WetShaving
This is a community of enthusiasts, hobbyists and artisans who enjoy a traditional wet shave: brush, soap, and safety or straight razor. We are a part of the WetShaving community found on Reddit, Discord, and IRC.
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Use [First Impressions] in the title if your experience with the product is limited.
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Use the [Review] in the title if you can provide comprehensive details with enough familiarity to answer follow-up questions.
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Disclose how the product being reviewed was acquired (e.g., PIF, loan, or purchase). If the product was provided to you directly by the maker or vendor free of charge or at a discount, you must disclose this fact even if the item will later be returned to the maker or vendor.
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December 3, 2023
Brush: AP Shave Co Summer 28mm G5C
Razor: J.A. Henckels Friodur 14 Full Hollow Square Point
Lather: Declaration Grooming - Opulence - Soap
Toner: Thayers - Rose - Toner
Aftershave: Declaration Grooming - Opulence - Aftershave
Talc: Yardley Classic
2 passes. Face lather. Excellent shave.
This shave was superbe (FR spelling and pronounciation). That is mostly due to the stainless steel Frio 14 I think. Stainless steel has been around since the early early 20th century. I guess that a combination of cost and heritage have kept straight razor steels as carbon steels (which rust) until the '60s. But, really, when tempered properly, stainless has no drawbacks as a straight razor steel. Note that most DE blades from the mid-20th century onwards are stainless and I wonder why more modern straight razors aren't stainless? [ And, yes, I'm not an authority. I've had formal training in materials science but that was around the time humans were learning the advantages of the wheel. ]
Today was a revisit of Opulence. During BBS November I used my tub and had the worst lather of the month. I was pretty sure it was user error, but both @[email protected] and @[email protected] informed me that there were Opulence tubs out there with a reputation for being very difficult to lather.
My strategy was to give the soap every chance possible to produce a good lather. I bloomed it with hot water for about 15 minutes prior to use, then loaded my dense G5C synthetic knot very heavily from the tub. The soap produced no suds just a paste. I spread this on the face and proceeded to add water to the brush and agitate the lather (i.e. face lather). I added a lot of water, did a lot of brush scrubbing, and finally built a moist dense and slick lather. This worked just fine for the shave and rinsed cleanly from the razor. There was enough lather in the brush to easily build for a second pass, but almost the same amount of water and agitation effort were needed. The lather did lose slickness during each pass but did so slow enough that my shaving was unaffected. Real residual slickness only came when the face was wet post-pass.
So, I know that I don't have to work this hard to lather any of my other DG soaps. I like the scent of Opulence, and can deal with the tub I have, but it is not a candidate for a quick shave.
Can confirm, I have a bad batch Opulence too.
Yeah, that's pretty much my opulence experience, too. Dense, no suds, and you need to load super heavily. But that fragrance ☺️
I speculate it's the "tradition" part in "traditional wetshaving" at fault.
What I've seen several times when discussing carbon vs. Stainless steel as to kitchen knives (for instance here) is that carbon steel can be honed quicker, to a sharper edge, and retains the edge longer. On the other side, it's more brittle, and rusts if you even think about rain.
I don't know whether that's true, though.
First, the article you linked is a nice high-level introduction. To go deep, though, there's no better place to start than Knife Steel Nerds. (@[email protected] might find this interesting as well.)
As with most things, the answer is "it depends". Edge retention and toughness (resistance to fracture) can be dialed in to suit a purpose. And there are different compositions of "stainless" to choose from, and different hardening regimes as well.
Honing is very much related to picking the correct abrasive for the purpose. I'm simplifying, but in addition to coarse, medium and fine abrasive material, you also need to consider the hardness of the abrasive. The closer an abrasive is, in hardness, to the material you want to abrade, the longer it will take to do the work you want to do (again, simplifying). The abrasive in Japanese natural stones (silicate) and coticules (garnet) are about the same hardness (Mohs scale) as stainless steel but are almost twice the (Mohs) hardness of carbon steel. So, these stones are well suited to one steel and not as great for another. However, the aluminum oxide in man-made abrasives can cut most steels well; except for the steels with very high vanadium carbide content. Diamond abrasives cut any steel well.
I think so as well.