The Honing Diaries...

I've been making some headway with the hones, and I'm trying some experimentation...and I think it'd probably be a good idea to keep track of what's going down.

So it starts with a Double Arrow I've had for a while...I modded it, grinding off the shoulders and making the tip a bit more interesting, then I rescaled it and honed it up.


In the modification I breadknifed out part of the smile. To hone it up, I used a hybrid honing method--starting with Glen's guide to honing a damage blade. I set the bevel on a 400/1K diamond plate I had laying around, then moved to Bart's "Single Coticule method." I used the coti to refine the bevel and smooth the edge, and finished on a Shapton Pro 12k hone, gave it a few passes on CrOx pasted strop, and shaved. It was a good shave--not fantastic, but decent. It was quite encouraging. A little more stropping and refinement on the paste and I got a good shaving edge! So, there's razor one.

Razor two is a little Torrey I got off eBay. It was ugly. UGLY.

I cleaned it up, polished it, repinned it and got this:

So I went to the hones. This time, I went for a different route. Once again, I started with Glen's method...set the bevel on the diamond plate, refined the edge on a 4k King hone, and smoothed it out on 8k lapping film. Once again, I finished on the 12k Shapton and CrOx paste. The test shave was good, and the full shave I got this morning was GREAT. Some real success on this one. It feels good, indeed.

The last razor is this Japanese made spike point. This one was tough to clean up, but I rescaled it and got it looking ok.

For the honing, I went to Bart's "Simple Method for Honing..." Once again, set the bevel on the diamond plate, then I refined with the BBW and Coticule. My standard 12k and paste finish and off to the test shave.
The test shave on this one was good, but I found some dull points on the blade. It was a good shave, but not super good...going form 0, however, I'm not disappointed.

All in all, I feel like I'm making some real progress with my honing. I'm enjoying it, too...which, of course, is waht it's all about.

Some of the Home Grown...

I love the DIY attitude. It's one of the great things about this traditionalist wetshaving gig, it seems to bring out creative impulses that otherwise might have lain dormant. Home made strops, homemade razor scales, homemade everything. And just the other day, a member of Straight Razor Place very generously sent me some of his homemade soap.



(Picture courtesy of Blackstangal)

Member Blackstangal on SRP posted about finally giving up on pricey commercial soaps (and they can certainly be that....as much as $30 for a piece of soap. SOAP!!!), and had decided to make his own. Seeing his post on SRP, I replied that since it was good enough for him, it might be good enough to make a few bucks. His response? He sent me some to try!

He's got three scents, "Laidback Lime, Buttery Coconut, And Mind Chillin Melon" and he sent me samples of all three. I started with the melon, the scent that struck me first and Al's recommendation. It's a pleasant sort of turquoise shade, and the scent is high and sweet--kind of like Everlasting Gobstoppers. Not cloying, though, it's quite nice.

For my shave, I did my usual routine--after a shower, lather up and do my thang while the lather softens my beard, and shave. The lather took a little bit more work to get going that I expected, but it came in time, and it came BIG. This stuff was rolling out of the bowl...and my brush got loaded up with tons of super rich, creamy lather. That was surprise number one. I've never gotten that thick or heavy a cream from a cold-pour soap before, not even from my beloved VDH Deluxe.

On my face, the lather was smooth and cool--Al mentioned a mysterious "cooling" effect that he himself couldn't explain; there's no menthol or mint oil, so it shouldn't be there. but it is--it feels like a cool autumn breeze on your face. The lather sat light, not heavy or uncomfortable at all like some of the thicker soaps. And then the shave. Surprise number two.

Ohhhh, what a shave. I don't know what Al does when he makes this stuff, but I sure as heck hope he keeps it up...My face LOVED this soap. Seriously, during and after this shave my face was singing ballads to Mind Chillin' Melon. It was full of protective cushion (a rarity in cold pours...) and nice and slick, too. I got a 95% BBS shave in two passes, and not only was it comfortable, my face felt like I had just gone to a SPA, rather than dragged a few inches of sharpened steel over it. I almost forgot to splash on my AS Milk, my face felt so refreshed...I did it, though, because I'm a creature of habit.

All day, I kept rubbing my face and smiling. Good shaves make good days, doncha know? And I certainly got a good shave off this one.

I am OVERJOYED that I got some of this soap. For one thing, it's a damn fine soap. For another, it is proof positive that people CAN do this for themselves, it doesn't have to be expensive or posh, and I love that. Of course, there's a little irony in this because the next soap in my rotation (and my next review, cha cha cha) is Penhaligon's English Fern, which is as pricey and posh as it gets. Oh, me...

A Fruitful Week

A major haul this week...including one sweet surprise.

I got all this stuff in the last couple of days:


Not too bad! The two Arko creams(Turkish creams, received form America), the Balea (A German cream...) and the Aqua Velva were in a grab box being passed around over at The Shave Den (hop on, there's still time!) and I am really looking forward to trying them...the Arkos are "Sensitive" and "Extra Sensitive"...I like the sound of that.

The Nivea (another German product) was purchased from Turkey (it showed up 4 days after I ordered it...FROM TURKEY. That's impressive!) based on the recommendation of my Man in Tokyo, Aleks. It better be good! ;).

The two Sweet Almond Oil soaps from Crabtree & Evelyn represent serious infringement of my "Avoid Discontinued products" guideline (let's ignore the Florena, ok?) but it was just so cheap...And it's from Australia! We're spanning the globe, here!

And then the surprise...my ever growing HAD (that's "Hone Acquisition Disorder") took hold of me and I bought a barber hone from a member as SMF without really knowing what I was buying. It turns out to be an "Its a peech" barber hone--one of the smoothest and finest barber hones ever! SWEET! I love surprises.

So, there we are. I have yet to use any of these, but it's just so much fun to have new stuff waiting for me...And of course, I'll share as soon as I get to them.

And then, there are the two Torrey straights winging their way across the sea to me, as well.

My credit card's been BUSY!

Wonders Never Cease

You may have seen this guy before:

He came at about the same time as two other brushes, so I never really talked about him. But it's high time I did...He's got a secret!

I got three brushes all about the same time. The Kim Son Horn Handle Silvertip, which you have read about; the pre-Vulfix Simpsons Duke 3, which has moved on to warmer pastures; and the Omega 21047 Travel Boar brush. That's the little guy on the right--he's got a hand turned acrylic handle, and according to Giovanni at Razor and Brush (who sold me the brush), a 21mm knot and a 47mm loft. The handle has a lovely faux horn look to it, and the whole thing just looks classy.

Now, the first thing I noticed when I got the brush, apart form its tiny size, was the look of the bristles.
Compare this:

To this:


In the Omega picture, the bristles have the look of a typical boar brush, with the fake badger "sketch"-the bristles are the kind of off-white "blonde" of a boar brush. In my picture, though, you can see more of a "brindled" color; there is more brown to it. I thought it was an aesthetic thing, to match the bristles with the handle--and it may well be so. But there is another factor at play here...

When I finally got around to using the brush (thanks, Zach, for reminding me to!) I found something a bit unexpected...

First was the smell. When I got my Omega professional, it frankly reeked. Reeked like a wet dog. That's just part of it--animal hairs smell bad when wet. The badger brushes also smell, though there is a different funk to it. This brush, however, had an odd smell--neither like the Omega professional nor the badger brushes I had used. Somewhere in between. Strange.

Second was performance. This is a boar brush. Boar brushes have a tendency toward low water retention and a slower lather rate than badger brushes; I thought that, due to this brush's smaller size this would even be more of a problem. I was absolutely wrong.

This brush is a lather monster. It took just a few swirls to work both the Cella from today's shave and the TBS Maca root cream from yesterday into a thick rich lather, and the water level was just right...I had to dip only once for each of them. The brush was a bit scritchy, but being a new boar brush that was no problem. It had a good amount of backbone, very massagey feeling, but it also had more splay than I assumed it would from the short loft. It felt good lathering, and it did a great job of it.

The performance was outstanding...and I couldn't understand it. I was sure that such a small boar brush should not be able to hold enough water to work so quickly...But then I looked more closely.



In among the coarse, poker-straight boar hairs I could see finer, somewhat kinky or wavy hairs. Some of them were dark brown to the tips, some of them were banded, some of them were bleached almost white...badger hairs.

This is a boar/badger mix! The website and the Omega catalogue both list this as a boar brush, I know, but the look, the performance, and the smell all seem to agree...this is a mix!

It has the stiffness and scrubbiness of a boar, lending it to work wonders with soaps and creams, and it has the water retention of a badger brush, helping it make the lather more hydrated. It's an awesome brush, and more than worth the $16 or so I dropped on it.

A hearty recommendation, and a very pleasant surprise!

For the love o' PETE! (Soap Review)

So I have tried a few high quality shaving creams and soaps now. The Gentlemen's Refinery, Mitchell's Wool Fat, Speick Shaving Stick...but yesterday I got one of the best shaves I have ever had, from a $2 puck of Wal-Mart shaving soap.


Van Der Hagen soap is a widely available, dirt cheap shaving soap. You can get this at almost any drug store in the States. It is, therefore, widely reviled as worthless by the shaving community. However...it isn't. It's actually good. It's pretty DAMN good, in fact, if my shaves yesterday and today are any indication.


The soap is surprisingly soft--when I held the puck, it felt like a slightly warmed cheese...a pink, floral smelling cheese. The particular specimen was Van Der Hagen Deluxe, "for dry skin and heavy beards." Like me.

I got this soap and, as I once read on Shave My Face, I decided to make a shave stick. So I got a shave stick container from JoAnna at The Shave Den, got my puck of VDH, cut it into tiny pieces and dropped the pieces into the shave stick container. a couple of 10-second bursts in the microwave and VOILA! Shave stick!



I tried the soap for the first time yesterday, and I was frankly astonished. I soaped up with the stick and hit it with my Omega brush. The stuff EXPLODED into lather...and it felt really, really good. I used my Tech with a third-shave Gillette 7 O'Clock Permasharp and it was just great. Smooth, comfortable...and moisturized. Not QUITE as moisturzed as an MWF shave, but up there.

And it's only $2. Man. I gotta reexamine some stuff....

Definitely a winner....

Accidental Smooth

So....I got a BBS shave today, and I didn't even realize it till later.



This morning, I did my usual shave routine.

Hot shower, a bit of my wife's moisturizing hair treatment to soften up my beard, and the shave. I had a 2nd shave Redpack Israeli Personna in my Tech, and I lathered up with my MWF (I've been picking it up and using it like a shave stick--makes it much easier to get the right amount of soap for the lather) and did my usual 3 pass, WTG ATG ATG shave. Afterwards, thinking about the dry weather lately, I used my remaining lather as a face wash, and skipped the Alum. The Eroika burned a buit more than usual--the lack of alum?--but my face felt great, smooth and moisturized.

Then, when I got to work, I put my chin in my hands and realized...This is the best shave I've ever had. I can't figure out why...maybe my Lather was a bit more hydrated? My technique a touch better? Dunno, but I keep feeling my face and I LIKE IT.

On another note...I really like those redpack personnas. I might have found my blades...we'll see when i get my blades from Giovanni at Razor and Brush.

Mom's Surprise

So, when I first started getting interested in this hobby, I talked to my mother about it. She goes to lots of flea markets and the like, so I asked her to be on the look out for "those old fashioned razors that take a double edged blade." She started laughing, and said "I think I know what you're talking about."

Fast forward to last night. My wife's birthday package came in from back home, and lo and behold, look what was in it!




A shaving kit with an Early 1920s Gem Micromatic TTO, and what I think is a Ball End Tech. (I'm no good at identification). They were with some nail grooming goods, as well.

They're not in perfect condition:



There's some pitting and corrosion on the head of the Gillette, but the chrome is still shiny (see the Gillette logo? Pretty) and the handle is pristine. The Gem has some serious chewing on the teeth of the comb; it's clearly been used more. But their value isn't what's important.

My grandmother passed last year, and my mother inherited the house. I guess this shaving kit has been there for years--and my mom never knew just what to do with it. It might have been my grandfather's, but probably not. They divorced long before I was born, and I think it was pretty nasty. I never met him. But My mom knew that she remembered seeing something like this set when she was a kid.
I got a little bit of family history here.

It makes me feel really, really good to have this. I feel part of something bigger than myself.