Forgot to post Fridays shave so I figured I'd do two for the price of one!
FRAT below.
Friday
Pre Shave: Shower
Brush: Epsilon Vie Long badger (On loan from
@Draco Noir)
Soap: Mystic Waters - Egyptian Dragon
Razor: Kamisori (western grind)
After Shave: Myrsol Blue
Could have easily put off Friday's shave but the lure of the Kamisori was too much. Had a very pleasant two pass shave which resulted in a DFS.
Sunday
Pre Shave: Shower
Brush: Epsilon Vie Long badger (On loan from
@Draco Noir)
Soap: Mystic Waters - Frankincense & Myrrh
Razor: Asymmetrical grind folding Kamisori (On loan from
@Draco Noir)
After Shave: Shaver Heaven - Summer Breeze
I spent a few hours with
@Draco Noir this afternoon and I was lucky enough to be sent off with 3 different straight razors to try out. Needless to say I couldn't wait to get home and have a shave. I was especially excited to try out an asymmetrical grind for the first time so it was an easy choice to try that first up. What a little firecracker of a razor, the blade felt a lot shorter than I'm used to but that certainly didn't hinder its performance. I actually had to make a conscience effort to slow myself down as it just felt like it wanted to whip around my face which could have very easily ended rather badly.
The main difference I found was utilising different angles to what I've been used to although I was pleased it only took a few seconds use to work out. As Draco had said it comes down to feel and this is where all the practice with a symmetrical grind held me in good stead. To get the right angle I would start using a very shallow angle and gradually kept increasing it until it felt right. I would then repeat the process when changing sides and when starting a different pass, I found this approach worked really well for me.
Initially I had thought I would just do a WTG pass and assuming that went well I might even try XTG just on the cheeks and leave it at that. As always, it sounded good in theory however I should have realised that I was deluding myself thinking I would be able to leave it at that! I ended up doing a full 3 pass shave WTG, XTG and ATG. Just like the razor being a little firecracker I had an absolute cracker of a shave. I had one little nick on the bottom of my chin but I don't really care about that, the whole experience was fantastic and I have a BBS shave to boot.
Another new thing that I first tried on Friday's shave and it worked so well I did it again today was instead of adding drops of water to create a lather, I used a spray bottle instead. On both occasions I found it doesn't take long using the spray bottle for the lather to explode, you can see the result
here. No doubt you can get the same result adding drops of water but I've found using the spray bottle I can whip up a great lather far quicker. I think it works quicker as using a spray bottle means you get very fine droplets of water is dispersed over a greater area of the soap/brush so doesn't take nearly as much effort to mix in. In any event I would be interested to see what other people thoughts are on it.
FRAT: First time using a asymmetrical folding Kamisori, one small nick and a BBS shave. Was an absolute cracker of a shave.
20160703_094851 by tvrepairzone, on Flickr
