Good evening, gents. What a glorious Monday evening!
Hot Towel
NSS Ice & Slice - Pure Badger
Star Safety Razor - Gillette Thai Super Thin [1]
Hot Rinse & Cold Rinse
Brut Aftershave
Face Lathered
One Pass ... all I needed
Many thanks to flip-68 for rekindling my interest in double edge shaving after a good stint of single edge and experimentation with straight edge. Phil dropped one of these into a Tech and loved the shave. I commented that I thought that would be the case, more through instinct than anything, so he sent me some to try out for myself.
Well, I am happy to report likewise - I absolutely loved the shave and the blade gave a peculiar lease of life to an otherwise seriously mild razor. I'm using a Star safety razor tonight.
History lesson - GEM ceased the name somewhere along their timeline, switching to Star for the 1912 until its final withdrawal after a brief stint also as Treet. Well, Star wound up their razor production with a double edge safety razor using a Gillette Tech style design. It's mild, perhaps milder than the later, lighter Techs.
With a Gillette Thai Super Thin strapped in, one pass was quite sufficient. Yes, I used the "Gillette Slide" on a couple of areas that I know can be problematic, but that one pass was quite sufficient for one day of growth. I got the kind of shave I get from a single pass with a slant. In fact, I'll use a slant tomorrow just to confirm.
Simple rinse down, no alum, no witch hazel, just water, splash of cold and a good splash of Brut to finish off.
Simple and effective shaving! It's so sharp, the sink was unusually full of stubble soup after that one pass, yet so gentle I could probably have pushed against my face with the razor in both hands and not drawn blood.
Thank you to flip-68 - all my Techs now have a reason other than completing a collection gathering nothing more than dust or a few and far between simple polish at the end of a problematic experimental shave with something peculiar from the early part of the twentieth century. Cheers!
