Shaving analytics

[mblakele]

Inspired by a discussion with mharris127 at http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthr...La-Toja-Sticks I added a digital scale and a timer to the equipment for a leisurely Sunday shave. This may be a whole new level of shaving OCD - probably better for my skin than chasing BBS, though. The only real hazard was that, while juggling the loaded brush and the digital scale, I almost knocked over a vintage bottle of Lilac Vegetal. However, no injuries were reported.

As much as possible I tried to stick to my usual routine. But naturally taking all these measurements altered my shave. It added extra time, about a minute by my estimate, and probably had other minor effects. I believe the measurements are accurate to plus or minus 1-min for time, and 0.5-g for weight.

Elapsed Time (minutes)	Event	Simpson Colonel (g)	Delta (g)	Notes
0	dry	61	0	Brush last used 9 days ago.
1	damp	67	+6	Soaked, then gently squeezed to release water.
1	loaded	69.5	+2.5	Dip and twist with full-size tub Nancy Boy signature scent shaving cream, paraben formulation ca. 2009-12, more than 50% used.
5	lathered	74	+4.5	Face-lathered, adding drops of water to the breach as needed. Lather was fine after about 2-min, but I like more prep time.
7	completed pass	74	0	Checking for evaporative loss. Light rinse after this pass.
8	re-lathered	73	-1
10	completed pass	73	0	Light rinse after this pass.
11	re-lathered	72	-1
13	completed pass	72	0	No rinse just yet.
14	milked	68.5	-3.5	Gentle squeeze to remove lather from the brush.
15	cleaned	69	+0.5	Rinsed brush thoroughly, and removed as much water as possible with gentle shaking.
24	post-shower	68.5	-0.5	Brush was placed upright in a room away from shower, near an open screen door, at about 65-F and about 55% humidity.
90	later	68	-0.5
360	later	66	-3	Still drying out.
1440	later	63	-3	Still drying out.
2880	later	62	-1	Still drying out.

Observations....

• My usual planning figure for creams is 1.5-g, but it seems I loaded over 4-g 2-g. Some folks have said that Nancy Boy is less economical than other creams. That may be, or perhaps I just loaded more than I intended to. I am trying to use that stuff up.
• The brush absorbed 6-8 grams of water, most of which I conclude stayed in the hair and did not work into the lather. I made about 6-g of lather, plus whatever was on my face for the first pass: call it 8-g since I think I have more lather on my face for the first pass. So my lather was roughly 50% 25% water, most of which I probably added while face-lathering.
• After the first pass, I used about 1-g per pass. It is surprising how much lather I squeezed out at the end. That core lather does not apply easily, and has to be milked out of the brush. I think it is wetter than the outer mantle of lather, too.
• The brush was a little heavier after a milked it than after I rinsed it. That makes sense: a given volume of residual lather would be lighter than the same volume of residual water.
• There seemed to be some early evaporative loss, then it seems to have slowed down. More data needed, but I expect this will be a decelerating process. I tend to let my brushes dry for 24-48 hr, and I find that I can still detect dampness in the heart of the brush after 24-hr.

Not sure when I will do this again, but feel free to add your own measurements to this thread. Some bowl-lathering measurements would be interesting, since you could weigh the bowl and brush together to get the total lather.

[mharris127]

Interesting. I usually only shave every other day but I can concur that when I do shave daily the brush sometimes feels slightly damp after 20- 24 hours. I keep my brush bristles up in my brush soaking cup when I am not shaving.

[prsman23]

(backs away slowly from this thread)

[SiBurning]

Awesome!!!

Now repeat 99 times. :)

I'd love to see more measurements by more people using different brushes, soaps, etc.

[BlackBard]

(backs away slowly from this thread)

Runnnnnnnnn!

[JaggerDragger]

Awesome analysis! I can tell you like science and observation...

[jwcarlson]

I think you added 2.5 grams of cream... not 4.5.

[mblakele]

I think you added 2.5 grams of cream... not 4.5.

Correct, thanks. I'll edit that.

[rebos]

fine data!

nancy boy signature cream has parabens?

[kingfisher]

IIRC, the old formulation did but the new one does not.

[mblakele]

48-hr later, the Colonel still appears to be 1-g heaver than when I started. It does not feel at all damp, so this is about as dry as the brushes in my rotation usually get. This may not be a bad thing: I have a pet theory that it is possible to dry the hair too much, making it brittle and more susceptible to damage.

Anyway I had time to gather data on another shave this morning. Steve may not like it, though: I changed several variables. I also decided to trust the decimal point on the scale, and to leave out some measurements that did not seem to add value.

Elapsed Time (minutes)	Event	Rooney 3/1 Super (g)	Delta (g)	Notes
0	dry	54.4	0	Brush last used 3 days ago. This is an older brush with the block-letter logo. I am the second owner, but I understand that it was originally purchased from Classic Shaving.
1.5	damp	65.0	+9.4	Soaked, then gently squeezed to release water.
6	lathered	68.8	+2.5	Face-lathering with Honeybee Spa stick (Cherry from the stick pass, on shave #39).
9	re-lathered	67.6	-1.2
12	re-lathered	66.3	-1.3
16	milked	61.0	-5.3	Gentle squeeze to remove lather from the brush.
16	cleaned	62.2	+1.2	Rinsed brush thoroughly, and removed as much water as possible with gentle shaking.
60	later	61.3	-0.9	Brush was placed upright in a room away from shower and near open windows, at about 65-F and about 55% humidity.

I forgot to weigh the soap before and after loading, but I am not sure how accurate that would be anyhow: the soap left in the stick may absorb some water from my face. But based on some other measurements I believe I used about 1-g of soap, and I must have made at least 10-g of lather. Naturally soap and cream are different, but it seems that I used more lather per pass this time. That may be simply a matter of having more in the brush: it looks like there was about 30% more. There was noticeably more leftover lather, too. The 3.5-g of leftover Nancy Boy lather felt like about enough for a pass (even though I was really only using 1-g per pass). This time it felt like enough for at least two passes.

[SiBurning]

I like it. It takes time to work out procedures.

[mblakele]

It takes work to follow procedures, too. This time I was so busy collecting data that I missed doing ATG on a couple of trouble spots.

Elapsed Time (minutes)	Event	Simpson Colonel (g)	Delta (g)	Notes
0	dry	61.7	0	Brush last used 3 days ago.
1.5	damp	67.8	+6.1	Soaked, then gently squeezed to release water.
6	lathered	72.4	+4.6	Face-lathering with Honeybee Spa stick (Cherry from the stick pass, on shave #40). Stick minus cap weight 46.6-g, then 45.4-g after loading.
9	re-lathered	71.2	-1.2
13	re-lathered	70.4	-0.8
16	milked	67.1	-3.3	Gentle squeeze to remove lather from the brush.
17	cleaned	68.2	+1.1	Rinsed brush thoroughly, and removed as much water as possible with gentle shaking. Brush was left to dry upright in a room away from shower and near open windows, at about 67-F and about 50% humidity.

Now we have some data that is more easily comparable to the previous shaves: same brush as #1, same soap as #2. The soak delta is starting to look brush-specific, which we might expect. The lather-hog quotient, or the amount of lather squeezed out after the last pass, may also be brush-specific. The amount of lather I use per pass may be more of a matter of technique, although I am surprised that it varies so much (0.8-1.3 g in these three shaves). I think a good chunk of that may be from the water content of the lather: it all looks about the same to me, but the same volume of a wetter lather should weigh more.

It would be interesting to compare data with someone else - although I would be the first to concede that collecting this data does not add much to the shaving experience.

[jwcarlson]

I have a gram scale and have long thought I should do a "study" to show how rediculous some of the soaking times that people use on here are. I have, however, sold/gave away all of my badger hair brushes, so I can't really do much of a full experiment. That I it's not like it is going to change anyone's mind. ;) Afterall... soaking 15 HAS to be better than running it under the water for 20 seconds, right? ;)

[AverageJoe]

Obviously, a flawed study since atmospheric pressure, age of badger at date of death, and moon phase on test date were not even considered! Guess it's back to simply lathering as usual :S (trying to turn shaving into a science experiment would take all the joy out of it for me, so much so that I'd probably grow a beard if I felt the need to analyze to this degree!!! :O)

[BZiel]

I have a MS in Statistical Analysis.

It's not in PowerPoint, so it's fake.

[mblakele]

Elapsed Time (minutes)	Event	BGS2012 - natural horse (g)	Delta (g)	Notes
0	dry	80.8	0	Brush last used 3 days ago.
1	damp	90.0	+9.2	Soaked, then gently squeezed to release water.
6	lathered	92.7	+2.7	Face-lathering with Honeybee Spa stick (Cherry from the stick pass, on shave #41). Stick minus cap weight 45.0-g, then 43.8-g after loading.
9	re-lathered	91.2	-1.5
13	re-lathered	90.2	-1.0
16	milked	87.1	-3.1	Gentle squeeze to remove lather from the brush.
17	cleaned	89.1	+2.0	Rinsed brush thoroughly, and removed as much water as possible with gentle shaking. Brush was left to dry upright in a room away from shower and near open windows, at about 70-F and about 65% humidity.
2880	48-hr later	81.0	-8.1	Left upright in a well-ventilated area.

The stick lost about 0.4-g overnight. I presume this was due to evaporation of the water absorbed from my face while loading. If so, yesterday I used a bit more soap than I though: about 1.6-g. It probably takes several days for a stick to fully dry out too, but that is a story for another day.

The horse-hair knot absorbs about as much water as the Rooney 3/1 Super, but seems to end up holding less lather. When I first started using it I had trouble getting it to hold enough for a full three-pass shave, so that makes some sense.

Oh, and the BGLE beehive handle is pretty heavy. Maybe we should start adding dry weights to the wiki pages for these brushes....

[razerburn]

"Check for evaporative loss" ... really?

[jwcarlson]

"Check for evaporative loss" ... really?

With the temperatures some of the people here shave with it's entirely possible. Very hot water is pretty volatile compared to cooler water. The chances it actually would be on the order of "grams"... nah.

How much does the color of your lure matter? The weight of your line? Are you particular about your fishing rod? Some of us take the shotgun approach to shaving... basically, just do it similarly each time and you'll be fine. But there are others who really like to get down into the nitty gritty details. Soak for five minutes, shake three times, swirl on puck for 45 seconds, etc etc. Me? Run it under cold water, squeeze it, rub it on the Arko, swirl on my face...

For fishing and hunting though... I'm a bit more particular, as I'd imagine you are as well. As long as you're getting out of it what you want... good.

[Alejandro1969]

Should shaving be fun or like the pre-flight check list of a 747?