC. Small amount of warm water on the puck while the brush soaked. I swirled the brush in the soap and the bloom water for about 20 seconds. This produced a good amount of pre-lather. I had to back off of pressing too much on the soap with my brush or the pre-lather would have gone down the sides of the container. Then began to face lather. After a few minutes my face had a nice coating of smooth thick lather and my brush still had plenty also.


2 full passes: Pass 1 XTG. Very good reduction. After rinsing and applying lather, there was still a good amount of lather.


Pass 2: ATG. I did small amount of touch up where I could feel stubble and this left my face a near BBS. A cold water rinse and very minor touch up and the baby came home. The Pinaud Clubman stung like fire this morning, especially a couple of places on my neck. I paid attention to those areas today and I believe what happened was that as I did my blade buffing the lather was taken off in the first stroke and there wasn't enough protection afterwards for the remaining strokes. Today, my neck was pink in those areas. Not bad, just slightly more pink than my normal color. I still had plenty of lather after my touch up for at least another pass.

Another nice BBS from the Rapira Super Stainless in the New LC. The Mitchell's Wool Fat provided nice protective slick lather throughout the body of the shave. My touch up after the cold water rinse was another matter though and I ended up with some noticeable irritation. I believe it was the way I put the soap on my neck before doing my blade buffing. Perhaps I put it on a little too thin at that point. Regardless, I really like MWF. I'll give it another face lather in the morning and then move on to another soap.

I hope everyone had a nice Monday!

 

I could tell you but then I'd have to send one of the boys over to insure your silence.

 

I vote for sending one of them over either way. We can call it a training exercise.

 

So I learned a valuable lesson with todays shave.

First off, I'm still committed to my tools I started with:

Hot Shower

Then:

Gillette Fatboy
Feather HI blade
Taylor Sandalwood Cream
EJ Best Badger brush
Nivea Mens AS Balm

Ok for the lesson learned, I couldnt remember what day last week I started with the current blade in the razor so I said one more shave should be fine. After all, last nights shave was AMAZING! Well, I'm thinking it was one shave to many. Started getting scrapping and pulling and instead of stopping and replacing the blade, I figured I'd go ahead and just finish and discard it afterwards. Now I have all this besky irritation thats been long gone all because I was too stubborn to just swap out the blade. I'm used to using the Mach blades till they basically wont shave because of the price. But now, I shouldnt be bothered with that and my new saying is:

"When in doubt, change it out!"

 

"Cartel workout plan"

 

I like the way you think Comrade!