It Takes Two: Day 22 of Lather Games

• Brush: Declaration Grooming Washington Blood of Kings B3
• Razor: Atelier Durdan – Horizon $ARTISTCLUB $ADJUSTABLE $CNC
• Blade: Feather Professional
• Lather: Stirling Soap Co – Black Pepper Lime
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Sea Spice Lime
• Fragrance: №4711 – Acqua Colonia Blood Orange & Basil

Theme justification: Black pepper and lime. All software today is marketed as a citrus and something (although only the soap claims two scent notes): Black pepper + lime, sea spice + lime, basil + blood orange.

Very satisfying shave. The fully open Horizon is a very nice shaver. Smooth and with a strong blade feel. The R41 of AC safety razors.

K.I.S.S: Day 21 of Lather Games

• Brush: Declaration Grooming Washington Blood of Kings B3
• Razor: Atelier Durdan – Horizon $ARTISTCLUB $ADJUSTABLE $CNC
• Blade: Feather Professional
• Lather: Nordic Shaving Company – Coffee
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co – Orange Chill
• Fragrance: Imaginary Authors – Saint Julep

Theme justification: Nordic Shaving Company’s Coffee is just that: “This soap has a pleasant and rich, even a little bit sweet scent of fresh roasted coffee.”, and it’s a good start for a brunch beverage themed scentscape: coffee followed refreshing orange juice (also one scent note) and a mint Julep (unfortunately multiple scent notes, but who’s counting)

Oh, I like this razor. Today I used it on level 8, where it has a good amount of blade feel, but it mostly it’s smooth and efficient. I might find some rare safety razor thrill for this one.

The Clash: Day 20 of Lather Games

• Brush: Declaration Grooming Washington Blood of Kings B3
• Razor: Atelier Durdan – Horizon $ARTISTCLUB $ADJUSTABLE $CNC
• Blade: Feather Professional
• Lather: CBL – Rock the Casbah
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. – Boat Drinks
• Fragrance: Farina – 1709

Theme justification: I never wrote down the scent notes of CBL Rock the Casbah because I don’t like the scent, and apparently the internet agrees with me because I can’t for the life of me find any person or site that found it worthwhile preserving them. The scent is a strong aromatic lavender (and if you’ve ever tried CBL, you know what I mean by “strong”. It’ll wrinkle your nose) with some warm, slightly nausea-inducing note that neither I nor my wife can place. What’s sure is that it doesn’t play well with sweet banana-coconut-rum combo of boat drinks. Farina’s bright Tuscan summer citrus throws a last wrench in this construction. You’ll note that I chose products that dissipate quickly.

The star of this shave is the razor. These hashtags have never been seen in that combination before. In this particular community, being European is usually a downside: I pay more for things, get them later, and reselling makes no sense because of shipping costs. But not today. Our ever-busy shave goods sponge u/J33pGuy13 somehow has the juice to get a prototype of the soon-to-be-released Horizon (French horizon, not English) for a pass-around. Since I live closest to Augustin, the pass-around starts with me 🎉.

So this razor has a very simple cam mechanism to move the base plate back and forth w.r.t the top cap where the blade tabs anchor the blade. Looking at the video from Augustin, I was worried about the alignment between the base plate and the top cap as the adjustment bolt slides from one end of the cam to the other, but it turns out that the two pieces have tight tolerances: they slide easily with no perceptible slack. Really satisfying.

I decided to start on level one for this first use. It’s fairly straight forward to find the right angle, and even at this lowest exposure, the razor is plenty efficient. The feedback is not quite GEM or Futur level, but quite loud and satisfying by safety razor standards. The head is heavy, maybe the heaviest I’ve tried, and that includes contraptions like the Wilkinson razor. I’m not sure yet how I feel about that, but it didn’t get in the way of a close and comfortable shave.

I’m a sucker for mechanical innovations in safety razors so this is catnip for me. I can’t find thrill anymore for yet another very well made three-piece safety razor, but this I can get behind. I’m holding back and try to continue forming opinion until I have more shaves with it under the belt, but this went as well as a first shave can.

(which cannot be sold as rum anymore, because EU).

Really? That’s interesting. I buy it for Feuerzangenbowle and it’s still sold as rum here

Juneteenth: Day 19 of Lather Games

• Brush: Rubberset 400-3 with a 26 mm unbleached Zenith boar knot at 56 mm loft $Hollow $AtomicAge $DoorKnob
• Razor: Wilkinson Sword – Wilkinson Razor $ADJUSTABLE $EIGHTDAYSAWEEK $FOREVERSAFETY $MACHINEAGE
• Lather: Martin de Candre – Absinthe
• Post Shave: Speick – Men Active
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! 3 Scots

Theme justification: It’s a hot summer Sunday morning in Commugny, and drops of morning dew glint on the leaves and grapes of the vineyards around the village. The air is still heavy from the thunderstorm that had rolled over Lake Geneva the night before. Vineyard worker Jean Lanfray had slept like shit and wakes up in a mood. He is thirsty. He decides to sneak out before his wife wakes up and starts nagging him about the list of chores to get done before the baby arrives. Jean knows that she hates him, and that the only reason she hasn’t divorced him yet is because the priest at Founex had convinced her to stick with him. Down the street, Jean slinks into Gorgette’s Buvette and orders a glass of wine, then another. He gets hungry and orders a sandwich with another glass of wine. The thirst doesn’t go away and he keeps ordering until he has finished a bottle. His dad shows up and they decide to drink cognac. Six glasses later, Jean feels a bit tired and orders a coffee with brandy and two crèmes de menthe for dessert. By now it’s early afternoon, and Jean knows that he better goes home now, so he quickly orders a glass of absinthe to wash it all down. And a second glass, just to make sure. At home, he’s a bit tired again, so he tells his wife to make him another coffee with brandy. Scared, she does what he asks. He likes the feeling of power and orders her to polish his shoes, but this time she starts talking back. Going on about divorce again. Jean loses it. The nerve on her. And pregnant with his child, too! He gets his Vetterli rifle from the foot locker and beats her over the head with it. That will teach her, he thinks, but instead she starts screaming for help and runs away, to the back door through the kitchen. He follows her with three long strides, aims and shoots her in the back of her head. Alarmed, his 4 year old daughter Rose comes storming in and he shoots her too. Her little sister Blanche, 18 months old, starts crying in her pram and he shuts her up with a shot in the head. Now he can hear the neighbours yell for the gendarmerie and it dawns on him that this might end poorly for him. He leaves the house and goes to his barn, where he sits down and shoots himself in the face. He misses his brain and only mangles his jaw. He collapses. The gendarmes arrest him minutes later. The trial lasts only one day, and Dr Albert Mahaim, a leading psychologist and expert witness testifies that Lanfray had suffered from a classic case of absinthe madness. Obviously. The public outrage is enormous, and already a few months later, on May 15, 1906, the Canton de Vaud bans the production, sale, possession, and consumption of absinthe. At the federal level, a ballot initiative bans it a few years later in a constitutional amendment, starting the era of moonshine absinthe in the Val de Travers. Think Appalachia, but the bootleggers speak French and make expensive watches in winter.

Fast forward to the late 1990s and a teenage djundjila growing up in a small town in northern Switzerland, looking for ways to rebel with his friends discovers absinthe. The green fairy, de verbotni schnaps.

Nowadays, 20 years after the federal ban had been lifted, the smell of absinthe still reminds me of evenings at the banks of the Aare, drinking moonshine absinthe and feeling grown-up, cool, and free. If you’re wondering about the bottle of US moonshine that was smuggles to Switzerland in a nappy bag in the SOTD picture, I added it because it tells me that people feel the same about moonshine everywhere, and that’s why they keep making them even after prohibitions end.

Relevant post or frag: Speick has a similar folklore as absinthe, centring around exaggerated properties ascribed to a mountain herb, and 3 Scots makes me think of William Wallace and his fight for freedom (I know that it’s the name of a British regiment, the irony isn’t lost on me).

Challenge: I first planned to use an open blade razor for this like u/Marquis90 is his legendary lake shave, but TACOed eventually. With a safety razor, it’s surprisingly easy to shave without mirror. The only difficulties are feeling the side burns levels and feeling all the missed spots.

The Wilkinson is a fun over-engineered razor that tries to be everything at once: auto-stropping, switchable, but rehonable blades, and adjustable. It’s functional, but not a razor I enjoy with its gigantic head that gets in the way.

Sadly both sticks aren’t readily available anymore in smaller drugstores like they used to be…

The palmolive one is even out of production :(

Canned Shave Goop featuring a Canadian pharmacy’s intercom music playlist: Day 18 of Lather Games

• Brush: Chisel and Hound – Flame On with v26 Fanchurian
• Razor: Eversharp-Schick Hydro-magic (I2, NOS) #Injector
• Blade: Personna Injector Blade
• Lather: Speick – Men Active Rasierseife
• Post Shave: Pitralon - Swiss version
• Fragrance: Acqua di Parma – Blu Mediterraneo Mirto di Panarea

Theme justification: All of the software products were bought in the department store less than five minutes of foot from my home.

The Speick soap is really good. It’s a vegan base that’s easy to lather and doesn’t froth a lot (which I find that commercial European soaps often do), and I enjoy the generic fresh scent of Speick products. In fact, I also used the matching deodorant today. This soap was the first shave soap that I really liked, and I used it exclusively for a while before I slipped and fell into the rabbit hole. Pitralon is a favourite of mine and it leaves the skin silky smooth like SW toners (used to 😭) do.

Stacking!

So you actually have no idea which is which?

Yup, I haven’t figured out a way to make sure, other than forcing rust on them, which I’ll do at some point. For now, I kinda enjoy not knowing :)

Yes they did, and this particular one is full hollow by modern standards, not like the Celebrated. Quite fascinating, this.

Don’t have a Cow, Man!: Day 17 of Lather Games

• Brush: Dogwood Handcrafts Tabak Oridjinal, now with 28 mm Gelousy knot
• Razor: Ralf Aust 5/8" full hollow, Spanish tip, stainless steel
• Razor: Ralf Aust 5/8" full hollow, Spanish tip, carbon steel
• Lather: Mäurer & Wirtz – Tabac Original – vegan base
• Post Shave: Mäurer & Wirtz – Tabac Original
• Fragrance: Mäurer & Wirtz – Tabac Original

Theme justification: This is the vegan base. My gratitude to the Lather Games Planning Committee Theme Planning Subcommittee (LGPCThPS) for allowing for an on-theme Tabac Tuesday this year ♥.

Challenge: So, a while back, when I was new to the straight razor rabbit hole, I got very interested in the pros and cons of stainless steel in straight razors when compared to the classic carbon steel. The advantages are obvious, but surely there must be a downside since almost all modern makers still prefer carbon steel? Well, if and when you find one, let me know. I dove deep into the Friodur rabbit hole and they are fantastic razors, from the earliest one that predates the patent on stainless steel to the ones made in the late 1980s they are just great. I also have a great stainless Dovo (that seems to be luck of the draw, as there are a few comments floating around the interwebs suggesting serious QA and QC issues). So I started to wonder, how do I really know whether I’m liking the steel or just the geometry? Cue, Ralf Aust to the rescue: He is a rare maker of modern straight razors who makes both carbon steel and stainless steel razors, so I ordered the same razor in two variants: once in carbon steel, once stainless.

The funny part is that I can’t tell them apart, even after 13 shaves on the original edge so far. They look, feel and shave the same and I have no idea which is which. Ralf Aust’s stainless steel is magnetic, so that doesn’t work to distinguish them. I weighed them, and one is about a gram heavier than the other, which might indicate it’s stainless steel which has a higher density and should result in a heavier razor for a given geometry, but these are handmade so I can’t really know for sure that the weight difference is from a variation in the thickness for instance, or from the heavier material.

As long as the two feel the same, it doesn’t really matter, I guess, but once I feel a difference (which I hope I will at some point. They can’t also have the same edge retention, can they?) I guess I’ll have to smear some vinegar on the tails to see which one rusts. Silly, but at least I’ll finally have certainty :D

Where’s the Beef?: Day 16 of Lather Games

• Brush: Chisel and Hound – Flame On with v26 Fanchurian
• Razor: Wade & Butcher The Sheffield (9/8", extra hollow ground) #Revenant #Str8Snob
• Lather: Grooming Dept – Almond Vanilla
• Post Shave: House of Mammoth – Almond Leather
• Fragrance: Tom Ford – Lost Cherry

Theme justification: This base has duck fat. Almond vanilla has this sweet kind of almond that smells like cherry, and its a fun little experiment to sniff it between more almondy almond like HoM Almond Leather and real cherry in TF Lost Cherry. When I sniff Almond leather and Almond Vanilla, Almond Vanilla smells like straight cherry to me. But after sniffing a bit of Lost Cherry, Almond Vanilla switches to almond in my brain. Oh the fun you can have.

I typically lather up and then shave, and today’s challenge would invert that order. Luckily for me, I forgot about the challenge until it was too late.

I honed up this razor during my lunch break, just before the shave, and its a pretty one. I thought I was buying a typical quarter- or half-hollow W&B à la FBU, but this one is fully hollow ground. I didn’t know that WB did such grinds until now.

Father’s Day: Day 15 of Lather Games

• Brush: Zenith 506B MB (27 mm × 51 mm Manchurian badger)
• Razor: Victoria 4 (6/8", half hollow, round tip, carbon steel) $AllNatural
• Lather: Palmolive – Classic
• Post Shave: Hâttric – Classic
• Fragrance: Creed – Silver Mountain Water

Theme justification: Everything’s on theme here. Pennellificio Pandolfo (the family business producing Zenith brushes) was founded it 1902, Victoria (today’s name: Victorinox) was founded in 1884 (under the name Messerfabrik Carl Elsener), Palmolive’s company in 1864, Olivin, the company behnd the brand Hâttric was founded in the early 1940’s (they are vague, which for a German company in that time is… concerning), and Creed was founded as a tailor shop in 1710. I was born after the 1940s.

Swiss Father’s Day was two weeks ago on LG opening day, and I celebrated it with a big dry-aged rib steak. Today, I’m using by Victoria razor: under its new name, Victorinox, many Swiss men have an almost personal connection to this brand. At some point in elementary school, your parents (typically your dad) will decide that you’re old enough to get your own Swiss army knife from Victorinox. It’s one of those “big boy” moments in early childhood. This first army knife lasts usually until your teenage years when suddenly, you “need” one with a cork screw. A bit later in boot camp, you’re issued your official Swiss army knife along with your personal assault rifle (you use its screw driver to adjust the sights). By this time, having a Victorinox knife in your pocket is just normal for me. When leaving home, I pat my pockets in a quick phone-wallet-keys-knife check, and it all started with my first knife that my father gave be some 35 years ago.

Today’s challenge: I got up before my wife and djunior, made coffee, listened to my podcasts and had a nice shave. Robes and candles wouldn’t help me relax more.

Near Death Experience: Day 14 of Lather Games

• Brush: Rubberset 400-3 with a 26 mm unbleached Zenith boar knot at 56 mm loft $Hollow $AtomicAge $DoorKnob
• Razor: Koraat – r/Wetshaving exclusive Moarteen (15/16", full hollow, carbon steel) #Str8Snob
• Lather: Noble Otter – RAWR
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company Seaforth! - Heather
• Fragrance: Barrister and Mann – 42

Theme justification: Last year, I used an almost dead tub of Mickey Lee Soapworks Kraken on near death day. Already in 2021, on .rip day, I used… an almost dead tub of Mickey Lee Soapworks Kraken. It’s become pretty clear that I’m using this last remainder of Kraken veeeery sparingly, and while this is clearly my closest-to-empty tub, it’s clearly not closest to being finished. Rawr on the other hands is a tub I’ve been using pretty consistently over the last 4 years and it has the best chance of being my next kill, so I think this has to be the right choice for today. Heather is Rawr’s less playful and more classy cousin.

Here it was so hot I had to include water pistols is the sotd pic 🫠

The heat wave is here too, and I’m not ready for the temperatures yet🫠

Frugal Friday: Day 13 of Lather Games

• Brush: Nom, super market boar
• Razor: Wilkinson Sword
• Blade: Wilkinson Sword
• Lather: Vitos – Super Extra Coco
• Post Shave: Wars – Classic - Energetyzujący Płyn Po Goleniu
• Fragrance: Adidas – Dynamic Pulse

Theme justification: my cheapest shave goods didn’t change, and the Vitos isn’t in my mountain den this time, so this is nothing new. Also justifies the challenge

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Thanks for noticing, fixed! 🙏

I know, hence the wording 😉