June 26, 2024 – LG24 Day 26 - Wildcard Wednesday
- Brush: BukoPuro Organic Coconut Husk
- Bowl: BukoPuro Organic Coconut Shell
- Razor: Merkur 23C
- Blade: Wizamet Super Iridium (2)
- Lather: BukoPuro - Organic Coconut Cream
- Post Shaver: BukoPuro - Virgin Organic Coconut Oil
- Fragranc: BukoPuro - Organic Coconut Juice
Daily Theme & Shave: My approach to last year's WCW was admittedly low effort - I used Aloe Vera Skin Care Lotion. I still regret that I didn't do something more adventurous (I don't mean adventurous as in shaving with anal lube, I mean adventurous as in doing something that's both fun and a a bit outside the box). Pre-games, u/tsrblke indicated that he was considering a locally themed "bonkers food shave". I was very intrigued but was having difficulty with how to present a Philippine-themed bonkers shave without looking like I was just copying Tsar, so I took things in a different direction. Today I'm shaving with a coconut. Well, that's not quite right. Today my software, bowl and brush will all be parts of coconuts I arranged to have harvested for use today.
You see, one of Mrs Worried's friends (we'll call her Mary) has a side-hustle farming coconuts and selling coconut meat at a local market. A few days ago, Mary harvested some coconuts for me. Here you see her son (we'll call him John) using a long pole to yank ripe coconuts from trees on their farm. John then "shucks" the husk to expose the nut. The nut is then split open, the coconut juice drained, and then the coconuts are mechanically scraped to remove the coconut meat.
John delivered the coconut raw materials shortly after we returned from Bali yesterday. The last pic shows the meat to be processed into cream and oil, plus the juice, husk and bowl set aside for the shave.
The second part of the coconut transformation is Master Chef'd by Mrs Worried. Before you can make coconut cream and oil, you need to extract the coconut milk from the meat. You add hot water to help release the milk from the meat, and you squeeze the meat until it's dry. This is a very low-tech process, thus even I'm qualified to do the squeezing. Any floating bits are strained out, and what you have left is coconut milk.
The milk is then heated, which causes the milk to break down and the coconut cream separates from the coconut oil. If you continue to heat the cream/oil, all moisture will cook out of the cream, and leaving behind a powdery, sweet treat used as flavor enhancer on desserts such as sticky rice. FYI - Mrs Worried made the stick rice concurrent with our cream/oil production since they share many of the base ingredients.
I let the cream/oil cool down, and then it was shave time. Keeping with the coconut theme, I used one of the coconut shells and some of the coconut husk left over from the meat extraction process as my bowl and brush. I used the husk to mix up the coconut cream in the shell and to apply the cream to my face. One thing I discovered during the shave is that coconut cream is not very creamy (at least in the raw state we produced). The cream was incredibly slick, and I got a great shave as a result, but to be honest, it looked more like vomit than cream when I applied it. Coconut oil is a natural beauty product and it worked well today as my post. Coconut juice is naturally fragrant and was a natural choice for my frag.
Relevant Post/Frag: Lather, Post and Frag were all made from the coconuts harvested at Mary's farm. Post was made by Mrs Worried with the same coconut meat used to make the lather, and the frag was extracted by John from the coconuts when they were being prepared for mechanical scraping. All in all, today was a family/friends affair.
Product Branding: If I were to get into the coconut product business, I would name my company BukoPuro. Buko is Tagalog for coconut and Puro is Spanish for pure. I used a company name creator AI for name development assistance and in logo design.
Daily Challenge: I have two levels of brush cleaning: daily and special. Shaving soap is naturally antibacterial, so daily cleaning is almost always what I do. Post-shave, I first extract as much soap as I can from the brush (I use the lather to clean soap scum from the sink with an old brush I repurposed for this task). I rinse the brush under the tap until there is no visible soap, and then I dunk/splay the brush in my shave bowl (refreshing water as necessary) until the water is clear. I then hang to dry.
I only perform special cleaning when a brush is brand new (it's part of my brush break in process) or if a brush gets contaminated (such as falling into the toilet). I use a dedicated brush cleaning soap from a vendor on the DNB list and thus shall not be named (I bought this pre-r/wetshaving and if I ever need to replenish my brush cleaning soap, I will procure Zingari's version next time). After soaking the brush (at least 15 minutes for natural haired brushes and at least a couple of minutes for synthetics) I load the brush doing figure eight swirls (both clockwise and counterclockwise) for 30 seconds with the cleaning soap. I then use a pocket comb to slowly comb the brush from glue plug to tip. If I encounter tangles, I slowly work that area until bristles are untangled. This combing process works the soap throughout the knot and lather starts building as a byproduct. I continue to comb the brush for another minute or so, and then I rinse the brush using my daily cleaning process.