December 30 Day Focus--Gillette Executive and Stirling Kong
December 12, 13
Razor - 1958 Gillette Executive Adjustable (Sat WTG 6, ATG 5 then Sun WTG 5, ATG 6)
Blade - Gillette Silver Blue (1 and 2)
Brush - Stirling Kong
Soap - Tabac Stick
Post - Cold water, witch hazel, Ice Blue Aqua Velva
When I last posted it was about Thursday's shave. I am just now getting to post about the shaves this weekend. My wife to be and I went out of town to Savannah, Ga for the weekend. A wonderful trip, beautiful weather, EXCELLENT food, and an amazing time with my fiancee!!!
I did not bring a laptop or anything like that, just had my phone. Had every intention of checking in a time or two while off. Well, my phone had other ideas. About 30 minutes after we arrived in Savannah, my phone went bat stuff crazy! Could not access data, wi-fi would not connect, could not make a phone call at all, but I could text. No idea how texting worked and nothing else did. I used texting to check in with my daughter and my parents who were keeping the dog for me, but otherwise no contact with the outside world.
No offense guys, but it was AMAZING!
I shaved both Saturday and Sunday because we were doing special dinners and other things while away and I wanted to look and feel my best for my fiancee. Anyway, had a fantastic weekend, but it did mean I am just now posting the recaps of the weekend's shaves.
Thursday I used Chris's settings with the more aggressive setting on the ATG second pass and the less aggressive setting on the WTG/XTG pass. In this case it meant 5 on the first pass and 6 on the second pass. This produced minor (very minor) irritation and a BBS shave. However, the 2 day growth shave did have a little more irritation than the one day growth shave I received from Vince's settings (the exact opposite of Chris's settings). So Vince was declared the winner, but on an uneven playing field. @
Bama Samurai (I assume in a purely non-defensive tone of course even though he had lost that round to his protege @
Rufus T. ) pointed out that the angle changes as the settings change and become more aggressive and wondered if I had failed to account for that in my shave. Good question. I honestly did not think about the need to change the angle while shaving the ATG pass, so I cannot guarantee it. My usual method when getting familiar with a razor, and especially now with the adjustable changing even within a shave, is to treat each pass as a new shave. Placing the razor on the cap and slowly lowering or raising the handle as necessary to get good solid feedback and the best possible angle. Now, is it possible I did not have optimum angle on the ATG pass, thereby causing Chris's settings to suffer??? I guess it is possible. But point still goes to Vince for that round.
So now onto Saturday's shave. I did not shave Friday so Vince's settings would have to go against a 2 day beard growth. First things first, the Tabac. Amazing soap! Love it in the shave stick. At this point, I thought I may be on the road towards face lathering conversion and making all of my soaps into shave sticks like @
clint64 and others have done. Really enjoyed just watching the lather explode on the face using the Stirling Kong! Set the Executive to 6 for the WTG pass and set off. Seemed like all was going well. Paid attention to the angle and off I went. A good reduction from the first pass. A very minor touch of irritation on the chin. Second pass, dialed down the Executive to 5 (and @
Douglas Carey I have remembered to open the TTO before changing and then tightening it after with the extra turn, thank you for the reminder!). A good second pass with the razor. Needed more touch-up than usual on the neck and jawline. Ended with a near BBS shave. My fiancee would not declare it a BBS shave because she said there were a couple places that were just not as smooth as others. So, looks like Vince's settings with a 2 day growth may not have been as good as Chris's settings with a two day growth.
Sunday was on to Chris's settings on only one days growth. Again lathered the Tabac and my fiancee commented on the fact that I was doing it without the bowl. According to her it "seemed more manly" so I guess I am officially a face latherer!! Anyway, I got down to shaving. WTG set on 5 and off I went. A good close smooth first pass. I think I could have stopped and ended up with a CCS+ shave. Re-wet my face (I did not rinse for those that followed the
thread on here) and change the setting to 6 for the ATG pass. Did the pass and this time paid attention to angle and to make sure I was not altering pressure between the WTG and ATG passes. The pass went very smoothly. Had no irritation and very little touch-up to be done. Finished the touch-up and ended with a BBS shave as declared by my fiancee. She commented later that afternoon about how smooth it still was. Think I got a good 9-10 hours out of that shave, which is excellent for me!
So, after the weekend, what have we learned. We learned my phone decided I needed some time away from everything but my fiancee ( I definitely agreed). It actually started working again after I dropped it Sunday afternoon. My fiancee decided it was a lot like me and just needed a smack in the head every now and then.
I learned that I do need to pay attention to angles when switching setting on the adjustable, but that I probably already did that given the way I shave. I learned I like face lathering, my fiancee likes face lathering, and so I am a face latherer pretty much from now on. I also learned that I may have given that point to @
Rufus T. a little prematurely. The one day growth was basically a tie between the settings with no noticeable or memorable difference between them. With 2 day's growth, Chris's settings resulted in a closer shave by what was probably the slightest of margins, while the shave using Vince's settings may have been ever so slightly less irritating (which it is truly surprising to say that @
Rufus T. is the less irritating one
). So, I have declared it a statistical tie for the settings at the 5 and 6 level.
The duel continues!
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