Restoration Highway

I've got a very cool razor, with some cosmetic issues. This will be an ongoing story of my attempt to clean it up a little.

The blade started here:

Lots of staining and discoloration, but no real damage. It's only cosmetic, but bad enough to get on my nerves. To get a good looking blade out of it, I started with some metal polish (99papa metal polish, to be exact.)
That left me with this:

The stains lightened considerably, and my cloth blackened considerably, but it's still ugly. So I decided to go ahead with sanding.
I got some 180, 240, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1500 grit sandpaper, and put together a sanding jig out of some plastic sticks and part of an old belt (better than my finger, I reckon).

I decided to start on the back of the razor, where my clumsiness would have the least visible effect, in case I screwed up.
So, before:


And after 20 minutes of hand sanding at 180 grit...


Some progress! There remains some staining, but I think I'll leave it. It's a reminder that this razor has seen more years than the town I live in...

Now, tonight the front. I have to think about that etching...do I want to preserve it? No? What do you think?

The Master List

I realized that I've talked too much about the things I DON'T like...The soaps that burned, the creams that sucked, and so on...What about the really good stuff? The stuff that I will be keeping around for as long as I possibly can? It's time to make The Master List...

I need a list, a centralized point where I can keep track of all the the products I love. Not just good products, but GREAT products...a Master List. This list is divided into two parts--"The Work Horses", or great products that I recommend without hesitation, and "The Masters", great products that, for one reason or another, are really REALLY special to me. TO ME. Not necessarily to you, and I respect that.

And Here It Is.

Section One: The Work Horses. These products are all very, very good. Great, even. They do what the need to do and you can rely on them without hesitation. But, for one reason or another, they aren't really SPECIAL (to me).

RAZORS
Gillette Tech

BLADES
Gillette 7 O'Clock Sharp Edge and PermaSharp, Gillette Bleue Extra Feather New Hi-Stainless Single Edge blades.

CREAMS
Truefitt & Hill 1805
J.M. Fraser's
Tabula Rasa
Connaught Shaving Creams
Taylor's Of Old Bond Street
Florena

SOAPS
Cella Crema Da Sapone
D.R. Harris Marlborough
Van Der Hagen Deluxe
Irisch Moos

AFTERCARE
The Shave Den's Aftershave Milk--Fantastic Skin Care, great scents.
Connaught Shaving's Three Crowns Aftershave Milk--Like above, but a bit more "heavy duty".

BRUSHES
Kim Son Horn Handled brushes--quality and beauty.

Section Two: The Masters These products have, in one way or another, earned a very special place in my estimation. They are not just great, they are meaningful, and I will undoubtedly keep them in use for as long as they are in production. You will note that the categories are limited; not every product range has earned a place among "The Masters" yet. This is as it should be.

SOAPS
Mitchell's Wool Fat Shaving Soap: This was my first soap, and it remains the best single shaving product I have yet tried. I love every single thing about it. The scent, subtle touches of wildflowers and soap; the lather, smooth and comforting; the skin care, gentle and caring; even the box, as traditional as it get. It's like someone took the essence of "olden days" and made a soap.

Tabac: This soap will surely earn a place on any "best of" list you might find. It's easy to use, gives great lather, and is pretty easily obtained. For me, though, it's special because the scent, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, is incredibly powerful--it induces memories of my father, just shaven, taking us all out to dinner on Saturday after pay-day; of trips to the zoo and the county fair; of stubbly hugs from a dad I could still talk to. Sappy, but true.

Valobra Fougere Soft Soap: This one is odd. It was a pain in the butt to get, and when I got it I was disappointed at first, but now...now it's almost indispensable. It's got a lovely scent, and lathers like a dream. It really and truly could not be improved upon (except by turning it into MWF).

CREAMS
The Body Shop Maca Root Cream: This one is sure to raise some eyebrows, but like I said, this is my list. The reason I think this one is so special is two-fold. First, it is special in a broad sense because. For many many people, this is the easiest high-quality cream to find--it is readily available to a very large portion of the world; even living in small-town Japan, a Body Shop branch is within easy driving distance. Second, the scent. To me, this is the single best scent in a cream I have found. It's Spring. It's Freshness. It's pure joy in a tube, and I love having it hang around me on a sunny day...I'm sure not everyone agrees, but I LOVE it.

RAZOR
Merkur Futur: This razor completely eradicated and desire I had to try another. It's perfect. The shape, the color (I have a satin matte finish...), the weight and design...Perfection. It's like a BauHaus/SF mashup...and it gives a fantastic shave. Even if I switch to Straight Shaving forever, the Futur will live on in my heart.

BRUSH
L'Ultima Setola: This is kind of cheating, as it's a custom brush--of course it's special to me. But really, it is perfect. The knot is a fantastic Omega boar knot, and the handle fits my hand like a dream, thanks to Rodd's magic touch. Love it, love it, love it.

There you have it. The Master List. These are the products I will never be without. So what about yours?

Honeward bound...The Legend Continues

I have briefly discussed before my desire to hone my own razors, and I have been getting a lot of practice lately. My techniques are improving, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. (Warning, there is a LOT of honing talk here, so don't click if you're not interested in straight razors or their care and feeding. Sorry about that.)


In my last post I mentioned some trouble with my Double Arrow. The blade was getting caught on the scales and it had damaged the edge a bit. A damaged razor edge is nothing you want to have sliding across your face, so it was imperative that I get that baby fixed. I could either pay someone else to do so, or take care of it myself. I opted for the latter.



I had had some success in honing my Tosuke straight using a method described by a member of Straight Razor Place named Bart (good info here and especially here, basically using a Belgian Blue Whetstone and a Belgian Coticule progression, and Bart also recommended using it to hone a damaged razor to cutting sharpness. Having just such a setup, and just such a razor, I was glad to read that.


I started, for some reason, on the BBW. I gave it some passes with slurry, and then some more, and then a ton more, checking every once in a while in a microscope to see the progress I was making...which was none. I had misunderstood, or misread, the advice on SRP. In my thread about this, I was re-enlightened--the proper place to start was on the COTICULE with slurry...so I did just that.

And it was magic. The chips melted away, and I soon had a nice smooth edge again. Except for one stubborn, very deep chip, which seemed to last and last. I was stumped on this one...it seemed like progress on the coticule had stopped. Keeping in mind something I read somewhere about "Good honing judgment is based on experience, and experience comes form bad honing judgment," I decided to do something stupid. I took a 1000 grit diamond plate i had bought to use as a hone lapper, and tried to hone out that last chip. Well, I actually only gave it one lap...it grated and ground and felt sickeningly rough. I regretted it the moment I started, but I had already done the damage so I finished the one lap and checked the edge under the scope. Indeed, the blade looked like I had used it to fight off an armored horde.

So I went back to the coticule and, 100 laps later, the blade was in perfect condition--including that one stubborn chip. Maybe I scared him with that monster of a diamond plate. Whatever the case, I had repaired the damage, and the blade was ready for final polishing. I took it to the BBW with a slurry, and then back to the coticule with just water and tried a test shave.

The shave was, of course, all kinds of interesting--not only was it my first "ground up" honing, is it were, but I was also testing out my scaleless razor concept for the first time. Results? Odd.

The blade felt very very strange. It cut, certainly, and I ended up with one of my best shaves yet, but in the process it pulled and did not "feel" sharp--it's like, the hairs would first bu pulled and THEN cut cleanly. However, there was none of the irritation or discomfort I associate with a dull razor. So the hone was kind of successful, though I am not really satisfied. Subsequent discussion onteh forum has led me to believe I didn't use the BBW right, and I need to go back and refine the edge more before the final polish. I'll try that out before I pass final judgment.

As for the scaleless razor...It was actually pretty good. It took some adjustment in grip and angle at first, to accommodate the new setup of the razor, but in the end it actually did seem easier to adjust to the different angles of my face without the scales to get in the way. It definitely made going against the grain on my right jawline easier...I'll give it a few more tries, but I think I can say with some surety, a scaleless razor is not the deadly, horrible mistake that some said it would be. The scales do serve a purpose, but they are certainly not essential to the balance of the razor.

The Legend of the Scaleless Razor

I have made some rather unorthodox claims before in my Straight Razor pursuits. But I am a man of my word...

Basically, I felt (at the time, though the jury is still out as to whether I was right or not) that the scales on a razor, though effective, are not expressly necessary. They are very useful in terms of the non-loss of fingertips and the protection of the blade, but can actually be a pain in the ass when adjusting grips and such. I posited that there would be some benefit to using a western style straight razor with no scales. They told me I was mad, MAD!!! But I was determined to go through with it, and I finally have had my chance.

I recently had a problem with a Double Arrow straight razor; the cheap, worthless scales were warped, and were hitting the blade, causing some damage to the cutting edge. This necessitated, rather fortuitously, the removal of the scales (and some serious hone time, but that's another story) and so I decided to go through with the scaleless razor idea.

However, due to the aforementioned finger slicing etc., I found it advisable to make something to clean cover the blade--a sheath, as it were. And this I did.
I began with my materials. A bit of metal-epoxy, a thin sheet of metal, and some cloth as a liner (a wool-polyester blend trimmed from a pair of pants left over form some alterations...the closest thing to wool I had on hand).




I trimmed a piece of cloth to fit folded over the blade and reaching halfway down to the cutting edge. I made it long enough to cover the blade from the "shoulders" of the blade to cover the tip with a little flap. I covered this with a thin, roughly even layer of mixed epoxy and waited a couple of minutes until it started to harden a bit, until it was a bit like modelling clay. At this point, I folded the cloth over the blade and molded the epoxy to fit tightly over the spine of the razor.



I let this harden overnight, and in the morning I had a form-fitting, smoothly removable back for my sheath. To finish, I cut a piece of the thin sheet metal which I bent in a weird contraption of my own device to fit snuffly to the thickness of the backpiece, but curved evenly and safely a good half inch from the edge of the razor. I fixed this in place with more epoxy, and I finally had a safe, perfectly fitted sheath that stayed in place quite well.

Popping the scales off the Double Arrow (Very easy, that--I just slipped a knife blade under the cheap brass washer on the back pin, ind PING! Off it came!) and I had my scaleless razor:



I shaved with my contraption this morning, but I'll leave that experience for the honing post...coming soon.

And The Packages Come Rolling In...

The results of my shopping spree have started to arrive. It's fun time!

The first to arrive, and perhaps my favorite, is this:
A Beardsley and Avon "Empire" straight razor with a double concave grind...an awesome, enormous blade with so much steel it feels like driving a truck around your face. It's not exactly sharp enough to shave yet, but it will be. Oh yes, it will be. (Pictures from the seller on Ebay).


A closeup of the blade, something I hope to clean up a little bit...but I like the etching. I wonder if there's any way to preserve it?



Next up is another box from good old Mr. Mayhew at Connaught Shaving. A beautiful bowl of dark oak, with a puck of Mitchell's Wool Fat; the bowl is not the best for lathering, but it's a great display piece (bottom right in the picture)


I also got a big old bottle of Paul's Three Crowns Indian Sandalwood Aftershave Milk. This stuff is GREAT for really bad shaves--it soothes and calms like you wouldn't believe.


Still on the way is a puck of D.R. Harris Marlborough shave soap, a container of Bronnley's English Fern talcum powder (Yes, talcum powder. Shut up, ok?) and a bottle of Trumper's Wild Fern EdT.

The last is a bit of a new interest of mine. I've come to be quite interested in scents...learning about "top notes" and "heart notes" and "drydown", the difference between tree moss and oak moss, and whatnot (if you wish to do the same, I recommend www.basenotes.net, a great resource for learning about the world of fragrance. God help me.). And it's all because of Penhaligon's English fern--the first Eau du Toilet I've ever found that I really, REALLY like. And so I got a wee bit obsessed with it...it turns out, of course, to be incredible expensive, and the company is more than a wee bit difficult to deal with. SO I settled for the next best thing, a bottle of Trumper's Wild Fern, a very similar take on the Fougere of legend. And then, of course, I got the Bronnley's talc in English fern to put a little frosting on that old cake of madness.

Meditations: The Enabler

Moderation is not my strong point. There are those who can attest to this. However, marriage has been good to me. Sometimes, it seems, TOO good.

My wife is a wonderful person. Seriously, I can't number the ways in which she makes my life better. But the one way that really, truly, surprised me was her support in this mad hobby.

Now, things started inauspiciously. I first mentioned the desire to purchase a shaving brush sometime last summer. She seemed largely disinterested, until I mentioned that it might cost about $30. She actually got pretty upset about this--she took it as a bad sign (see my first sentence above...). However, she eventually got used to the idea, and the feared financial cataclysm never occurred. Granted, her job with her bonuses, and my job with my pay raise and bonus, made this a bit easier to avoid.

So, I progressed, acquiring and acquiring, and my wife seemed fairly distant. She would occasionally comment on the number of packages, but as far as real disapproval goes, nothing really ever came. And then came the shocking revelation that all this time she had actually been curious about wetshaving. She wanted to know about all the creams and soaps and the brushes; she wanted to see how I made lather, and just how I used that enormous metal contraption to shave every morning. And then came the straights, and she wanted to know about honing and stropping, steel and scales and different grinds. She took me to home centers to look at hones, and furniture stores to look at wood, and then the true shocker: she bought a display case to put in the entertaining room, so people could see the curious things that I used to scrape the hairs from my face. That one threw me for a loop, indeed.

Recently, she's taken to watching me hone, and peering through the microscope to see the edges I'm working on. It's amazing. And joyous.

Just last week she told me "It's been a while since you did any shopping--isn't it about time you got some soaps and stuff?" without a hint of irony...indeed, she ENCOURAGED me to buy stuff! So I have a few boxes on the way to me, at the encouragement of my wife.

I am too, too lucky. And an, I can't wait for those boxes to roll in!

There's A Moos Loose...

After a great deal of Kerfluffle (that's the technical term, I believe) I finally got my hot little hands on the fabled Sir Irisch Moos shave soap.



This soap first raised its ugly head on the Board Which Shall Not Be Named, with an innocent question about its continued existence; it turns out this soap brand, once produced by a smaller German company, had been purchased by Maeurer and Wirtz (the producers of Tabac) and is only available from a few German vendors. This lead to a swarm of requests for it, and an eventual group buy--which apparently has not shown up, three months later. Other sources were sought, and eventually it has reached the mainstream supply route--I know that Superlather.com has a shipment on the way, with plans for more if interest is high.

And it is.

I got my stick though a trade with a member of TSD, and it showed up a couple of days ago. I tried it yesterday and today, and one word: WOW.

The lather is, in a word, "Tabac-y". It is quick to lather, and produces a great, smooth slick cushion of shaving goodness. The soap only comes in a stick form, which is just dandy with me, but some people might not like the process...you rub it on your face and hit it with the brush. In seconds, you are all kinds of ready to shave. Fantastic.

Of course, the big difference to Tabac is the scent--this is the big deal, I think, because a lot of people love Tabac's lather but not the smell. I personally love both--but I do like change, so the IM was welcome. Now, the thing is, IM really has a lovely scent. It is rich and well-rounded, with some nice citrus notes on the top end, but a clear warm heart. Oddly enough, I can still get some Tabac notes there--maybe cloves, some Lavender and perhaps a touch of vanilla. But like I said, I love the scent of Tabac, so I'm all kinds of happy here.

So yes. Irisch Moos is more than worth the effort of finding it--especially now that is approaching wide availability. I will be buying it again, no doubt.

I believe the word is CRAPTACULAR.

Oy, what a week I've had.

Between car crashes, unrelated trips to the hospital, hauling tons of books up and down stairs, caring for sick family and working overtime at work, things have been a weeeee bit unpleasant around the house.

So this week's shaves took a backseat to just getting the hell out of bed--quick and dirty. I did get a good week of shaves out of the Futur loaded with a 7 O'Clock PermaSharp, using MWF and Tabac stick...so I can't complain. But yeah, nothing magical or blogworthy.

I'm hoping to change that this week...I've got some Irisch Moos shave soap coming, and I'm working on some honing challenges with my straights, and I'm developing a WHOLE NEW ACQUISITION DISORDER!!!! So, let's get back to business, and enjoy us some shaves.

Review Double Day!!!! Valobra Fougere Soft Soap

As promised (It's yesterday somewhere...) Another review...And another great product!

I'm a huge fan of the Valobra shave stick. It's a great soap, and it's fairly reasonable priced, if a bit small. I am also a fan of fougere scents like Trumper's Wild Fern or Penhaligon's English Fern. When I heard, then, that there was a fougere scented version of Valobra's Soft Soap (a.k.a. "Crema die Sapone purissima"), I thought "That sounds like a winner..." and then, when I heard no one on the shaving fora had tried it, and that it was only available from a single German retailer, well, I decided I would be the one!

I tracked down (a.k.a. clicked the link in the forum post describing it) the website selling it (1001seife.de -- all German, but Xenia Trost, the owner, is perfectly capable of communicating in English; drop her an email!) and got a couple of boxes sent.



When the boxes arrived, of course I opened right away, to see what was up. What I found was interesting...A brick of a sticky, putty-like soap (much like Cella, but greyer) that smelled like...Valobra. The very first reaction I had was a bit of disappointment. The fougere scent I had waited for was just like the Valobra shaving stick I had had for ages. Nice, but...nothing new. Then, some of the more floral notes started to come through, and I noticed a roundness and sweetness I hadn't noticed in the stick. These really came through in the lather--lavendar and a touch of bergamot. Very very nice; the scent has become perhaps my favorite soap scent.

I molded the soap into a topped glass bowl and tried a lather--and was so, so happy I did. Fantastic stuff...I got some of the creamiest, loveliest lather I have ever had from any soap, and some of the best shaves. I just wanted to keep using it and using it...and I have. I think this might very well be tied with MWF right now for the best thing in my shave drawer.

Man. Fantastic scent, fantastic lather...I can't recommend this soap highly enough.

Review Time! J. M. Fraser's Shaving Cream

This one was a pleasant surprise from those crazy Canucks...


As I may have mentioned before, I got a sample of this cream from Da Great White North in a trade, and then I got a nice full jar of the Oriental Spice scent, and let me tell you, I will do it again. I believe that, ounce for ounce, this might very well be the best vaule cream on the market. You can get a POUND of this stuff for $13 Canadian...A POUND!!! "But Surely..." you say "But surely, for that pittance this must be one of those wimpy little underperformers like Williams or that crap sassafrass soap you got off Fleabay!"

And I would give you a resounding "HAH! Fie upon thee! This cream is ALL THAT!"

Also, don't call me Shirley.

The original scent, a fresh, perfectly acceptable lemon lime, is a light cream that is just begging to whip up a great lather. A little water, a little whipping, and BOOOM, great shaving lather. It's slick and smooth--it isn't, perhaps, the most cushioney or protective, but it is pretty gosh darned good. The Oriental Spice (of legend) is not quite as easy to lather. It takes a bit more water and a bit more work, but it seemed to me to offer a touch more protection that the original. Why this might be I have no idea...maybe it's related to the fact that it's twice the price (that is, roughly the same price tag, but half the product)? Whatever the case may be, it's worth every looney...and then some.

Good creams, get them.

GOOOOOAAAAALLL!!!!

Well, I did it. Made it to March with no DE, and I lived to tell the tale.

Following up on the deal to exclusively use a straight for a week may not seem like a big deal to some, but when that cold steel is held against your throat, it makes you think about things. Things like health insurance...and scar tissue...and your wife's scorn.

But it was a good thing. My technique improved a lot, and I got to know my razors better, and I even started honing. I now know I can get a pretty darn good shave with a straight, but that it is DAMNED easy to nick yourself, not to mention cut your ear pretty well. I also found that, for reasons I can not fully understand, the straight is MUCH easier on my neck than the DE.

Even with meticulous care, no pressure and slow, careful strokes with my Futur, I almost always end up with redness and irritation on my neck, just to the sides of my adam's apple. With the straight, though, this didn't happen. Even if I managed to nick myself in those areas, there wasn't nearly as much discomfort and hardly any red at all. This fact was brought home to me today, after I finished my (very smooth) DE shave--my wife frowned and looked at my neck, and said "Didn't do too well today, did you?"

No, I guess not...

So, anyway, having proved something to myself, I think I might give this straight thing a bit more time. I'll go with my futur until my current blade gives out, then it's back to the straights for a while. I have some honing to work on, and some smoothness techniques to...smooth out.

Come back tomorrow for a product review twofer, ok? I PROMISE, there will be stuff NON-straight related.

I PROMISE.

Some, anyway.