Aug. 2, 2022 - Headless Mammoth Hoggin' Day 2
In my hurry to soak my brush so I could get my shave on before getting the kids ready for school, I forgot to take a picture of the brush before the shave.
This is what it looks like after the second second use
Yesterday I had trouble picking up soap after running low after the first pass, so today I decided to try scooping out a generous amount and loading it in an empty tub before proceeding with the face lather. When the brush dried after the first shave I was somewhat surprised by the transformation that the brush had gone through and the tips looked noticeably better like they might actually be pleasant to use. But that was a lie. Today's face lather wasn't much more enjoyable than yesterdays, but I did end up with a more respectable amount of lather. I'm finding that the boar brush doesn't hold as much water as I expected, but thinking about it it makes sense because the bristles of the brush are much thicker than synthetic/badger fibers so water has much less overall surface area to adhere to. #pHySiCs #ICouldBeFullOfSh1t
After using this boar, I'm starting to remember some of the qualities that I liked about boar brushes from using them maybe 7-8 years ago. One thing I seem to recall is that boars seem to skip to foamy phase of lather and goes right to the yogurty good stuff. My guess is the lower density of fibers ends up introducing less air into the lather, but I haven't used denser boars so I could be wrong on this. I also like that the backbone of boar brushes isn't evenly distributed due to the hairs being thicker closer to the base of the knot than the tips, allowing for a nice combination of good backbone that doesn't splay wildly while being able to flex and split near the tips. Natural 2-in-1 fibers, if you will. Amazing stuff.
I was half expecting the lather to disappear by the time I was ready to do my second pass but fortunately the boar did not eat the mammoth today and I had enough lather to do a normal second pass without reloading, but I'm a 3 pass shaver and the boar had nothing left to give after the second pass. The brush had much less lather inside the knot than I expected, but I didn't feel like loading again so I just scraped the little lather that was left off the sides of the brush with my hands to complete a third pass. Fortunately this Tusk base is amazing so even with almost no lather I was able to do an ATG pass with the shavette, buffing certain areas with the residual slickness. My face felt great after applying the Mammoth balm.
Seeing everyone and their mothers with brand new Zenith boars yesterday definitely gave me a bit of brush envy but using this cheap Proraso brush also seemed fitting given how similar it is to my first brush ever, the Omega 48. I have a cheap Zenith on the way so I'm looking forward to trying that out as well.
In preparation for AA I purposely used mostly DEs the past few weeks knowing that I wanted to use a shavette for August and I'm finding a lot of joy in using the kamisori again. The Feather SR + Schick Proline combo has been giving me fantastically smooth shaves and I'm glad that my proficiency with the shavette has given me the opportunity to focus more on the excitement of breaking in the boar without worrying about destroying my face. I've never counted blade uses with the shavette but I know I haven't taken a blade to 31 shaves before so it will be interesting to see if the blade performance starts degrading in the second or third week.
#RawHoggin #MammothMafia
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