A truly superb shave this morning. Yardley is a classic vintage soap with a traditional (and still quite present) lavender fragrance. The lather, worked up with the excellent Omega S-Brush shown, was thick and creamy and effective. With the newer angel-hair brushes now available at modest prices (though not so modest as the S-Brush prices), the S-Brush has been eclipsed, but it still performs as well and feels as good as it ever did, and that is very well (and good) indeed.
The Merkur white bakelite slant shown is, Fine says, the model for his new razor. If he truly replicated all the shaving geometry (the minor changes he made to the bottom of the baseplate will not affect the shave), then he will have a truly first-rate slant. This slant’s feel and performance are amazing: almost totally BBS after the second pass, while still shaving with great comfort. The razor does have a distinct blade feel—more than the Stealth, I’d say. (The Stealth was also modeled on this razor, which is famously good, but with more design mods than Fine says he has taken.) I would use the white bakelite slant more frequently, except that bakelite is brittle and I fear losing the razor by accidentally dropping it. (I had a spare, but I contributed that to Tradere when he told me he was going to make a slant, which he never did. I had high hopes then of getting a less fragile version of the bakelite slant—hopes that now may be realized.)
A good splash of Creed’s Aventus finished the shave and brings us one day closer to the launch of Fine’s slant.
Filed under: Shaving
