FireTJ wrote:I have seen nearly every one of mantic's videos to include geofatboy's haha. They helped greatly. My biggest thing now is just finding my razor. I find ones i want but they are bid only on ebay and i constantly lose the bid haha. I wanted a black beauty super slim but no luck so far. As for everything else, Im going to be getting a tweezerman badger brush, taylor of old bond street cream and a blade sampler. I am still deciding if i want to buy a stand or not for the brush. I know i can probably make one up but I may also be able to find a nice one.
Is a special bowl needed? I am on the fence between buying one or not. I have seen that some people like to lather up straight on the face and others need a bowl. Would it be a problem to just start using a large mug or bowl that I already have? Mug would be porcelain and bowl plastic. I do have porcelain bowl too.
Thanks guys
Ahh, the question as to whether to dry with bristles down or bristles up... We can go round and round on this. The brush will dry faster withthe bristles up, but many folks will say you need to hang it bristles down. Flip a coin or do what you want, either method will work fine. I use one stand, and that's for a brush that doesn't have a flat bottom, or it would stand on it's own the way all my other brushes stand- bristles up.
Bowl, hand lather, or face lather... another do what you want item. Of the 3 I suggest bowl or face. Reserve the hand lathering for test lathers and learning to make lather, and for travel. You need to try both bowl and face lathering.
To my way of thinking face lathering is the way to go, but lots of folks use a bowl.
I face lather because I need to prep my face/beard anyway and face lathering does that by the most efficient method IMO. There is another reason also; one has a huge handle on the lather quality as it gets built on the face.
Have no fear about not having enough lather, even a tiny brush holds enough lather for at least 3 passes if the lather was any good to begin with. If you need more than 3 passes, well, I wouldn't do that. Too many passes can lead to irritation. If you don't get the shave you want with 3 passes concentrate more on technique , get a more aggressive razor when your technique is up to handling it, and/or try another blade.
I can go on can't I!? One last thing, get a blade sampler. There's only one face that can determine your best blade(s) and that is yours. We can tell you what works for us, but not will work for you. So buy a sampler and bite the bullet and test the blades after you have your technique down and can consistently pull off a decent shave every time.
Thanks squire! Pm is sent.