It seems recycling older Steam Vent threads has become more popular than bickering over politics, and who's scored the latest points in
The Culture Wars. I'm good with that.
Back in September, I decided to go with Gillette Mach 3 Turbo blades. I think I covered that already. I ordered a box of 20 M3T blades from Costco. They are much better than the fake Sensor Excel blades I had thrown out.
I wanted to get away from the Gillette handles, and splurged a bit, getting one of these. It was about $32 on Amazon. It's longer, heavier, and better balanced than Gillette's handle. I like that.
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That bit of splurging got me over the edge, just a bit. It helped that I had an abundance of points in my Amazon account.
I decided I had nothing better to do than try a badger shaving brush. Being basically cheap, I ordered a
$30 Parker Black Badger brush. That turned out to be a shopping error. It was OK except for 3 or 4 hairs that were too stiff and sharp. As I worked up a lather on my face, those hairs poked my face enough to hurt. I eventually ditched it, replacing with this
Silvertip Badger brush at only twice the price. It's much better.
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Next, I had to have a proper stand & bowl for all this nice stuff.
Got this. The stand is good, but the bowl is too small.
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I eventually realized I needed a larger bowl to whip up the lather, I ordered
this shaving mug. It cost less than others I saw, and has a useful feature of raised 'speed bumps' on the inside bottom of the mug. They actually help in raising a lather.
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Even after getting all this fine new stuff, I found there was a learning curve for getting a good lather. I found
this video on Amazon which actually helped me in this process. Ignore the first minute.
Finally, I can get to my real question that Mikado463 mentioned earlier.
So far, I've used
Poraso Red which is sandalwood scented. Once I learned how to make good lather, I started liking it.
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I have learned there are basically two types of shaving soap, tallow (animal fat) based, or palm oil (vegetable oil) based. I was steered away from the tallow kind because one customer reviewer said it made his skin too greasy. I imagine that guys with dryer skin might prefer the tallow based soaps.
I have learned that there is a bewildering variety of shaving soaps & scents available, at wide range of prices. With that in mind, what can anyone recommend?
@Mikado463 and
@TLS Guy