LG SOTD 26Jun2024
- Brush: Yaqi Cavern Lake - 24mm tuxedo synthetic
- Razor: Karve - CB SB-C (Copper)
- Blade: Wizamet - Super Iridium (8)
- Lather: Stirling Conditioner Bar - Queen of Hearts
- Bowl: CaYuen - Dark Nebula, large
- Post Shave: House of Mammoth - Shave Balm, Embrace
Welcome to the twenty-sixth shave of the 2024 Lather Games. Today’s theme is wildcard Wednesday where the goal is to shave with any sort of shave lubricant you want so long as no one else uses the same thing first. It’s always a weird theme because there are different ways of approaching.
There’s the stunt lube - guacamole, motor oil, toothpaste, KY, whatever, the idea is to go for theme and judge points with something dumb enough that statistically no one else is as dumb as you and earns respect from the sadistic side of the judges.
There’s the early bird where you grab a lather for scoring purposes and hope to post first. Not a deep strategy but it’s usually going to work out and, if you go early enough, maybe even cause a later DQ for someone thinking like you and not paying attention.
Then there’s the route I’m going - plausibly functional but statistically unlikely to get a DQ. If someone else uses this at all, let alone before me, I will be very surprised. I have high hopes for it as a makeshift lather.
Stirling’s Queen of Hearts, or should I say their dupe of Juicy Couture by the Viva la Juicy Project, may not be the manliest of scents by pedigree, but I rub that stuff on my head daily via this conditioner bar. It is a delicious and warm caramel or toffee like scent and whoever tried to market it to just the ladies was evil and clearly trying to keep the awesomeness from us gents.
I discovered that Stirling’s conditioner bar makes for a great shower lubricant for shaving my neck and other bits and pits. True lather is too easily rinsed off in the confines of a running shower, but this stuff is slick and clings even in the splatter with solid residual slickness. Today I’m going to put a brush to it and see what sort of “normal” shaving lather I can make out of it.
Turns out it’s not bad but not really lather. Just creamy-ish goo. Was slick enough used out of the shower but not up to soap standards. Pretty sure results would have been identical if not a bit better if I just slicked my face with the bar like I do in the shower for shaving. The awkward loading, the iffy water loading, none of it seemed to have improved the final product beyond trying something for the games. It did take a lot more effort to rinse the skin post shave. Would not recommend this as a replacement for proper shave soap.
The brush cleaning routine is more that I don’t let them get nasty to begin with - even today the alternative lather will clean easily from the brush. All my usual brushes are synthetics that don’t absorb much grossness and I only have the two infrequently used boar brushes and never use them with anything unusual that can penetrate the natural fibers. After I shave, swish the brush out in the sink to remove bulk of lather and then under running water straight into the knot while I massage and squeeze until nothing but clear water coming out. Rinse a few more times, snap out all the water, and give it a good sniff. It should barely smell like the soap I just used unless something with unusual funk like Melange. If still smells too strong, more rinsing. Then I air dry it, usually for days (or longer), before it gets used again. Every brush has stayed fresh thoroughly rinsed and rotated like this.
If there ever is a reason to clean clean the brush, dish soap is how I go, but BaM’s Death may have been last time that was necessary.
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There’s a bit of false bravado going on these past two days. Put our sixteen y.o. Aussie down yesterday. If you’re a dog lover, pour a little lather out for a good boy and friend