An excellent shave: the Omega R&B brush loaded up well from the Klar Seifen soap, an excellent soap. Three passes with the Standard razor, leading to a smooth finish, and a splash of Klar Seifen aftershave.
A comment on the brush action. Larry Isaacs commented on this post, writing:
For me and my shavers the whiskers need to be lifted away from the face to be properly mowed down. We prefer boar, so it makes sense this brush [the Ecotools Finishing Kabuki brush - LG] wouldn’t do it for me. They’re polar opposites in terms of backbone./blockquote>
Since this morning I was using a boar brush, I paid careful attention to the action to detect whether the whiskers would be lifted away from the face. (Let me note that I shave daily, so the stubble is generally short and, so far as I can tell, does not grow close to the face but away from the face, so lifting the stubble is not an issue for me. But every man has his own patterns of stubble growth. Still, the amount of lift would be miniscule: the stubble simply isn’t that long.)
I could detect no lifting at all: so far as I can tell, the action of the brush is the same as for the Ecotools (and yesterday’s Rooney Emiion): brushing lather back and forth over the stubble, thus softening it for the blade. Of course, the R&B brush is quite soft—it’s made of untrimmed badger bristles—so perhaps another boar brush might act differently. But I don’t think so: the action of the brush as it brushes over the stubble doesn’t seem to lift anything. And while a resilient brush will certain feel different than a softer brush, I don’t see how it can lift bristles unless it is really a scrub brush (which would be unpleasant on the face, at least to me).
So I’m a little doubtful that any lifting is going on, but I’m willing to be proved wrong. Shave a week with the Ecotools brush, then a week with a boar brush, then another week with the Ecotools, and see whether the resulting shaves are any different. I do quite understand that some prefer the feel of a more resilient knot, but I’m more focused her on the shaving efficacy of the brush.
Any who can identify a stubble-lifting action from their shaving brush, please let me know the make and model so I can try it.
Filed under: Shaving
