I have to say that I do not understand the popularity of Semogue brushes. The 830 boar brush shown in the photo seems still unable to sustain a lather after many, many latherings to break it in. Whereas an Omega boar is typically performing quite well with a week’s use and well on the way to being broken in after 2-3 weeks, my Semogue brushes—those that have not failed utterly because of a badly splayed knot—are still not performing up to snuff.
I’m going to give this brush another few weeks of use (I make a lather with it each day following my regular shave), and if it still performs as badly as it does now, it goes into the wastebin: lesson learned once more. Semogue brushes are, in my experience, wildly overrated.
By loading the brush before the shave and again during the shave, I got enough lather to do a shave. I picked Mystic Water Sensitive Skin shaving soap because of a discussion on Wicked Edge, and brought out my iKon DLC slant for the same reason. The cutting sound from the slant was especially noticeable this morning, and by the end of the second pass I figured that it may be in part because the blade was getting dull: my face was already mostly BBS, which it generally is following the second pass with a slant. So I replaced the blade—a Personna Lab Blue—before the third pass and finished with a BBS result with no problems.
A small splash of Annick Goutal’s Eau de Sud, and I am opening the door to a pleasant weekend.
Filed under: Shaving
