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

GearNoir said:
Cutting trees...is this just to clear or are you using it for building?
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I'm just clearing a new spot to move the cabin into the woods. I thought I'd only have to cut down 2 or 3 trees when I picked it, but when I actually measured things out a few trees were too close for comfort so they had to come down. There's two groups most fall into when they build a cabin in the woods: #1 want to clear a huge area and create an opening so that no tree is anywhere near the cabin. #2 want to just slide the cabin into the woods with minimal disruption. I'm of the second category. It's nice and cool at this location and a breeze kicks up mid-morning and lasts all afternoon. If you clear that area out you could disrupt that, and then things start growing which means another lawn to keep mowed. I also don't want there to be any evidence a cabin is out there so that if someone does see it they are very surprised and sort of stumble upon it. There's risk yes that a tree could fall on your cabin or a big branch could fall on it or you get an ice storm/heavy snow and branches come down on it. I picked this sight though because I've seen no evidence of that happening.
 
As promised, I mounted the chalkboard arm in my blacksmith shop tonight. You might wonder why a blacksmith would need such a thing, well, it's important a lot of the time to draw the concept that's in your head onto something. I see a lot of blacksmiths having metal tables and metal on the wall somewhere that they do this but it's often not something they can see from the anvil so they have to leave the anvil to compare their work to the drawing. Mine swings out of the way to the wall when not in use but swings out in front of my anvil when in use. Other times it's important to measure out a design exactly and the chalk board would be good for that too. You hold the piece you are working on up to the measured drawing on the chalkboard to see how you are doing. You can't do that with paper or it would light on fire so it's important to have something non-combustible, and something that won't melt but yet you can draw on it. Soapstone pens on metal work great for that too and for drawing measurements right on your anvil. I did a decorative scroll on the end so that I can grab it and move the whole arm back and forth. The other bonus......the flip side of the chalk board can be used too so I can have two drawings going at once. This was nothing fancy but mostly about function. The chalkboard is an antique from the late 19th century - very early 20th century.

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I thought about writing something TSC related, but I was just trying to assemble it and get it up before dinner.

Yesterday I had one of those shaves that felt horrible about 5 minutes after the post shave routine. I didn't even look at my face thinking it was red and irritated on the cheeks, but got to work and was amazed because it didn't look bad at all - hardly noticeable but it felt bad. As a result I only used the DE today and went really light with a 2 pass shave using (of course) MW Sandalwood Coconut. I took my par for the day with DFS / DFS+ in places. Ahhhh, my face thanked me and it felt so much better. The Dolphin laughed at me from waaaaaaaay over there and I think she even flipped her tail at me as she swam off :LOL: I think I'll need a couple of 2 pass shave days to let the face recover from whatever I did yesterday.
 
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Lol bummer on the shave. We’ve all had those days.

Next time that happens, apply some witch hazel here n there. It’ll help a little.
 
I had a decent shave this morning. The dolphin chasing redness and irritation from Sunday is mostly gone, but I didn't take any chances today and took my par to move on to play tomorrow. DFS / DFS+ overall. I used MW Irish Traveler. I'm really digging this scent which is her version of Irish Tweed. It pairs up nice with the Poraso AS I have kicking around. I use the AS more as a cologne because I've found the alcohol content of most AS's really lights up my face. Minor irritation becomes really red and noticeable when I use the AS.

All this talk of par's for shaving got me to thinking.....which is dangerous I know......so I'm thinking about a Shaving Golf Scorecard rating of shaves. Eagle = DBBS shave, Birdie = BBS/BBS+ shave, Par = DFS/DFS+, Boegy = SAS, Double/Triple Boegy is subjective to the shaver but should include bad cuts, irritation, and so on. If you had a bad shave you can just add on how many strokes you feel fits the shave.

So this week my Shave Golf score rates likes this:

Sunday: Eagle -2 Monday: Birdie -1 Tuesday: Boegy +1 Wednesday: Par 0 Thursday: Par 0

So far, still 2 under par for the week thanks to my fantastic shave on Sunday. Feel free to play Shave Golf. I'll start a new thread in the general discuss area on this too so more people can see it and play by posting.
 
GearNoir said:
Fun idea for golf lovers. Sandy I never desired to progress beyond my mini golf career.
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I used to golf a lot when I had time and money back in my teens and 20's so it doesn't even have to be for those who love to golf. Back in high school I was on the golf team and we were so serious that we brought our own putters when we played mini golf with our girlfriends out on a Friday night :ROFLMAO: So serious and former mini golfers are welcome.
 
Great shave this morning. The irritation caused on Sunday was nursed away so I could use the SR for a full pass this morning which got me BBS smooth and feeling great. I broke out my favorite MW Bay Rum soap and just enjoyed the shave this morning making sure I did a super light touch on the cheeks. I find when there's irritation there that if I do half circle strokes on the ATG pass I sort of sneak up on it and don't worsen the irritation.

I'm making progress on the upper lip too. Currently, pass 1 is with the SR. Pass 2 is a diagonal side stroke, and pass 3 is with a cart with some clean-up with the DE doing those half circle strokes. If I start the stroke in a direction I've already shaved in and turn gradually up to ATG it doesn't bother it like a straight up ATG pass. Still not as perfect as I'd like but much better and no redness at all. I still skip the AS Balm on it and that really has helped.

On the personal side of things, I've ordered all the building supplies for the cabin move. Geez was that a chunk of money, but we'd saved for a while & set it aside knowing we'd have to order metal roofing / trim and mega lumber. Since the guy who built the cabin did it with regular 2 x 4's I decided to make a base frame of 4 x 6 x 12 pressure treated lumber. I'll run long bolts through the sill plate of the cabin through the 4x6x12's to secure the whole thing. I'll be limited as to what I can do on the move day which will drive me crazy because I like to work hard, but I'm learning that my friends are just glad to help and want to save my hip from getting hurt. It's a tough lesson for me to learn to receive. This weekend I hope to cut down one more tree and get the base piers set and level.
 
Nice stuff Mike and I'm like you in willing to do anything to help others and slow on asking or accepting help. Humility is a good lesson to learn and gives others joy to help. We'll need pics so you man the camera some.
 
I'll for sure take it easy. Many of these guys used to be under my supervision at one time so they'll be used to me taking the lead. I have a former Seabee so he's used to building these things and did so in theater in Iraq. I'll for sure post pictures.

I had to put a full day of work in on Saturday because I'm tied up this Saturday. I studied the large tree the crew will be cutting on the move day and it really has to drop on the build site so I couldn't finish all the piers or they would be in the way. I got 2 other trees cut though and got all the blocks moved to the build site / dug the front 3 support pillars. I'll have to get out there and take some pictures of the build site to post. It's really a beautiful location and when I dug the holes for the piers the soil was nice and dry which means frost won't be much of an issue since I'm building on grade.

Onto shaving.......Sunday I held back a little after last week's irritation issue. I still got a great BBS / BBS+ shave without irritation because I cut my clean-up time out. This morning, another great BBS shave. All with MW Bay Rum. One thing I've noticed with the Feather blades in the DE is that they are a little rough with the first few shaves on a new blade. I have to be very careful those first few shaves not to cause irritation. About shave 3 it starts to smooth out for me and is great for 4 more shaves.

My wife is also never going back to carts. She's so impressed with how the DE shaves and she said "Now I understand why you made such a big deal about how great your shaves feel." She'll probably get weeks of use out of one blade.
 
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