Yesterday I happened to pick up this Tcheon Fung Sing soap, an artisanal soap from Italy, to use in making lather to continue breaking in my two Semogue brushes. (One reason I recommend Omega rather than Semogue boar brushes for novices is the insanely long break-in period Semogue brushes require. I was palm lathering, since I wasn’t going to shave (Never on Sunday) and I did want to give the brushes a bit of a workout. When I palm lather, I have the hot-water tap on to just a trickle, and I will extend my left fingers under the flow briefly, then work that dab of water into the brush (and lather), then extend my hand again for a little more water, then work that in, and so on.
After just a few increments of water, the lather was an incredibly rich, thick, creamy, slick concoction, a really superb mix. I haven’t used Tcheon Fung Sing for a while, and I don’t recall it being so good—if it had been, I think I would have used it more often. Moreover, since I generally don’t palm lather, I don’t know whether other soaps are also capable of this. There’s much experimentation ahead.
So today I again did palm-lathering, this time with Mr Pomp (the brush shown), again using Tcheon Fung Sing. Same result: amazingly rich, thick, creamy, slick lather. This set the stage for a very fine shave indeed.
As you see in the photo, I broke somewhat with my usual practice of using a slant on Monday and decided to use the Rockwell. What is not evident in the photo is the baseplate selection: R6. And I used a Feather blade.
Delightful shave. The Rockwell is an extremely well-designed razor. Very comfortable shave, no nicks at all, and an amazing amount of stubble removed on the first pass. By the end I had a very comfortable BBS result. I think this razor system is definitely going to make its mark.
A good splash of Paul Sebastian, a not-very-expensive aftershave I buy from Amazon and like a lot, and the day begins.
I must do a walk. Now that I’m routinely wearing a pedometer, I saw that yesterday—a rainy day when I did not go out but did a fair amount of cooking—I see that I took 302 steps total. With my walk I usually have 4500-5500, depending on whether or not I did any grocery shopping. (Walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket adds a surprising number of steps.)
Filed under: Shaving
