The Shave

Observations

Face-lathering continues to produce a denser, more slippery lather as opposed to a fluffier, prettier product in the bowl. I think this is a positive thing.

At this point I am consistently out-performing my cartridge razor days, with less irritation, with more pleasant products and having more fun. Even if the holy grail of the irritation free BBS shave eludes me forever, I call this a win.

I really like the in-between nature of the soft Italian soap. I may have to have a small collection.

I wish I had gotten pictures of the Lather From the Black Lagoon that came out of the brush the first time while I was setting the dye.

Today, I did a dumb thing. I changed almost everything. My preshave soap and razor were the only things still the same.I got my Vie-Long 13800 in the mail today, with a tub of RazoRock Caprician Lemon cream soap. I couldn't just leave them sitting there. It would have been criminal. I also didn't want to try to stretch the Feather to a third shave, considering the rough feeling it was developing by the time I was done yesterday. So I moved on to the next blade in the line-up: Gillette Super Platinum, Blue Box.First I took some prelaunch steps to reduce the new-brush smell and get rid of any extra dye from the stripe they put in it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to it from art brushes, but the smell of the horse and badger brushed haven't bothered me at all. This one is a bit strong, but it just smells horsey. If it were going to stay on my skin I might worry.Second was a test lather. I had already lathered my VDH with the brush during cleaning, so I knew it would eat soap off a puck very nicely. What I didn't know was how the RR soap behaved, and I wanted to know before I was actually all prepped and trying to shave. So, I made a test lather in my bowl with the new brush, and it really came out great.My shave went really well. I had already switched to the Gillette Blue in the razor so I was ready to go. Despite some warnings about prickliness, I decided to face lather as the soap suggested. The brush (50/50 mane/tail) is actually already soft, with good backbone and just a bit of scritchiness. Just like the previous two lathers, the brush loaded quite easily, becoming saturated with soap in 45 seconds of loading.After a couple of minutes of building the lather on my face, I was nicely lathered, my face felt good, and my brush was full of delicious smelling lemony goodness.The soap feels great, with good slickness and no sting or other reaction from my skin to the scent. I was a bit worried about the scent when I opened the tub. The concentrated smell reminded me a bit of lemon cleaners. Once lathered, though, it mellowed to a pleasant, natural, unsweetened lemon smell. Where my TOBS Lemons & Limes cream smells more like a citrus candy or lemon curd, the RazoRock is more like the fruit.The Gillette performance was outstanding and comfortable. I did a 3 pass shave and some touch-ups. I do have a little razor burn, but not much for what is a BBS shave except for two small patches on the sides of my larynx. I did have a little bit of a nick where I got some razor bumps during my Feather adventure, but that wasn't bad.The brush was a real star here, too. Plenty of lather in there for all the passes and touch-up, and still plenty left over at the end:All in all, I had myself a pretty pleasant time at the sink this evening. Tomorrow I will most likely switch to another lather and see how much, if any, of the smoothness of the shave came from the RazoRock, and how much from the blade.