Aug. 3, 2022
Day 3 of AA.
Brush status: Yesterday's shave highlighted signs of break-in already - that break-in continues. The control brush is orange - the black (test) brush has already started to fan out, but is still much closer to the control brush than my fully broken in boar brush on the right. Looking up close, you can see some splitting happening on the test brush (right). The control brush continues to smell like barnyard; on the test brush the swine smell remains, but is less intense and somewhat masked by lime. I call this combined aroma "Swime®". The Stirling brush no longer smells like pig at all, it smells of an Exxon station just on the other side of the Indiana border. shudders
Thanks Stag.
The brush is splaying better and is developing some softness. Still very scratchy, but clearly better than yesterday, which in turn was much better than the first day. I do have a couple places on my face where I have some small abrasions that appear to be caused by the brush. Not dissimilar to the breakout I had when I used a pot scrubber as a lather brush, though not as intense of a breakout. This brush is definitely a shedder - much like the rest of my life seems to be covered in Labrador hair, my soap is coated in piggy hair.
Soap status: At the start of today's shave my tin weighed 47g. After the shave it was down to 44g, for a three-day use of 10g. At this rate, I would go through a tub of SSL in 34 days. Soap use stayed even from day 2 to day 3.
Razor status: I don't have a ton of experience with GEMs, but with one exception, I've had consistently good or better shaves. The one exception was with a MMOC Gen 1, which was a lot more aggressive. At this point I don't know that I would grab this over the Pushbutton I have that I really enjoy, but it does give a good shave. I suspect that people with much more coarse facial hair would find this razor more helpful than me with my peach fuzz. The very last swipe today did result in a nick, but it was totally my fault, I got sloppy. I also had a tiny weeper, but honestly that might have been broken open by the brush, not sure.
Cumulative Stats:
- Shaves: 3/31
- Weepers: 2
- Nicks: 1
- Soap grams used: 10
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