Quest for less technology

[Pinto90]

I do have a tuck of Feather and of BIC CP that may change how it shaves. Time for the Swing to make an appearance. It was about a month since I last used it and that was with the Tiger, which was not one of my best shaves. However, this outing with the Derby Premium was one that shaves are supposed to be. Smooth, efficient and easy.

On a sadder note. I had to drop out of the April GRUME. Italian Barber sent out message of a 24 hour sale and of course they had some items on sale that I have been eyeing for a while.
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Uncle Boris you decided to drop the April Grume group just when there is only one day left until the end of the month!!??

Good choice for your purchases, I saw the RR handle very nice I like it.
Has the offer expired? I see now on Italian Barber they are selling it for $14.99

The Feather and BIC CP bad blades for me, however of the BIC I will still have to try the Astor. I hope it is less sharp and nice.

 

[blethenstrom]

Uncle Boris you decided to drop the April Grume group just when there is only one day left until the end of the month!!??

Good choice for your purchases, I saw the RR handle very nice I like it.
Has the offer expired? I see now on Italian Barber they are selling it for $14.99

The Feather and BIC CP bad blades for me, however of the BIC I will still have to try the Astor. I hope it is less sharp and nice.

It seems like the sale is over (un)fortunately. I actually had a few days left in April when I dropped out. Yeah it was my full intention to stay in, but stuff happened.

I got the handle for $11 something and the RR400 brush was off a bit as well. I have wanted to try the RR400 for a while and see how I like the larger handle on a brush. I pretty much only use synthetic brushes and I really like RRs Plissoft knots. I did get some other things as well, but those I will show off later.

I have only tried the BIC CP so far of the top blades in sharpness and it was with mixed results. I can see why people say that the BIC CP is quite razor dependent. I do have a full tuck of BIC CP and it will be tested again at some point. I will try to use it in several different razors that I have then, but if it is too razor dependent it is not for me. I also will do the same for the tuck of Feather blades that I have. Never tried them so we will see how they perform. I am a cheapskate though so Feather blades will most likely not become a staple of mine, even if they work great in my razors. I have plenty of great working blades already. I guess it is more out of curiosity that I want to test them out.

 

[Pinto90]

I have only tried the BIC CP so far of the top blades in sharpness and it was with mixed results. I can see why people say that the BIC CP is quite razor dependent. I do have a full tuck of BIC CP and it will be tested again at some point. I will try to use it in several different razors that I have then, but if it is too razor dependent it is not for me. I also will do the same for the tuck of Feather blades that I have. Never tried them so we will see how they perform. I am a cheapskate though so Feather blades will most likely not become a staple of mine, even if they work great in my razors. I have plenty of great working blades already. I guess it is more out of curiosity that I want to test them out.

Among the sharpest blades there are also Kai blades and they cost a little less than Feather,you are right there are so many good blades that you have tried and own,you don't have to buy and use the sharpest ones necessarily.

It's good to try just out of curiosity and always try a few different blades,however from now on I will follow your example and not buy as many blades except one pack at a time.

You should definitely try the Bic Astor blades and the Turkish Zaza Super Stainless blades the latter are quite sweet.

The Astor I have not tried them yet but the Feather and Bic CP on my face every time scratches and blood,irritation with any razor I have tried them.

I am curious and waiting to see your new purchases.

 

[blethenstrom]

Evening shave - 4/29/24
Razor: RazoRock Mentor
Blade: Derby Premium (4/5) (2)
Soap: BSS #1
Brush: Omega 10065 Boar
Aftershave: Osage Rub
Rating: 9.5/10, DFS+
Another great shave with this combination. Not quite as close as the previous shave, but still a very nice shave. I contribute the slightly less closeness to my own doing and not paying attention. Anyways very respectable. No issues.

Spent last evening outside working on various tasks around the house. We bought an automatic chicken door for the little chicks as well so I installed that and I fixed the rack that the tomatoes grows up on. It was rotting and falling apart. My dear wife bought a bunch of plants that needs to make it into the garden. I usually grows all the plants from seed, but this year things seems to have gotten away from me and I did not have the energy to do so. I need to whip myself into shape and go out there and do some work. Lot of things that I am behind on.

Happy shaves everyone!

 

[blethenstrom]

Evening shave - 4/30/24
Razor: RazoRock Mentor
Blade: Derby Premium (4/5) (3)
Soap: BSS #1
Brush: Omega 81052 Banded Boar
Aftershave: Clubman Citrus Musk
Rating: 9.25/10, DFS++
This shave ended up decievingly close. I did not think I had a great shave until after a while post shave. I was smoooooth. I did however have a bit tightness and stiffness in my face, but no weepers on my face. Still here 10 hours post shave I am smoooth DFS+. Not sure I want it this close on a regular basis though since it would probably tear up my face. Very nice shave.

Well it was time for the last gift that @Guido75 sent with his package for me a while back. He included a brand new Omega 81052 Banded Boar brush. I have not used many boar brushes in the past. Actually I only had two of them. An Omega travel brush and an Omega 10065 to be exact. I guess that my synthetics has performed so well for me that they have fallen in the backseat a bit.

This brush I started to break in a few days ago by soaking and stropping it a number of times. The tips still has not started to split much yet so it still is pretty prickly, but I decided to go for it for last night's shave. This brush is vastly different from what I am used to. It has loads of backbone and since I am a face latherer that is a bit of a challenge. Was it prickly? Indeed it was and I do not know if it contributed to my skin sensitivity after the shave or if that was all due to the shave itself. Anyways it did it's job and I am sure that over time it will break in more and get softer. I may put it through another round of soak and strop treatment to see if I can break it in a bit better. I might also try some bowl lathering. I have not done that in a long time and I am actually not great at it either. Might be a good practice as well.

The shave was a good one albeit with a bit of irritation in the form of tightness and sensitivity. It was one of the closer shaves I have had in a while, but I am not sure that my skin can handle that on a regular basis. I think I would build up too my irritation on subsequent shaves. It is a good thing I have 36 hours until my next shave so my skin can rest a bit longer.

Last evening I finally got some tomatoes and peppers in the ground. This year will be a bit of a down year for gardening. Well I say that, but I am still going to have 15 tomato plants and 12 pepper plants and other stuff as well. I found loads of volunteer tomato plants in one of my bed so guess what the majority of my tomato plants for this year will be of the "guess which kind" variety. I do have 5 Purple Cherokee, which is an awesome variety. If you have not tried them do so! I still have cucumber, butternut squash, jalapeno and herbs to plant. If I have room I'll throw something else in there.

Happy shaving everyone!

 

[Guido75]

The tips still has not started to split much yet so it still is pretty prickly

Mine is too as well. I haven’t used it past 20 shaves yet. I have been semi brutal in breaking it in with towel stropping, lathering and blow drying as well as combing the knot. It is softer than when I first got it, but not at the desired level yet.

I hope it becomes better over time. In my case it seems to at least.

Enjoy!

Guido

 

[blethenstrom]

Well it is this time of the month again.......
We are entering into another month so that means that it is time for some STATISTICS! We all (at least myself and @Guido75) enjoy a good run of numbers and such. April was a somewhat quiet month as far as new things go. I did however introduce the Merkur 41C (I will stick with that that is what it is) that I received from @Guido75 and on the last shave of the month the Omega 81052 brush that I also received from Guido. Other than that it has been a fairly steady month.

Not too much movement on anything significant on the blade front this past month. The Derby Premium, which I have used pretty much throughout April has solidified it's 3rd place in the rankings. Normally once you use a blade across more and more razors it will sink a bit in the rankings, but the Derby Premium has really not. It has been a solid blade for me and I will finish up the last blade in my tuck in about a week and a half. One a bit surprising blade is the Parker Premium. Now this is a blade that came with the PIF I won of the Parker SoloEdge razor. It is a 100 pack of the half DE Parker Premium blades and the first one I tried was really good. We will see if that continues or not.

On the razor front there has been a bit more movement. The Mentor is to me surprising the lead razor at the time. with all it's alignment issues it still manages to give me very good shave consistently. I am kind of building this love-hate relationship with it so we will see where this goes. One surprise to me has been the KCG razor. This razor if you told me two months ago would be one of the better ones I would not believe you. I used it before my trip and then during my cruise and it was a stellar performer with the Derby Premium blade and the other blades I've tried in it. I think it is a razor that you have to learn real well to get good shaves with. The angle is very narrow at which it works well. The big benefit though is the lack of irritation. Once you learn the angles you get great shaves, but with no irritation and that is the ultimate goal. another razor that should not be a surprise is that the Swing SB has risen in the ranks. It is still a fairly new razor to me and the more I use it the better it gets. I suspect we may see it move up a few more locations still.

Shave # on a blade yielded no real new information. I still do not see any of the blades that I have used starting to decline before I bin them. Of course the Tiger sticks out like a sore thumb, but we will see if it can remedy that once I use the full tuck of them that I have.

Just a quick view of the number of blades that I have used of each as a source for my shave statistics.

I have purposely left out my blade vs razor statistics. The matrix has gotten so large, with the growing numbers of blades and razors, that it is hard to fit in one picture and still be readable. If this is something that you would like to see I can always split it into two pictures. Please let me know.

 

[blethenstrom]

Mine is too as well. I haven’t used it past 20 shaves yet. I have been semi brutal in breaking it in with towel stropping, lathering and blow drying as well as combing the knot. It is softer than when I first got it, but not at the desired level yet.

I hope it becomes better over time. In my case it seems to at least.

Enjoy!

Guido

I will continue to soak and towel strop for a while to see what happens. I probably will only bowl lather with it until it gets a bit softer. Now the Omega 10065 that I have broke in nicely, but that I think is a bleached boar brush and I think those are easier to break in than the unbleached ones. Please correct me if I am wrong. the Omega 10065 is not bad at all to face lather with. I even used it for a couple of shaves this week in preparation for the 81052.

 

[Guido75]

We all (at least myself and @Guido75) enjoy a good run of numbers and such

We could start a cult!

 

[Guido75]

Statistics are sorted on comfort scores right? Looking good! I don’t track number of blades myself (yet?), but nice to see the consistent performance of all blades over time. Might be worth a separate thread!

Guido

 

[blethenstrom]

Statistics are sorted on comfort scores right? Looking good! I don’t track number of blades myself (yet?), but nice to see the consistent performance of all blades over time. Might be worth a separate thread!

Guido

The first blade statistic view and the razor statistic view are sorted on "Average Shave Rating". Blade shave # is just sorted on blade name alphabetically. I added the number of blades used just on a whim. I had all the data already so it was easy to make another pivot table.

Maybe we should have a statistic junkie thread. the only problem is that it will just be you and I there.

 

[Jay21]

Boris, I was thinking about your RR Mentor. Supposedly, it's the same head as Maggard Razor's aggressive head. Since you expressed interest in getting another, you may consider them. I'll also throw out there that if you are enjoying the more aggressive Mentor, but don't want any alignment issues, you may consider the Lupo 95. It's superb. It costs more, but it's worth every penny to me.

 

[blethenstrom]

The one issue I have with my statistics @Guido75 is that I have no way right now to adjust for if I do less passes and do not want to effect the ratings in a negative way. What I mean is that if I want a quick one pass shave with a blade the resulting "shave quality" will not be as good as if I did a three pass shave. I may only get a CCS with one pass, but that is great for a single pass whereas a CCS with a full three pass shave is really bad. I wish I could figure out how to account for quick shaves without breaking the numbers. I will never have the same shave quality score for a single pass vs a three pass shave.

It is almost like the number of passes has to be taken into account along with "shave quality" but I have not figured out yet how to do so in a fair way. Hopefully that made sense.

 

[blethenstrom]

Boris, I was thinking about your RR Mentor. Supposedly, it's the same head as Maggard Razor's aggressive head. Since you expressed interest in getting another, you may consider them. I'll also throw out there that if you are enjoying the more aggressive Mentor, but don't want any alignment issues, you may consider the Lupo 95. It's superb. It costs more, but it's worth every penny to me.

I did not know it was the same head on Maggard's aggressive razor. Good info. I am not sure if I am an aggressive razor "junkie" though. My experience with the KCG lately has really confused me. I do know I can shave with the KCG every 24 hours without any risk of irritation accumulation and get great shaves. However, I am not sure I can do that with an aggressive one though. It almost seem like with the more aggressive razors I have, I need a 36 hour break here and there not to cause too much issues.

The Lupo 95 certainly has been intriguing to me and we will see if I end up with one one of these days. I do have the GC .84 and I can always also get a GC 1.05SB plate if I wanted something more there as well.

I might even back off getting another RR Mentor (Maggard aggressive head) at this point and work with the razors I have. I have several that give me great shaves and several that I do not know well yet. This is probably where I am leaning right now, but that does not mean I might not have a spur of the moment, momentary case of insanity or similar and get something different. It has happened before.

 

[Jay21]

You'll find that many razor heads sold as house brands are sourced from Yaqi and Baili. Find the lowest price you can for each if you're in the market and then call it a day.

 

[Guido75]

The one issue I have with my statistics @Guido75 is that I have no way right now to adjust for if I do less passes and do not want to effect the ratings in a negative way. What I mean is that if I want a quick one pass shave with a blade the resulting "shave quality" will not be as good as if I did a three pass shave. I may only get a CCS with one pass, but that is great for a single pass whereas a CCS with a full three pass shave is really bad. I wish I could figure out how to account for quick shaves without breaking the numbers. I will never have the same shave quality score for a single pass vs a three pass shave.

Would shave result divided by number of passes be a proxy for that? That would lower the rating for three pass shaves in line with a one pass shave.

Other solution might be to Z-standardise your scores before making the tables.

 

[blethenstrom]

Would shave result divided by number of passes be a proxy for that? That would lower the rating for three pass shaves in line with a one pass shave.

Other solution might be to Z-standardise your scores before making the tables.

I was thinking of doing the dividing by the number of passes, but my current "shave quality" scale is not conducive to that. For that to work a BBS(3 pass goal) has to have a numerical value 3 times higher than CCS(or SAS as goal for 1 pass shave) to be fair or something similar to that.

The Z-standardization I had never heard of so I had to look it up. This, since it removes the average, might have some merit. However, it does mean that I have to generate separate average/std dev for 1,2,2.5,3 pass shaves and then once I have the Z value for each take an average of those? Not sure how easy that would be to do in google sheets, but it surely stirred up some thoughts.

 

[Balin]

Maybe we should have a statistic junkie thread. the only problem is that it will just be you and I there.

I am tracking a few more items this year, including shave rating. I should have some better stats for my year end review. I don't do it monthly as I find the sample size too small to be meaningful for me.

 

[Guido75]

Maybe we should have a statistic junkie thread. the only problem is that it will just be you and I there.

Yeah that would be called PM rather than a thread! But there are more brothers shaving by numbers (there’s even a brother that has that as his avatar).

it does mean that I have to generate separate average/std dev for 1,2,2.5,3 pass shaves and then once I have the Z value for each take an average of those?

After standardisation you only use the Z-scores for your statistics. Technically those numbers themselves don’t mean anything (because you have effectively translated everything to a SD equivalent) in terms of 1-10 scale but it does help sorting things out.

So you could calculate them, and then use the outcomes to sort your current table using the raw scores again, if that makes sense.

My guess would be for all intents and purposes to use the proxy as a starter and see where that takes you.

 

[blethenstrom]

Yeah that would be called PM rather than a thread! But there are more brothers shaving by numbers (there’s even a brother that has that as his avatar).



After standardisation you only use the Z-scores for your statistics. Technically those numbers themselves don’t mean anything (because you have effectively translated everything to a SD equivalent) in terms of 1-10 scale but it does help sorting things out.

So you could calculate them, and then use the outcomes to sort your current table using the raw scores again, if that makes sense.

Hmm maybe we statistical nerds should have a geek out thread regarding this.

I did play around a bit with Z scores and it still need some work, but it might be a useful way to look at things. Now something struck me as well and that is that with Z scores we might be able to compare between ourselves better even if we are using differing scales since it is based on means and std dev. It resets the scale so to speak. As long as we are fairly consistent with ourself we might be able to compare scores between people.