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Cat's whiskers

shaving equipment

Online forums are good sources of information and/or habitats for groupthink. Jean Valjean ignored the smell; so can you :-)

forums are biased in various ways. for example, woodworkers' opinions about linseed oil are informed by wood finish products. in another forum, we might find a recommendation for finishing wood with linseed oil sold by an art supply store. sauce for the painter is sauce for the woodworker?

Slippery when wet

when i became interested in safety razors, forums were invaluable sources of information. they are still helpful, but i learned enough to continue on my own.

at one point i bought cheap shaving soap thinking that it couldn't be as bad as forum contributors claimed. they were right, but the soap was/is still useful: it stays at the bottom of my shaving mug so the soap i actually use is closer to the top. i brought the cheap soap to the store while shopping for a shaving mug. that search ended when i had trouble removing the soap from a baby cup.

all my soaps are ad hoc blends. for shaving soap, blending entails adding excess water and waiting for the mixture to solidify. i can be patient (for a change), because dipping a brush in soapy liquid is easy and i don't shave daily.

to make a new blend, i start by recycling some of the old blend with a zester. (any zester would work, which is a good thing because Victorinox stopped making my favorite.) then, add fresh ingredients (use the zester to grate any shaving soaps) and water.

Close shave

forum opinions about razors and blades were less useful for several reasons, e.g. the range of products is much larger. forum contributors self identifying as experts is another factor. reviews based on one or two shaves were typical. muscle memory helps us shave, but it can also prevent us from quickly adapting to different equipment. many people think my Weishi 9306 is too mild. after a brief trial, i agreed and put it away.

when it was time to give my Gillette Slim a thorough cleaning, i gave my Weishi another chance. it didn't take long to adapt. a bad workman blames his tools.

Brush filaments

opinions about shaving brushes were least useful, because there was a strong bias for soft badger hair and widespread ignorance about brush materials.

for a moment, it was fashionable to buy Turkish brushes that supposedly had horsehair knots. people eventually realized that the filaments in these Turkish brushes were hog bristles. (after spending too much time reading about brushes, i decided to use the definitions in this glossary.) a pleasantly sarcastic message in The Shave Den forum (defunct) may have helped convince the last holdouts.

there were horsehair shaving brushes long ago, so i remained curious until i bought a stencil brush with a black knot made from 55% bristle and 45% horsehair. it is good for cleaning things so i keep it near my sink. it is a nasty shaving brush.

no longer curious about horsehair, but still believing that the best shaving brush is something that was designed for another purpose, i bought a stencil brush with 100% black bristles. it was not as bad as the bristle-horsehair brush, but i quickly stopped using it and sold it.

knowing that black bristle is too coarse, i bought the white bristle stencil brush standing next to my shaving mug. for someone who likes bristle brushes and is willing to adapt to his equipment, it works quite well. it is not good for someone who wants his face to look like a cumulus cloud.

the long handle and ferrule can support the brush while it dries, so the knot retains its shape. after a few hours, i stand the brush on its bristles to facilitate drying near the ferrule. can your brush do that?

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