Wet Shaving

@AwesomePete sent me this great link to a graphic showing the history of Shaving

I was fortunate enough to borrow a tub of this for a week from a friend. Ultimately I didn’t want to give it back. Here are the highlights of this shaving cream:

• Price: Bottom line, it’s expensive. Try to get it on sale or ask for it for Fathers Day. 

• Packaging: Distinctive black tub with gold lettering. However, similar tub to the other Truefitt & Hill shaving creams.

• Scent: Many folks say it’s the “finest barbershop scent”, while I really liked it, I’m not sure it’s my favorite. Probably because it’s a bit heavy on the lavender notes, and having a wife who loves lavender I tend to lean away from it whenever possible.

• Lathering: Fantastic. It created a very tight closed cell foam, and didn’t seem to dry out as quickly as some of my other favorite brands. It flowed well on the brush. I did miss not having a little tingly interaction the face, but was surprised with how well it lubricated and made my skin feel after use.

• Overall Shave: Excellent. Nuff said.

A couple of tips when using any lubricating shave oil (sometimes called a pres have oil):

• First and foremost…don’t use a lot of this. From most of the mistakes I’ve read about online is folks just use way to much of this. For a typical coverage I’m using only 4-5 drops and get pretty good coverage across the shaving area.
• Second, the oil isn’t necessarily for improving the cut of your blade or helping hair stand correctly for a better shave. It’s primary function is for protecting skin during the shave.

Once I got past the fact that I wasn’t necessarily getting a better shave with the lubricating oil, I started to pay attention to how it effected my skin. Where I noticed the difference was in the parts of my face where I had trouble getting a clean shave or occasionally nicking myself. I noticed less nicking and less irritation in the skin.

This particular oil (American Crew Lubricating Shave Oil) has a wonderful clove like smell (clove oil is the main ingredient). And seems to clean up pretty well. After rinsing my face after most of my shaving I’ve noticed that it washes away and almost none is left (which I do like). One of the downsides is the bottle it comes in. It has a flip top which becomes difficult to operate one handed when getting oil on it.

I have had two friends that have tried using a lubricating shave oil but just didn’t have a particularly nice experiences siting the fact they don’t want to wash the oil off their hands in the sink they are shaving in and when they do they get a film in the sink. I my experience by using less, and applying it before you fill the sink with hot water (or using a second sink like I often do) it mitigates these issues.

Another neat new treat for my birthday was something I have been looking for, for almost a year. That is a stainless steel bowl just the right size, that I can float in my sink. The idea is that while ceramic mugs and such are nice, they still insulate too much, I’d like better heat transfer between the water and the bowl to keep the lather warm throughout the entire shave. I ended up settling on a set of bowls from Amazon. The Endurance 8 Piece Stainless Steel Prep Bowls Set with Lids

How I typically use it is to place it in my sink, and start running the water to warm it up filling it up with water so it’s submerged until the sink is full. But then the bowl is very warm, so I empty it and start the lathering process. After using it it cleans up quickly and typically even dries before I’m done cleaning up.

o The Good: First, the size is perfect, it fits in the palm of your hand with a nice shape, has a rim that you can grab onto but isn’t to big or small. It’s schedule 18 stainless steel so it has a very nice heft to it. I really didn’t care for the lids, but as one of my WetShaving friends mentioned, it would be a nice option to cover soaps etc when needed. It really transfers the heat well, short of using super hot water it’s the warmest I’ve been able to keep the lather.

o The Bad: maybe a bit too heavy as it does float low in the water, if you have a heaver brush it probably will capsize it.

o The Surprise: while the inside of the bowl is smooth, there is some very small texture that someone aids in the creation of the lather. It’s very noticeable, but not sure what is but suspect it’s something from how the bowl is cold rolled around a mold when created. I was going to try to take a punch and put a few dimples in the bottom of the bowl to create a dimpled surface aiding in the creation of the lather, but honestly it doesn’t need it.

According tho their, marketing speak, the “Feather Hi-Stainless Blades are renowned for being the sharpest double edge razor blades on the market. These blades feature a platinum coating for enhanced comfort and will fit most traditional double edge razors. Made in Japan, the platinum coated Feather is exceptionally sharp but will reward you with the closest shave.”

I had tried a few shaves with Feather Hi-Stainless Platinum Double Edge Razor Blades
before, and liked them. I received a sleeve as a birthday gift and have been using them with my Merkur razor and it’s been a dream. I find they are very consistent, don’t ding my face up as much (as long as you take your time and don’t hurry….if you do hurry you will ding yourself up bad). This may be because it ‘feels’ lighter on my face, almost like there isn’t a blade in my razor. I typically do a three pass shave and noticed right away that after the first pass, I was close to where I was typically on my second pass. I am running typically getting around 7 shaves per blade which is, in my experience, pretty good. However when the blades go bad…change it because they are really not usable when dull. I probably will still keep the Merkur blades as my bread and butter blades, but these are fast becoming my favorite.

For my birthday this year I got a tub of the ‘Taylor of Old Bond Street Avocado Shaving Cream’.  It was a wonderful gift from my in-laws  (my mother in-law so gets me).  As you long time readers of my WetShaving blog may remember, I reviewed it earlier in this post, but it was on loan and not my own, so I only got to shave with it twice.

So now having used it for a period of time I just wanted to give an update to that post.  I still don’t think it smells like Avocado, but I do like the smell.  I hinted at it earlier, but this does seem to dry out quickly after lathering, so adding water to the lather and having a nice wet face seem to really help this from drying out.  Something else I have just started doing is to not dip my brush into the tub but us my fingers to remove some and place it in my lathering bowl then use the brush to build the lather.

I think this seems to give me more consistent results when building the right lather.   I’ve also noticed that this seems to really make the shorter hairs in my bear stand up and be shaved well.  All in all, two big thumbs up.

Another in a long line of Shaving crème soap’s on loan from my friend Dane.  Opening it up I felt the smell was a little faint, but has a nice soap/lavender-ish type smell.  I noticed that in the container it has an almost Vaseline type texture, so I had to dig a little bit more to get the soap on the brush.  I was using a shaving scuttle to build the lather in (a review on that device later).   I had to work the brush a little more than normal and use a little bit more water to get a nice lather, but a nice lather it did make. I also noticed that it appeared I didn’t have to use as much of it to get the same level of foam.  Seemed to be a medium cell foam, that was medium to medium-high on the slippery scale.  I did my typical three pass shave and  I noticed that when shaving there wasn’t a lot of smell.  It cleaned up well, seemed to be my skin was very soothed even after I washed it off.  I give it a thumbs up, but having said that not sure I’d purchase it, probably because although it didn’t fall down in any area of my preference, it also didn’t particularly excel in any area either.

Another loaned shaving implement from my friend Dane (he has all the cool toys).  This was a gift from his wife, and I got to say at first glance, I was a bit skeptical.  The basic principle is that you fill the inside with hot water and it surrounds your lather bowl  keeping a constant temperature.  The shear mass of the pottery insures that once warm it stays warm.  Here are the steps recommended to me by Dane that I followed when evaluating it:

1)      Fill sink and scuttle with hot water

2)      Place scuttle in the sink to help warm it up.

3)      Take shower or prep the rest of your shaving gear

4)      After showering, empty scuttle and refill with hot water

5)      Build lather and shave!

I noticed a few things.  The filling spout seems a bit on the small side, so it was a little tricky filling it with water from my tap.  However once you get this piece of pottery warm it stays warm, and it really does keep the lather warm.  The irregular  swirls on the bottom of the lather bowl really assist in creating a quick and full lather and really helps with crème’s that are harder to build lather with.    This scuttle is big and heavy (especially when full of hot water).  So if you like to palm your mug or bowl while building lather, then this isn’t the device for you.  However because of this heft and size, it didn’t move around when I sat it on the counter as I was working the brush.  It does have a small handle, but you can tell it’s not really meant for holding on to when full of water and in use.

These are very suitable to display, very high quality pottery, nice aesthetic design and not mass produced.  In fact the website says they each take a month to make from start to finish, and every one of them is hand thrown by Sara.  The cost is anywhere from $50 to $100 depending on the model you get, the Moss Scuttle I tested was $50 and available at http://www.sarabonnymanpottery.com.

Bottom line, it really does improve the shaving experience and results.   When I purchase one, it probably won’t be part of my daily shaving routine, but will be reserved for those ‘special’ times where I’m taking a bit more time and effort.

This one again is on loan from my friend Rick. It’s the “Taylor of Old Bond Street – Mr. Taylors Shaving Cream”. I’ll keep it short since it’s fairly similar to the other Taylor of Old Bond Street shaving creams.  Basically it builds a great lather fairly easily and quickly.  The smell is a more traditional smell that will appeal to most wetshaving fans.  Similar to the Coats Limited, it wasn’t as slippery as I prefer, but it also wasn’t objectionable.  One thing I gotta say about the creams that come in these PVC bowl containers, is that they come with a secondary plastic lid that sort of gets in the way.    In fact a few times I’ve even dumped it in the shaving cream, argh, basically if you get one of these,  just take the second lid out.

Taylor Of Old Bond Street Avocado Shaving Cream is yet another in a line of borrowed shaving creams from my freind Dane.  Doing a little research on it, it’s recommended for beginners to the wet shaving world.  It’s also thought of as being well known for building the best lather of any of the Taylor line of shaving creams.  I’m not sure it smells like Avocado’s, but it does have a nice earthy green type smell that my wife really ‘really’ likes.

Well it lathers so quickly and easily, with a great rich, thick small cell foam that.  So much so in fact I can see why they say it’s a great beginners saving cream.  Once the lather was built, the green woody type aroma really came out.  My brush really spread it well and built the lather on my beard.  A very pleasurable experience so far.  I did my typical 3 pass shave, and the shaving was good, it’s still not as slippery of a shave as I like but it certainly very serviceable.    I did notice the lather go a little drying and stiffer by the time I got to my  3rd pass, so simply adding a little water back in resolved that issue.   After finishing it all washed my face clean, in fact it clean off my mug, brush & razor really well (so much so it was noticeable).    So all in all it gets a big thumbs up from me.

However after I got dressed for the day I noticed that the aroma of the shaving cream was still lingering with me.  In fact it lasted until after lunch.  That really surprised me as I hadn’t ever had such a clean cream have an aroma that lasted that long.  Maybe it was the blend of essential oils the guys over at Badger & Blade tend to rave about.