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An Unexpected Journey: A Newbie's Walk In Wet Shaving

HandleBarberDave said:
(y)Another nice shave, as far as the WSP soap, or any for that matter, bloom soap with a tablespoon of water, start off with a drier brush, load like you stole it, and add drips of water as needed to get your latherpalooza on(y)(y) bowl or face will work on both
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Thanks Dave. Here's my normal lathering process currently: I do bloom all my puck soaps with just about a tablespoon of water. I let it sit in there while I get everything around for my shower etc. Then I pour the bloom water in my lathering bowl to start the lather. I wet my brush and then wring / shake it out so it's on the dryer side but wet enough to not be totally dry or anything close to it. I then load the brush for about 30 seconds and go to lathering in the bowl. I then add cold water drops as needed until I get the consistency where I can make peaks in the soap. I will admit, I often have to squeeze all the soap out of the brush into the bowl and keep lathering until I get what I want. My brush seems to want to hog all the soap. Watching your videos helped me realize the importance of working the lather into the beard. Now it's a real pleasurable thing and I enjoy that part of my shave a lot.

ShawnF said:
I had my hip done in Amhurst. They didn't have any issues giving me pain meds. I'm normally too stupid to take them, but they do help at night trying to go to sleep. You do lay on your hip after all, and they will have just done a lot in there. Moderation and as really needed for sure, but don't not use them at all just for the sake of being bull headed. You know me well enough I'm just like you are (sans the mammoth hair and one finger :p), bull headed and high pain tolerance, but trust me, you'll want a couple here and there the first few days to a week. Don't kill yourself, just suck it up and use a few. I need a striker this summer you know. :ROFLMAO:
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Dang dude, you know me well! A guy I know stopped me Sunday and said "Now Mike, don't be a bullhead! You take care of yourself and don't do too much." Like the true Colonel he was speaking to his sergeant. I'll be really careful and I'm thinking if I can tolerate Tylenol during the day I'll probably take the pain meds at night so I can sleep and maybe before therapy if it proves to be too painful. I really do think that the pain I've been dealing with every day will be gone and replaced with a pain at the incision site that will get better over the weeks so I'll just be thrilled to get rid of the daily pain.

I got a sledge just waiting to swing bro!
 
This morning, I felt like I was ready to go tackle something.....like a jet plane ready to launch off the carrier. In that spirit, I opted for something less intense and grabbed a sample of Mystic Water Leather and Smoke to try out.

Today's Shave: Shave #147

Razor: Parker Variant - Graphite handle / Chinese knock-off of Feather Kamisori Style (Top Lip Only)
Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
Brush: Eric's Lignum Vitae Hand Turned Brush Handle, 22 mm Boss Knot
Soap: Mystic Water Leather and Smoke
Bowl: Red Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Wash with soap in the shower . Rub raw soap on face from the puck.
Total Razor on Face Time: 7 minutes
Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand) face only, Cold rinse. Every Man Jack AS Balm to the face only. Mammoth Painting.

When you lather up Mystic Water soaps, you pretty much know you are in for a treat performance wise. It is difficult for me to lather from the half moon samples, but I found a plastic denture container works great for the MW samples. No, I don't have dentures, but swiped this from my wife's hospital stay a number of years ago. Hey, we paid for it so why not take it home right? This soap smells great in puck form and in lathering. Most here know that using cold water to lather it is key. My only complaint is that when mammoth painting, the real cigar den scent disappears and I'm left only with a residual soap smell. It just smells like a bar soap from a hotel. As I sit now, I'm getting no benefit from mammoth painting at all. This would be a great soap to follow up with a complimentary AS in the same theme/scent.

The shave was excellent. I did a 3 pass shave (3.5 razor setting) with clean-up and got a nice BBS feel afterwards. The performance was great, as you would expect from MW soaps. I'm spending about 2 minutes on my normal clean-ups with the razor set at 1.5. The clean-ups mostly involve blade buffing on the face and around the mouth with some J hooking at the jaw/neck junction

On the personal side........I got my echo cardiogram yesterday. Ahhh, the Black Vanille mammoth painting residual scent filled the exam room with a great scent that made the female echo person very friendly. Normally they tell you how they can't say anything but she was very friendly and said she didn't see anything that would prevent surgery next week. I have to go over the results with a cardiologist before I can be officially cleared. This was the first time I had ever been told anything from the person doing the echo and it was the first time the mammoth painting was in full force, so you tell me if the two are connected? 😁 She was kind and attached the leads where there wasn't a thick forest of mammoth hair so I was thankful for that!
 
A busy week this week as I'm trying to get all the man stuff done around the house that might require me to climb a ladder or get down on the ground and fix something. Still time to get a great shave in before jetting off to work.

Today's Shave: Shave #148

Razor: Parker Variant - Graphite handle / Chinese knock-off of Feather Kamisori Style (Top Lip Only)
Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
Brush: Eric's Lignum Vitae Hand Turned Brush Handle, 22 mm Boss Knot
Soap: Mystic Water Sandalwood Coconut
Bowl: Red Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Wash with soap in the shower . Rub raw soap on face from the puck.
Total Razor on Face Time: 8 minutes
Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand) face only, Cold rinse. Every Man Jack AS Balm to the face only. Mammoth Painting.

I decided to dive into the samples again and pull out a favorite of mine. Though this sample is more sandalwood than coconut, it's still a fine smelling soap. For some reason, the larger pucks of this soap smell more like coconut than this sample. I squeaked in a very nice 3 pass shave this morning with some cleanup. Pretty much the same shave as yesterday, although it's time to pitch the blade as I got a little bit of irritation in places. I almost pitched it before starting but wanted to ensure that the new blade saw me through the weekend so that my last shave on Monday morning before my surgery was excellent.

On the personal side, I checked the weather and decided to roll the dice and switch my winter tires out for my summer ones. I'm pretty particular about doing it myself. Around here they charge $69 just to take one set of tires and rims off and put on the other. Then they charge a fee to reprogram my computer in the SUV to recognize the tire pressure sensors in my summer rims. I bought a nice little gadget for $100 that does it for me. It's paid for its self many times over already. Having dedicated rims for snow tires is handy because I can wait until the weather changes and just do it myself. This killed the hip, but hey, it's coming out in a few days so who cares at this point. Got the winter rims washed up and ready for storage too. I cleaned up the blacksmith shop as it won't be in use for a while.
 
Nice morning for a shave eh? I heard geese flying overhead last night and just in time for a snow storm hitting us tomorrow. Yeah, the weather people said nothing about this coastal storm Monday and Tuesday when I decided to take off my winter tires. Oh well, glad it's not on the day of my surgery.

Today's Shave: Shave #149

Razor: Parker Variant - Graphite handle / Chinese knock-off of Feather Kamisori Style (Top Lip Only)
Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
Brush: Eric's Lignum Vitae Hand Turned Brush Handle, 22 mm Boss Knot
Soap: Mystic Water Lavender Lime
Bowl: Red Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Wash with soap in the shower . Rub raw soap on face from the puck.
Total Razor on Face Time: 7 minutes
Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand) face only, Cold rinse. Every Man Jack AS Balm to the face only. Mammoth Painting.

I was dealing with some irritation this morning from a shirt collar I wore yesterday and some on the upper lip so it was time for a new blade. I worked up a great lather, but boy did the menthol sting a bit where the collar had done its work yesterday. I did a straight 3 pass shave this morning without any clean-up. It felt pretty good. With the new blade I got a fine BBS / BBS- shave on the face and most parts of the neck. DFS in spots on the neck due to skipping the clean-up.

Here's the choices I've settled on for shaving the day of my surgery: 1) Just do minimal shaving this weekend so that I can have a really good and close shave the morning of my surgery. I won't be shaving while in the hospital so it might just carry me through a good 24 hours. 2) Try to get a great shave in the night before and just let it carry. 3)Shave the night before and then just do a simple one pass touch-up the morning of the surgery. Any suggestions out there in TSC land?

On the personal side.........Many people have asked me if I'm worried about the surgery. The truthful answer is well, yes and no. Whenever you face something where complete control is in someone else's hands there's always concern. There's things I'm concerned about, but prayer allows me great comfort.

I'm reminded of a story that was told by a pastor. He was flying to speaking engagement and he was sitting next to this African American woman in her 60's. They chit chatted until she dozed off asleep. About 10 minutes after that the plane hit terrible turbulence. It was so bad that people started to really get panicky. The pastor was white knuckled and gripping his seat, but the lady next to him was fast asleep still. When they landed finally, she woke up and the pastor said "Man, we almost died up there how could you sleep through it all." She yawned and looked up at the pastor and said "Son, I can't fly this plane." and then she just shuffled on out with everyone. At first this all sounds like she was just simple minded, but the opposite is really true. She recognized that she had no control over any of it (she can't fly the plane) so she just continued to sleep.

I guess that's where I'm at. I can't do this surgery and I have no control over the outcome or even if I wake up from it or not. So why worry? It won't do me any good to do so.
 
That's a good outlook to have, and is how I live my life. It's a philosophy that took me a while to learn but I am much happier now that I understand it and put it into practice. I never worry about things that are beyond my control. There's just no point. It's just added stress on you for absolutely no benefit.
 
Spider said:
That's a good outlook to have, and is how I live my life. It's a philosophy that took me a while to learn but I am much happier now that I understand it and put it into practice. I never worry about things that are beyond my control. There's just no point. It's just added stress on you for absolutely no benefit.
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Climbers have a 3 foot world around them that they must master. Look beyond that and you get overwhelmed. Each day has its hand holds and footholds, we just have take them as we go along. What's hardest for me is to let people do things for me. I'd rather die trying than say I can't do something. When I'm injured or sick, I just want to crawl in a cave somewhere and emerge when I feel better. Having to let my wife do so much around the house has been a humbling experience for me personally. I'd go out and shovel snow only to have to sit the rest of the day with an ice pack on my hip. My wife is prairie tough though, I'm amazed at how strong she is and how much she's done. She's my helpmate for sure and no she doesn't read my posts here 😆
 
Well knowing you, I'm sure you're going to be pushing the recovery to start paying all that back
 
I would say...pick a shave that will worry you the least. Don't stress it man...just whatever works!
 
NurseDave said:
Well knowing you, I'm sure you're going to be pushing the recovery to start paying all that back
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I gave up building my forge so that she can get a new kitchen. She deserves it 3 times over. The hard thing is hiring people to do what I know I could do if it were not for the surgery. I'd painted our urine yellow laminate counter tops years ago to look like granite and it was great for about 4 years and then a couple touch-ups and it was just not holding. It was only meant to get us by for 2 years, but a job change, twins, and lots of interesting things going on and here we are 7 years later finally getting to replacing them with real granite this time.

dangerousdon said:
I would say...pick a shave that will worry you the least. Don't stress it man...just whatever works!
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K.I.S.S for sure.
 
I didn't even realize today was shave # 150! Nothing special I guess.

Today's Shave: Shave #150

Razor: Parker Variant - Graphite handle / Chinese knock-off of Feather Kamisori Style (Top Lip Only)
Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
Brush: Eric's Lignum Vitae Hand Turned Brush Handle, 22 mm Boss Knot
Soap: Mystic Water Lavender Lime
Bowl: Red Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Wash with soap in the shower . Rub raw soap on face from the puck.
Total Razor on Face Time: 8 minutes
Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand) face only, Cold rinse. Nivea Sensative AS Balm to the face only. No mammoth painting, just some Master Bay Rum AS splashed on the mammoth hair.

I pushed the easy button this morning and just repeated yesterday's shave except I used some of the Nivea AS balm just to see if I still liked it. I got a great lather and worked it in great with the brush. A great 3.5 razor setting 3 pass shave. I've got some irritation on the face in the cheek area for some reason. It went away for a while but it's slightly back. I suspect that little area has some strange directional growth there. I did a clean-up on 1.5 and got a fine BBS shave.

I'm thinking that I will shave Saturday night and let the shave ride all day Sunday so my face has a rest and a super close shave Monday morning before the surgery.

I stopped by my favorite junk shop yesterday on my lunch. I ended up finding a small blacksmithing hammer head, a steel block with some interesting shapes cut in it that I can make into a anvil tool called a swage, and 10 old files/rasps - all for $15. Some of the old files were Heller's and Nicholson's which are top names. Some of the more worn files will end up becoming knives someday, but most were in great usable shape. I mounted the hammer head last night, just enjoying working in my shop knowing it will be a while before I get back down there. Funny thing is, I'm actually excited about getting the surgery. That sounds weird, but I'm ready to start the road back to no pain and a normal life. I can't wait to put a full day's worth of work in around the house someday way down the recovery road. Getting to ditch the cane will be nice too.
 
Congrats on 150 and I like your reads and your attitude, I spent 30 yrs worrying about almost everything, but after I saw what I think was a miracle that gave us 10 extra years with my mom, I realized life is too finite to worry, I sold my business without a plan and literally put everything in God's Hands. not to get religious, but once I did that and just rode the roller coaster things just happen and I roll with it. Prayer your way sir
 
HandleBarberDave said:
Congrats on 150 and I like your reads and your attitude, I spent 30 yrs worrying about almost everything, but after I saw what I think was a miracle that gave us 10 extra years with my mom, I realized life is too finite to worry, I sold my business without a plan and literally put everything in God's Hands. not to get religious, but once I did that and just rode the roller coaster things just happen and I roll with it. Prayer your way sir
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Thank you for your prayers. I used to worry a lot about dying, but like you I found a different path that allowed me to trust in something much larger than me.
 
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