The Ecotools Retractiable Kabuki turns out to be as good a shave brush as the regular Ecotools Kabuki—that is, quite good. It has its own distinct character, and to those who move from a boar brush to a silvertip badger and exclaim about the softness: You ain’t felt nuttin’ yet.
The brush has a sleeve that comes up from the handle to protect the knot when the cap (glimpsed behind the brush) is used: the cap snaps onto the extended sleeve, and the sleeve is then retracted to ready the brush for travel. “Retractable” in the brush name refers to this sleeve, which works extremely well.
I used the Jlocke98 formula with lanolin oil, then worked up quite a good lather from Geo. F. Trumper Rose shaving soap: a definite rose fragrance, but fainter than the D.R. Harris Rose shaving cream fragrance—and undoubtedly fainter than a Trumper Rose shaving cream: shaving creams are more forward with their fragrances than shaving soaps.
The iKon, like the Pils and unlike the various Merkur two-piece razors (the 34C “HD”, for example), is in fact a two-piece razor: a cap, with the baseplate and handle permanently joined with a roller bearing (so that the handle can turn independently). The Merkur two-piece design attaches baseplate and handle in such a way that the handle cannot rotate independently. Thus to tighten the cap, some other means must be found. Merkur uses a hollow handle with an internal threaded shaft that can turn freely and is held inside the shaft by a friction ring: not exactly “two-piece.”
This is the stainless iKon two-piece, with an Astra Superior Platinum blade, and it did a very fine job. Again I nicked my chin, and this time I see why: my angle when shaving the chin has gone bad. I’ll have to get a new one.
Three passes, perfect smoothness, and a good splash of Saint Charles Shave Bulgarian Rose aftershave. Ready for Friday!
Filed under: Shaving
