- Brush: Wild West Brushworks - Copper Shadow with Timberwolf knot
- Razor: Bismarck ~ 4/8", hollow ground, square point
- Lather: Maggard Razors - Mango Sage Tea
- Post Shave: Noble Otter - Thé Noir et Vanille
- Fragrance: Chatillon Lux - Admiral
Maggard Day! Brad Maggard created a pillar of our little community here and his boxes clutter my apartment. It's my go-to place for the first look not only when buying software, but also for my shaving-related DIY projects. Brad also had a big influence on the beginning of my descent down the rabbit hole; I started exactly the wrong way. Instead of doing the recommended thing where you get one good straight razor honed my a reputable honemeister and use it for 100 or so shaves to learn the technique without too many variables, I woke up one day in 2022 to the Lather Games announcement post with the then new Hardware Scavenger Hunt. If I wanted to compete for all points, I suddenly needed a straight razor below 4/8, one above 7/8, one in between, and a shavette. My first few open blades shaves were all for LG, with cheap vintage eBay straights that I honed on cheap lapping films (glorified sand paper) glued to plexiglass panes. It was not optimal, but it was enough to get me hooked. After LG, I decided that I needed to do straight razors right. I bought this Bismarck razor honed by Brad himself to have a reference edge (Note to my djudge, this means it qualifies for the Maggard hardware sponsor point), bought water stones, started hunting down razors on Brad's List, and interviewed Brad about straight razors together with u/VisceralWatch, u/EldrormR, u/Semaj3000, and u/J33pGuy13 on the Audio Book Club Shaves podcast (one of my favourite episodes, btw. Now I'm 432 straight razor shaves into the hobby (and 536 open blade shaves when you count also my shavette shaves).
Theme and post/frag relevance: Mango Sage Tea is a Maggard house brand soap, and the Soap/Frag/Post triplet recreate the name in their notes with mango in the soap, sage in the frag, and thé (tea) in the splash.
Challenge: I've been pretty good about big purchases from Maggard with the biggest one at a moderate USD 190 price tag for a bunch of scales, pinning kits and other hardware for a little razor restoration project a while back, but I've racked up over 2500 in small orders over the years. It's good that I don't do these analyses of my financial irresponsibility too often 😅