Cool shaves fight facial fires
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Tag Archives: Grooming
Professor Modevi’s beard generator – grooming quackery
In the second half of the 1800’s a beard was considered not only considered masculine, but actually considered good for your health.
This was the age of heroic exploration; and as rugged adventurers began to tackle the terra incognita of far-flung continents, they would immerse themselves in wild nature, letting their beards grow thick. The beard became a symbol of rugged manliness and men began to emulate their bewhiskered heroes.
At the same time doctors were beginning to encourage men to wear beards as a means of warding off illness. The Victorian obsession with air quality saw the beard as a sort of filter. A thick beard, it was reasoned, would capture the impurities before they could get inside the body. Others saw it as a means of relaxing the throat, especially for those whose work involved public speaking. Some doctors were even recommending that men grew beards to avoid sore throats – better to prevent than to cure later I guess.
Off course, this meant that if you couldn’t grow a proper beard, you looked for solutions both to improve your masculinity and your health. Enter from the left; the quacks!
Patent medicine was big in the late 1800’s… some harmless, some deadly, all useless for what they were supposed to cure.
The beard crazy died for good during the Great War; given a choice between a smooth shave and a horrendous death, it was no real choice.
Eclipse Red Ring advertisement
Black and white shaving in colour?
There is a lot of old black and white photos of people shaving out there, photos that give us some idea of what shaving was like back then but which could tell us so much more more if they were in colour.
Enter colourise.sg – a deep learning colouriser prototype for old photos. Old Singaporean photos specifically, which may explain some of the odd colour choices…
I don’t believe the american dough-boys of the Great War wore blue uniforms, but overall not a bad effort.
German uniforms during the Great War were – at least when issued – feldgrau; a light grey-green, though there were variations of the shade ranging from greys to browns. Even with the blue-tinted uniforms and green sandbags, the recoloured image have a lot more life to it.
In this image from the Vietnam War, there is still a blue tint to the flak vest, although the rest of the fatigues are much closer to real life. The sandbags are a natural brown, and the lather looks white and inviting.
Or how about a nice straight razor shave, taken from the book Shaving Made Easy? There isn’t much for the software to take clues from in this image, but it still do a pretty good job making the shave looks like a faded colour photo.
Now this is the way to have your daily shaves… the colouriser have made a good one of this one, probably due to all the available clues in the photo.
How about an old fashioned barbershop? A few artefacts from the software, but the shave looks so much more inviting in colours.
Wrapping up with a still frame from The Great Dictator, one of Charlie Chaplin’s bests films. The shave scene was filmed in one go, and is well worth finding and watching.
While not perfect, I enjoyed coming a little closer to what shaves looked like back then… check it out for yourself if you got a favourite image you want to see re-colourised.
The cost of shaving over a quarter century
I was pondering over my morning coffee today how much shaving really costs us… or could have cost us, if we didn’t go all in buying all those razors, brushes, soaps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And all those et ceteras do add up.
Consider a spherical cow in vacuum… actually, no.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where the software – that is the pre-shave, the lather, and the post-shave – is identical, but we’ll consider different hardware – razor and blade / cartridge. In other words; I’ll only look at the cost of razor + cutting edge.
The Gillette Sensor I got as a promotion in boot camp lasted about 25 years of somewhat infrequent use before breaking. That should make a good baseline as a lifespan of a razor (even if at least one of my razors is a century old and still shaves great).
For the “cheap and nasty route”, Amazon charges roughly 13USD for a Gillette Fusion5 ProGlide Power Men’s Razor Handle (quite the mouthful to say) and 34USD for a pack of 12 refills. Gillette suggests that a cartridge lasts “up to” a month of shaving, so a 12 pack should last a year. The total cost of the handle and 25×12 cartridges at Amazon (which is cheap compared to buying in brick and mortar stores) is 863USD.
Looking over at BullGoose Shaving, a mid-range razor like the Muhle R41 Twist Safety Razor will set you back 75USD. He sells one of my favourite blades – the Green Astra – in packs of one hundred for a reasonable 15USD. In my experience, blades lasts for about a week, so a pack will lasts a little under two years – or 13 packs for the projected 25 years. Doing the math, we’ll find that going this route will costs a total of 270USD.
Or in a more visual format:
The break even point seems to be around two years and five months – 2,3665 years, which works out to roughly two years, four months, and twelve days – so if you plan to shave for more than two and a half year into the future, it pays to switch to DE once you used up any carts you already have bought.
Caveats: Amazon is as mentioned usually cheaper than buying from a physical store. You can get less expensive traditional safety razors, as well as significantly more expensive ones. I picked the R41 as an example of a mid-range model.
Again; this ONLY looks at the cost of shaving with a single razor and using the same blade, and assumes that you’ll use the same software regardless.
Heel-tastic – foot rescue in stick form
To paraphrase my sergant in boot camp; Take care of your feet and your feet will take care of you…
Wearing marching boots all day at work can be pretty rough on your feet, and my feet were getting pretty nasty… dry, cracking and generally sore. Not a pretty sight, and just filing and lotion before bedtime didn’t do much. But then my beloved wife spotted this:
While the name is a bad pun and the ingredient list is full of stuff you definitely don’t want in your shaving soap, it actually works very well. While my feet ain’t baby smooth by far and I still need to grind the hard skin off every evening, all the crack and a lot of the soreness is gone.
If you have cracking heels and dry feet, and if you can find it, definitely give the Heel-tastic a chance. It helped me enough that I’m devoting space in my GoBag for a stick of it.
The Lavish Gentleman’s charcoal mask; a review
I’ve been using the charcoal mask I received for free from The Lavish Gentleman for a couple of weeks now, and I feel I can give a few opinions.
Overall, I do enjoy using it on days I don’t shave. It goes on easily due to it’s low viscosity, it don’t flake when it’s dry, and it comes of quite easily with a wash cloth and warm water.
The active ingredients are activated charcoal and kaolin clay, both of which are absorbents. The rest of the ingredients list is, well, not long but has a lot of long words in it. Still a shorter and less scary than some of my beloved wife’s facial masks though, so there is that.
The big question is; does the mask make my skin cleaner / better / younger / faster?
And the answer is… honestly, I’m not sure. It certainly don’t make my skin any worse – but with the added focus I’ve had on my facial skin – especially in the area around my nose, which have given me a lot of trouble in the past – since I started using the facial cleansing oil from The Lavish Gentlemen daily, it’s hard to say if the oil or the mask is doing the heavy lifting. I won’t stop using it though; if it is helping I certainly don’t want to backslide.
As I said, I do enjoy using the mask twice weekly. Some people might consider the asking price a little high (almost 24 USD / fl.oz at full price), but given how little I actually use of the product the small jar will last a long time. If you have trouble with oily skin or clogged pores, you can do a lot worse (and spend a lot more money) than trying the charcoal mask from The Lavish Gentleman. While you’re at it you might want to grab some of their cleansing oil too; that have become part of my daily routine.
PS: they are currently having a 30% off sale, and it looks like the promocode WegianWarrior15 still works and stacks on top of the sale… so why wait? You can get it for almost half off!
Simple pleasures
Cold water on the face.
Krampert’s Finest Bay Rum.
I’m ready to face the world.
Initial thoughts on TheLavishGentleman’s charcoal mask: a little goes a long way…
As I mentioned the other day I got a free charcoal mask from The Lavish Gentleman with my order of cleansing oil. I tried some on Tuesday, and I tried it again today… so while it’s way to early to make a review, it’s not to early to share some first impressions.
Firstly, this mask is a lot more liquid than I expected… based on previous experience I expected a paste like consistency, but this stuff is closer to an aftershave balm.
Secondly, it stays quite flexible when it’s dried… I have no problems talking, eating and drinking coffee, with no fear that the mask would flake of.
Thirdly, it washes off really easily… no hard scrubbing, no need to use soap. A hot shower and a wash cloth is all I needed.
And lastly… a little goes a long way. I only planned to do my “T-sone” today, but since you can’t put it back in the pot once it’s on your finger it became more of an O-zone…
New arrival – The Lavish Gentleman Charcoal Mask
So I ordered some more of the facial cleanings oil from The Lavish Gentleman I reviewed in the end of January.
Graciously they not only gave me free shipping to Norway, on top of the 15% off, but they also put in a free gift; a jar of their Detoxifying Charcoal Mask. My beloved wife have been at me from time to time about using masks to clear up my skin (working in a dusty environment can cause a lot of clogged pores), so she’s having a chuckle over me actually trying this.
Packaging was top notch, survived the trip over here in good condition. I’ll let y’all know how the mask works out for me in a couple of weeks.