A truly fine shave, but I tilted the playing field somewhat: a two-day stubble, for starters. Then the use of the Asses’ Milk shaving soap. And finally my bakelite slant holding a Kai blade.
I decided to use the Ecotools after reading about the problems proaso encountered when he used it. I understand his frustration: you read that a tool does extremely well (e.g., in Cool Tools), you buy it, and it doesn’t work well at all for you. But the Ecotools has worked so very well for me and others that I wanted to try to get to the bottom of it and also observe how I used it to see what I could learn.
First, of course: the Ecotools Bamboo Finishing Kabuki is sold as a make-up brush, so its use as a shaving brush is definitely off-label (though I will point out that some off-label uses of medications have good results). And it’s somewhat unusual. I tried four different make-up brushes (and I had high hopes for a goat-hair kabuki), but none of the others worked well at all. The goat-hair kabuki was a particular disappointment: wonderfully soft on the skin, it had a dense knot into which the soap and lather disappeared, never to emerge. But the Ecotools has been a stellar performer.
Second, proraso does have hard water at his current location: quite hard, apparently. I have relatively soft water—so, with all else equal (brush, soap, technique) the performance difference between his Ecotools use and mine would be due to the water.
I noticed when I used the brush this morning that I do load the brush at some length. I did get a terrific lather (asses’ milk is the best!), and when I finished the 3 passes of my shave, I applied lather for two more passes, rinsing instead of shaving after each application. There was still lather in the brush, and all applications had been generous, so the brush does not lack for capacity.
I suggested that perhaps a longer loading time might help, but proraso said that just one use was sufficient for him, so I don’t think he’ll do much playing around with it. I, however, am still curious, so tomorrow I’ll use it with an Arko shave stick, a soap that novices are likely to favor.
I think the Kai blade may be needing replacement: the cutting ease was not quite what I expected. Nonetheless, the shave went very well: almost BBS after two passes, and the third pass cleaned up every rough spot left.
A splash of Alt Innsbruck, and this morning I noticed the menthol particularly.
And now the week begins.
Filed under: Daily life, Shaving
