u/djundjila's SOTDs for challenge 'SOTD photo scavenger hunt'

Bonjour, Jeux de Savons!

We're back, baby!

• Brush: Rubberset 400-3 #Ancient #Hollow
• Razor: Henkotsu Kamisori #Kamisori #Str8Snob
• Lather: Hendrix Classics & Co - Roasted
• Post Shave: Barrister and Mann - Cheshire
• Fragrance: Imaginary Authors - Saint Julep

These lather games feel weird, instead of preparing to compete, I've sunk more hours that I'd like to count into preparing for their organisation and operation. I thought at least I'd be more relaxed this time when I can't really compete with u/RedMosquito (As an aside, did you know that his family wealth comes from shady GDR oligarchy circles? His grandpa ran the Rote Mücke Volksrasurfabrik MikroMatik in Magdeburg in the late 1970s and through most of the '80s. I started my oppo research before I was asked to join the organising committee, and I also have other juicy titbits), but it's still super exciting to experience the start of Lather Games. Big shout-out to u/Crisp_Mango for setting immediately a sky-high bar!

I can't wait to follow along in these games and talk about them in the podcast!

This soap sample is from u/EldrormR, and it's the first time I try a HC&C product.

Challenge:

I've used all the types of razors on the list, but this kami was approved by the Chief Djustice himself.

Post Shave and Fragrance Relevance: They're all drinks. Coffee lather, Earl Grey tea post shave, Mint Julep frag. And I continue the drinks theme in the #photocontest.

Don't have a Cow, Man!

• Brush: Chisel and Hound Ambrosia Maple #Composite
• Razor: Schick Type B Repeating Magazine Razor #Brassing #IllFuckingDoItAgain
• Blade: Schick Vintage 20 Injector Magazine (2)
• Lather: Wholly Kaw – Dulci Tobacco
• Post Shave: Summer Break Soaps – Valedictorian
• Fragrance: Tom Ford – Tobacco Vanille

Dulci Tobacco was my first vegan product by Wholly Kaw (The bison in the background of the SOTD pic have not been harmed in any way), and I love the scent of it. Sweet and gourmand, it's the starting point for a little tobacco scent excursion, followed by earthier, smoky Tobacco of Valedictorian, and the drier fuller Tobacco scent of Tobacco Vanille. This one sparked joy.

While it doesn't have the satisfying toast buttering sound of the GEM SEs, the Schick Type B is one of the coolest SE razors in existence. You basically get a year of shaving out of a full magazine, a total nerd snipe for a mechanical engineer like me.

For the #photocontest, I'm shooting for the Pets theme. Now, we don't have pets of our own (the closest I have to a pet is Djunior), so we had to go visit our tax payer-funded pets at the local zoo.

AlmonMammothMonDay

• Brush: Frank Shaving FR 0929 Pure Badger Shaving Brush 20 mm × 47 mm #Runt #WeDontNeedNoStinkingBadgers #Smoll
• Razor: Karve Christopher Bradley aluminium, E plate #CNC #Rainbow
• Blade: Big Ben Super Stainless (3)
• Lather: House of Mammoth – Almond Leather
• Post Shave: Declaration Grooming – Fake Yellow Light
• Fragrance: Chatillon Lux – Gratiot League Square

Theme: Almond Leather (frequently auto corrected to Salmon Letters) is one of my favourite Mammoth scents. The combination of almond and leather absolutely shouldn't work. It should smell sickly sweet and desgoostang, but instead the two notes really build on each other. I'm honouring our champion u/RedMosquitoMM, who famously has the nose of a bloodhound and comes up with fantastic scent combinations and even better descriptions of them, by using the best three part scent progression that I have ever discovered. Almond Leather -> Fake Yellow Light -> Gratiot League square is so much more that the sum of its parts, and they play so well together that I rarely use them separately anymore. Mosquito, it was a pure pleasure following along your tour de force last year, once again, 👏👏👏

#photocontest: So. Royals. One of the themes is royals. What's happening here? Do the organisers of #photocontest realise that most of us don't live in the middle ages anymore? Royals are something we've guillotined or chased away a few centuries ago and made their houses museums. Anyway, I've used some non-kosher plastic money to have the late Queen Lizy join my SOTD pic.

April Showers

• Brush: Djundjila Brushworx – r/Wetshaving exclusive Barber Pole with Maggard G5 knot #FauxFur #PremiumPlastic
• Razor: Wilkinson Sword – Wilkinson Razor #Dial #EightDaysAWeek #SelfSharpening
• Lather: Barrister and Mann – Roam
• Post Shave: Barrister and Mann – Roam
• Fragrance: House of Mammoth – Shire 2

Sometimes, I really need some external nudge to realise things that should be obvious. I've always liked Roam, but I could never find a category in my mind for it. Then, looking through the themes, it jumped at me: Roam is a spring scent. It's the scent of camp site on a spring morning with dewy grass, mud in front of the tent's entrance, and the smell of countless camp fires so deeply infused in the tent and the wool blankets that they never stop smelling of it. To continue this image, I've added Shire: Once you've packed everything up and are back in the saddle, you leave the smoke behind, the morning sun dries the landscape and you get to cleaner grass and tobacco notes.

For the #science part of today, I've kept lab notes: I bowl lathered using precisely 1.02 g of Roam with 11 ml of water, I stropped the #SelfSharpening Wilkinson Sword Tuesday blade for 30 laps on the included strop, and I did three passes with the #Dial on the most open setting. I then forgot about the science during post application (failed to weigh the balm tub before), so I have to report a negative result there (Reminds me of fatigue tests on aluminium frames a friend of my ran. One of the conclusions was that the fatigue failure usually occurred in the research assistant before the frame and that the former needed to be rotated. Alas, I was alone in my bathroom, beside which a rotation of the participant would likely cause me a DQ.) Finally, two spritzes of Shire under the shirt, corresponding to 140 mg of product (2 significant digits only).

Summer Break Soaps has two scent spots dear to my heart: Valedictorian and Teacher's Pet. Both of these reliably put me in a good mood.

I'm shooting for the technology theme in the #photocontest, and I chose close-ups of this fun and ridiculously overengineered razor with explanatory text as medium. In the SOTD picture link, note that there are multiple pictures in the gallery, and that you can hover your mouse of each of them (or long-press on mobile) to see the explanations.

Olfactory Stacking Games

• Brush: Viel-Long B0320921 Cachurro Horse Hair #HorseSass #Toll
• Razor: Hoffritz Travel Slant #JetSetter #Unicorn
• Blade: Astra (Blue) (1)
• Lather: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Black Watch
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Black Watch
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Black Watch

Stacking is hard, risky, and the best case scenario is, well, you get a stack. Still, this was fun, and 44 attempts doesn't seem too shabby.

I went with Black Watch, a recent favourite of mine for the theme today. Plum is an underused scent note IMO. Warm and sweet without being cloying. I also really enjoy using the Highland base, although I can't help but remember u/pppork describing it as greasy :)

Regarding the unicorn hashtag: I can't prove that this particular travel slant was made before 1971, and this particular model seems to have been made until the late seventies or early eighties, when they switched to the scalloped cap that we still know today from the Merkur 37C (Hoffritz are rebranded Merkurs), but this model was produced since the sixties. I think this should satisfy the hashtag rule since this razor is itself, or is at least interchangeable with and indistinguishable from, a unicorn by the hashtag's definition. Either way, this is a great little 4-piece razor that folds into a tiny 5x5 cm shiny box. Oh, and this was my first ever vintage, which I proudly showed off on r/wicked_edge back in the day.

EDIT: after u/enndeegee gave me a bad conscience about the #unicorn, I did some more digging. This razor in the exact packaging I have is was sold as a 1960s Hoffritz Travel Slant on Razoremporium.com

Regarding the #Toll tag, this razor is sold as a 57mm loft, but I measure it at a solid 62mm.

I'm shooting for the history theme of the #photocontest, specifically a piece of history of obsolete technology. The odd stamp-looking thing on the right in my SOTD picture is a pagination machine. Imagine yourself in the age before digital word processing and your job is to produce 1000 numbered raffle tickets and all you have is a photo copier. Or you are a clerk in charge of writing up a lengthy contract that is still being negotiated and its (type-written and carbon-copied) sections can still grow or shrink, but in the end it needs page numbers. Enter the pagination machine: This stamp has only one setting to choose, the revolution period, and then it counts. If you set the revolution period to 1, it'll start by stamping 1, then 2, 3, you get the picture (and it's literally in the picture, on the left side, where I used it to count my attempts at stacking). If you set the revolution period to 2, you can stamp your raffle tickets twice each, to have the sequence 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, ... so that you cat tear off half the ticket and use half for the raffle drawing and the other as a receipt for the participant. Neat, and obsolete now that you can just set a form field or page numbers in your word processor of choice and never worry about the pagination problem again.

Fremen Friday

• Brush: Dogwood Handcrafts Papa Eld with Declaration Grooming B3 #SHD
• Razor: Ever-Ready Natuar Angle (E-bar) #Twins
• Blade: Personna GEM PTFE (5)
• Lather: Abbate y La Mantia – Vulcano
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Spiced
• Fragrance: Mäurer & Wirtz – Tabac Man Fire Power

Dune struck me as a vaguely fascist übermensch fantasy, so I stopped reading after the first book. Multiple people I respect tell me that the subsequent books get better, so I guess I should find out how the freedom fight of the Fremen continues some day.

Vulcano is clearly a spice scent (lots of pepper and anise), but not a warm scent like Spiced or a dry scent like Fire power. Vulcano is fresh and hot simultaneously (this is where the temperature-spiciness metaphor breaks down) and plays tricks on the mind. The post and frag relevance here that they show different aspects of spiciness.

On a side note, there's this ongoing and very much stuck discussion between u/semaj3000 and myself about whether spiced is a summer or winter scent, and my stance is firmly that the scent of mandarines, vanilla, and gingerbread spices (literally the scent of Santa's bag) can be nothing else but a Christmas scent. This morning, when I went to wake up my wife, the first thing she said was "Oh, you smell very nice, so summerly!" 🤬🤬🤬

Today's challenge caused me to reevaluate my recent choices. One or two years ago, my answer would have been easy: I like doing bike treks, organise big hog roasts, and automate stuff around the house with little robots. Well, my last hog roast and the last time I've touched a soldering iron was before Djunior was born, and I haven't carried a tent up the alps on my bike since last year. So what's my hobby now?

I realised with some horror, that over the last year, I've spent more than an hour per day on developping the DjudgePortal (it originally started for Austere August 2022), and since I'm not getting paid to do it, I guess I have to classify this activity as a hobby or reevaluate my life choices 😅. I also like photography and take it seriously enough that it can count as a hobby, I guess.

Speaking of photography, I'm shooting for the Literature theme of the #photocontest, specifically concentrating on section 28.VII.β: "Science Fiction, Non-Fascist, English Language" of my bookshelf. Although, I'm not sure whether Brave New World is categorised correctly, I can never really tell.

Small Business

• Brush: Zenith 506U XSE unbleached 27mm × 56 mm boar #TexasPigStinkMassacre
• Razor: GEM Heavy Flat Top (G-Bar) #Twins
• Blade: Personna GEM PTFE (2)
• Lather: Maggard Razors – Tobacco & Leather
• Post Shave: House of Mammoth – Almond Leather
• Fragrance: Maher Olfactive – Treachery

To get the challenge out of the way: my answer. The DQ thread is my main source of information and enablement when it comes to obscure shaving knowledge, recently primarily about straight razors.

This is the first time I've tried Maggard's Tobacco and Leather, and its scent is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. The leather note is quite strong, and reminds me of CBL Lavender and Leather, which I have on my roster for later this month. I randomly got the most perfect, drippy, slick-as-snot (using Brand Maggard's term for describing the slickness of Barbasol) lather right away. I'm not often that lucky with bases I'm not used to, and it left an excellent impression. Almond Leather's leather note is softer, but the plays really nicely with the scent of the soap.

Treachery is another first for me, and I chose it for the tobacco and almond notes to create a tobacco-leather <-> leather-almond <-> almond-tobacco triangle of scents (relevance of post and frag). It's a very rich scent with a very different tobacco note than the soap. I clearly smell vanilla and some spices (spoiler, there is no vanilla note 😅) but I can't pick out the whiskey, berries, cocoa, etc from the well-blended background. I'll have to remember giving this sample some love after AA, This might be a full bottle candidate.

Regarding the #Twins tag, I've used the E-Bar yesterday.

A few words about Maggard. It's definitely the place where I've left most of my wetshaving money, and it's not even close. I can't help but think of Maggard Razors as the home of wetshaving in a way. Last October, we had the opportunity to talk to Brad Maggard for an hour and a half and discuss all things wetshaving with him. Give it a listen, if you're looking for some entertainment (other than the Lather Games, of course) this weekend.

For #photocontest, I'm shooting for the masterpieces theme, with an hommage to Wes Anderson and his compulsive need for symmetry.

☠Death before Decaf☠

• Brush: Zenith r/Wetshaving exclusive MOAR BOAR #Chonk #OldWorld
• Razor: Gillette Goodwill #RegUS
• Blade: Feather (DE) (2)
• Lather: Catie’s Bubbles – Irish Coffee
• Post Shave: Barrister and Mann – Leviathan
• Fragrance: Imaginary Authors – Sundrunk

Kitchen shave day! Yayy! I didn't have time to come up with another episode of Indiana Djundj again, but less pressure to shit post is a perk of being a djudge, so I don't feel to bad about it. I'm looking forward to browsing the SOTD thread and look at kitchen shaves before going to bed tonight.

So, this shave concludes the Brush hashtags with my last missing hashtag #Chonk easily filled by the MOAR BOAR. You can see in the picture that my MOAR BOAR brush has some gold lines where it shouldn't, it's because I broke it and tried to fix it Kintsugi style 😭. At least it's still functional. I'm still missing the #AllNatural razor hashtag, but not for long.

We are a half-Croatian household, so we have a nice Džezva for making Balkan-style coffee, and it has the perfect size for lathering with the MOAR BOAR brush, very much unlike Catie's Bubbles tiny diameter tubs. Lore has it that this is explained by the fact that Chris is a bowl latherer.

I really like Catie's Bubbles' soap base, and Irish Coffee is a delightful gourmand that always makes me happy, and I had a great kitchen shave with the heavy Goodwill and the chonky moar boar.

My relevant post and frag theme for today clashes hard: I guess every culture has their version of Irish Coffee and ours is Kafi Lutz. There are two kinds of occasions for it, the happy drunk one (e.g., après-ski in the bar at the bottom of the slopes, getting you happy and (Sun)drunk), and the sad drunk one (pouring your morning booze in your coffee in a vain attempt at hiding your alcoholism as in Leviathan picking up the coffee note and turning it into dark despair).

Regarding the #RegUS hashtag, here's some supporting evidence.

For the #photocontest, I am submitting this picture of me mid-shave. I am the #law after all.

A redditor may be photographed more than once if they meet more than one theme, however if you are photographing yourself this should be a full body shot not a lame ass selfie

FAILED (although nice shirt DJ)

Musical Monday

• Brush: APShaveCo Butterscotch w/ 24mm Tuxedo knot
• Razor: Victoria 4 (6/8″, half hollow, round tip, carbon steel) #AllNatural
• Lather: Declaration Grooming – Fake Yellow Light
• Post Shave: Barrister and Mann – Paganini’s Violin
• Fragrance: Stirling Soap Co. – Ozark Mountain

This was a tough one, theme-wise for me. In previous Lather Games, I poured over the calendar the moment it got published, and I traded for whatever I needed to set it up to my liking. This year, at the time the calendar was published, the issue tracker of the portal had dozens of open tickets and I had to work on those instead of prepping and I didn't start planning my roster until Lather Games eve. The musical themed soaps in my den are BaM (Rhapsody, Paganini's Violin), Stirling (Glastonbury, Witchy Woman), Mammoth (Mindigo), WK (Rebelle), and DG (Night/Dayman, Fake Yellow Light) and all these artisans were really useful in other days. I managed to free up DG and still make today's theme whithout blocking the path to 30 soapers (I think).

This razor with its beautiful 100 years old #AllNatural horn scales completes my razor hashtag scavenger hunt for this year.

I'm leaning into the relevant post shave and fragrance rubric this year. In previous years, I always tried to somewhat match the scents in interesting ways, but this year's formulation of the rules encourages thematic links of any sort, and I'm having fun with it. Today's link is colour, all software today prominently features the colour yellow on the artwork (including the brush, since it's suspiciously soft for a hardware item), yet none is citrusy.

For today's challenge, I decided to share my business plan of becoming a soaper with only one scent, the scent of scents, pure Mousse de Saxe. This label shows the Musical Monday edition of my soap.

Obviously, my #photocontest submission today is #music themed.

Sunny Days

• Brush: Мужской Материк with Maggard Tuxedo knot
• Razor: Weck Hair Shaper (blue translucent scales) #YTho
• Blade: Kismet Rostfrei, Polymer beschichtet (4)
• Lather: Chicago Grooming Co. (Formerly Oleo Soapworks) – Montrose Beach
• Post Shave: Pitralon – Polar
• Fragrance: Mäurer & Wirtz – Tabac Man Gravity

It's silly hot here in south-western Switzerland right now and I can't wait to go to the beach and smell Montrose Beach while sipping a double Pelinkovac.

The relevant post and frag theme for today is trying to stay cool at the beach, a.k.a., summer: The beach is, well, the soap, Pitralon Polar with it's vaguely sporty scent and refreshing menthol is the cold drink, and Gravity with its floral, fruit and earthy notes is the scent from a well kept perfumed AC unit in a high end hotel lobby. Oh, that, and that they are colour coordinated for today's challenge.

The #photocontest theme is wild animals.

Spooky Season

• Brush: Zenith B8
• Razor: Weck Sextoblade Med Prep #YTho
• Blade: Kismet Rostfrei, Polymer beschichtet (2)
• Lather: Zingari – Nocturne
• Post Shave: Zingari – Nocturne – recovery splash
• Fragrance: Southern Witchcrafts – Autumn Ash

Oh, good old u/MajorMinceMeat and his Atlas Challenge. This is one of the crazier stories of our sub IMO: MMM (back then a daily shaver) decides one day to create this challenge for the non-daily shavers, hypes it to the max, and decides in the last moment that he has better things to do than dealing with it. Somehow, three years later, Atlas is still a thing, and yet again I'm finding myself trying to determine the best way to show Mighty Atlas shouldering his burden of tonsorial detritus in an SOTD picture. This is wild to me.

I narrowly avoided having to shave my head or something (legs are reserved for never skip leg day), because I almost forgot about the challenge, and my proof of participation shown in the SOTD picture is from the very last stroke of the first pass, i.e., the last chance for saving stubble of photographically relevant size.

Nocturne and Autumn Ash shave a lot of the same idea of autumn, a smoky harvest time scent (relevant post and frag), and they play very nicely together, but they are very different scents. It seemed frankly like an uninspired pairing in my spreadsheet, but now that I used it again, I kinda love the combo.

Interesting(?) titbit*: when googling "Autumn Ash" without "Southern Witchcrafts", the first hit I get is from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement showing the mugshot of a Sexual Offender/Predator called Autumn Ash.

The theme for today's #photocontest is light sources. The light source for this shot was my beaming grin after reading this.

* Yes, titbit.