Aug. 1, 2022 - AA Day 1 - Unboxing, weighing, and the start of breaking in
Day One of AA.
For my Austere August I'm going with the following items.
Razor: Micromatic Open Comb, Gen 2. I picked this up in May, but haven't gotten a lot of quality time with it due to the Lather Games and wanting to use some other stuff in July. So far the shaves I've had with it have been adequate even though they required more attention to detail than normal. My actual razor is pretty ugly, but structurally it's sound.
Blade: I had ordered some PTFEs for August, but they didn't arrive. So, I'm using a Stainless instead. This is unfortunate, but rules are rules, and a PTFE blade is arriving tomorrow, a day late.
Brush: There has been lots of talk about how finding a bad boar is a lot harder than finding a bad badger, because boars are so much cheaper that even the cheapest brushes are generally acceptable or better. I'm putting this to the test - I found and bought two very inexpensive boar knots from Shave Forge (they were ~$5 when I bought them, they're now about $15!!!), and 3D printed two handles. Why two you ask? So we have a control and a test brush. I'll be able to compare on a daily basis the brush I'm using vs. what it started out like. I knotted the brushes last week, and then boxed up the brushes until today. I'll be leaving the control brush in a ziploc bag so that it doesn't air out, so I can compare the aroma of the control vs. test. I also have a well-broken in (probably 50 shaves) Stirling Boar that I'll periodically show in comparison to highlight the changes of the brush throughout August. I won't compare the smell of the Stirling brush, because it still smells like a mix of spinach baby food and gasoline.
Soap: Sea Spice Lime is getting the nod, due the fact that I really like it, and since I won a trickhole of it during the Lather Games. I don't like to lather directly on my soap, so I've scooped approximately half of my container into an empty tin I have, and will be working from this tin during AA. I will be logging weights at the end of my shave each day (after the soap has had a chance to dry) so that we can see how much soap I'm burning on a day to day basis. If I need to refill the tin, I can. I started today's shave with the tin weighing 54g.
AS/EDT: SSL Toner and EDT.
Today's Shave:
I unboxed my brush, and set out all of my accruements for the day's shave. Smelling the brush, there is a definite stink. I noticed when I first used my Stirling boar that there was almost no smell, because I was ready for it - with this brush there is a distinct heavy smell. That smell intensified 3 fold when I ran water on the brush to get it ready for shaving. I hope the scent goes away quickly, because it's stomach-churning bad. Almost like the smell of beef bouillon. Not what I wanted to rub on my face.
I'm typically a scoop-and-precision-lather guy, so face lathering is relatively new for me. I lathered the soap for 30 seconds, and was amazed at how much soap seemed to be used up. Moving to my face, I started to build a lather, and found that there was very little splay with this brush unless I really put pressure on it. That in turn dug the bristles into my face, which was quite unpleasant. The smell of the brush is overwhelming, and SSL does little to mask it. If anything, the porky/lime smell just made me think of some tacos I had in Mexico City and started my stomach growling. However, I was able to get a good lather up, and moved to the shave.
I've used the MMOC before, and this blade before, so I knew what to expect. The other blade I have I've taken to about 15 shaves, so I'm expecting to double that this month. Honestly, this is the part of AA that has me most worried, but for today, I had a good-but-not-quite-BBS two pass shave.
Shave weight after the soap drying for a couple hours is now 50g, so 4g of SSL went into today's shave. That's an insane soap usage - if the soap usage doesn't drop I'll definitely have to restock SSL before month end, but I suspect that as the brush becomes broken in, the soap usage will drop.
So, I am planning to log my thoughts on the shave each day, and compliment those with daily progression photos of the brush against the control brush and my broken-in Stirling. I'll also keep track of soap usage by day, to see if it remains constant or drops as the brush starts to soften.
At the end of August, one lucky Xir can win the control brush via PIF. Let Austere August begin!
Tagging u/EldrormR, u/Semaj3000, u/djundjila
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