August 6, 2022
- Brush: Zenith B15 (506 U/L) 27.5mm Boar
- Razor: GEM MMOC Gold Gen2
- Blade: Personna Gem PTFE (6)
- Lather: Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag - Soap
- Post Shave: Thayers - Lemon - Toner
- Post Shave: Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag - Aftershave
- Fragrance: Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag - Eau de Parfum
2 passes. Face lather. Good shave.
The brush felt about the same today as it did yesterday. I don't have issues building a lather. I'm doing two passes and building both passes from the brush load. If I could not, I would just get more soap from the tub, so building a lather isn't really an issue. The brush isn't heavenly soft like my badger brushes, but I'm starting to understand that you get an attachment to the break-in process of a boar. We'll see how I feel in 25 days.
I know that I'll continue to enjoy Midnight Stag. Using a single soap for a month is no great sacrifice. I have years of using the same canned goo, and I have many months of experience lathering with bar soap when I was too lazy to go out and buy canned goo. I agree with /u/sgrdddy. The EdP does its own thing. For me, it's a much more detailed scent than the soap or splash, and I enjoy them all.
Finally, let's talk a little about the blade. I found an area of the edge that has two noticeable microchips in it. They're at about 1/4 of the edge length from the left. This is what I expect to happen as the edge is used. If you look, you can see that these microchips occur where grind marks appear to be deep. According to this MIT paper, an edge dulls by chipping away, tiny bits at a time. Because I'm flipping the blade each day, my shaving is essentially fatiguing edge material in both directions. I don't know whether this will increase the rate of chipping or not. I can't discern any edge degradation yet while shaving; though I'm typically sensitive to it. I expect that I'll start to feel it around day 10.
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