LG SOTD 16Jun2024
- Brush: Fuller Bakelite - 20mm x 48mm synthetic (refurbished by TSF)
- Razor: Gillette - 109 Super Adjustable (1970) #ADJUSTABLE
- Blade: Personna - Lab Blue (2)
- Lather: Cella - Red
- Bowl: Stonecrest Andre Ponche bowl
- Post Shave: Afta by Mennen - Aftershave Lotion, Original
Happy Sunday, beautiful people! Welcome to the sixteenth shave of the 2024 Lather Games. Today's theme is “Father’s Day” where we shave with a brand of lather older than we are.
I’m taking this full throttle and everything is in some way older than my decaying body. The brush handle is mid twentieth century, 1940s or 50s. The razor is the 1970-P2 109 Super Adjustable that I’m hoping for a better experience than yesterday. The USA made Personna have been around since 1963 - although, per Razor Emporium, AccuTec has lost the rights to the Personna trademark and the blades will be branded as AccuForge going forward. The lather, Cella Red has been around way longer than me - as the packaging proclaims it was established in 1899. My lather scoop, the stainless 1/4 teaspoon, is from Williams & Sonoma, established 1956. The “lather bowl” is a pre-war, made in Korea soup/cereal bowl that was originally owned by my grandparents and is the last surviving bowl from the set. Finally, the post shave is a frequent flyer, Afta by Mennen, a brand founded circa 1878.
Today’s daily challenge was to shave our legs, and since that is a shower activity took care of that first with a different set of hardware. Used the same Cella Red with the Yaqi Caramel & CaYuen for lather and my copper Karve CB with a Treet Falcon.
The Christopher Bradley seems made for shaving your body. Ever since I decided to try it on the back of my neck early spring, been using it every weekend to clean up. I have shaved some things and had one very slight nick once. And that was with the D plate - I find it crazy intuitive for shaving at weird angles with poor to no visibility. With summer here, even been keeping the pits clean. That has not extended to my legs. I’ve never shaved my legs before this.
The results are unfortunately not runway worthy. I am, if the video and pics yesterday didn’t give it away, nearsighted AF. Though I contorted myself into weird and uncomfortable positions to view things as best I could, alas, hairs escaped the smoothening. Been wearing shorts at work so I’ll find out if anyone likes staring at my legs 😂
The themed shave involves Cella, a soap that I appreciate the solid performance of, particularly versus the cost, but that I do not use because of the scent. I don’t like strong almond scent. Marzipan and the like quickly reaches blech levels with me. However, after three years the levels are acceptable, maybe even light, as the soap smell itself was quite noticeable when shaving my legs.
I have higher hopes for the razor today with a proper lather (yesterday’s F your face challenge is still fresh in my mind 😅) but expectations are lowish. I like proper blade clamping. Henson and Karve’s clamping is fantastic. These vintage TTO razors are flapping in the breeze relatively speaking 😉.
My relationship with my father is complicated, but his influences are here with this shave. The razor is, as best my memory serves, the long handled variant of the same razor he had in the medicine cabinet when I was growing up. He wasn’t using it by the time I remember - the man was hardcore in his cheap efficiency and had switched to disposables as far back as I remember. To this day his razor of choice is whatever disposable BJ’s has in bulk the cheapest. I tried the TTO once, and I did not care for the painful tugging that was some combo of canned foam, old blade, and me being clueless and never went back. It’s neat revisiting it all these years later with proper lather and skills and see what could have been. The post shave will always remind me of my dad. He did and still uses Afta and only Afta. To me, it is the smell of shaving and the stuff works as well as any of the $15-$25 balms. I doubt it will ever leave my den.
I am pleased that being able to use properly hydrated lather improved the experience of using the Super Adjustable. It is not replacing any of the horsemen, but today I was able to play with the remaining adjustable settings and actually tell something beyond they were different 😅, arrived at only 2 being preferable. It was usable on 9 but the blade feel was off the charts. At 2 it was comfortable with minor blade feel and still efficient enough. It will return on Frugal Friday as it’s the cheapest razor in the den.
Enjoy the remaining weekend