The Kraken:

This morning's shave was great. Between the scent of Mickey Lee Soapworks' The Kraken and the scent of Clubman, I couldn't have picked a better shave for a Monday morning. In terms of post shave feel, today's shave was ok. It's not as close as I would get with my straight razor, but it's smooth and comfortable. In terms of DE safety razors, I will be going with PAA's double open comb when ever it's back in stock and there's no telling when that will be:

Purpose:

What an incredible shave this morning. It was another "ice rink" type of shave this morning and this edge was comfortable on an epic level. It did take 3 passes though which I don't like doing because it causes me irritation if I go more than that. As for the soap, you can NOT go wrong with Soap Commander at all. This was their Purpose scent which has now been discontinued. In my opinion it's the best Bay Rum scent on the planet period:

Mail Call Coming:

Well after checking my credit card balances, I decided to buy me a pre-bevel setting stone. I chose to get a Soft Arkansas stone which is equal to a Naniwa Chosera 600 grit stone. I'll start with one Arkansas stone for now but my next one will be the Hard Arkansas stone. And I'm going with the 8 by 3 inch sizes which gives me more room to work with:

These can use either water or oil but once you use oil with these stones, you are committed to using oil with these stones on a permanent basis. So I will be using water instead of oil.

Number 12 of 2016:

Well some people will be going crazy after this one, but say hello to my 12th soap of 2016. This was Through The Fire Fine Craft's steel which has an amazing scent and will definitely be added to back to my rotation as soon as I'm able to:

Didn't really have a lot left to save at all but I wanted to save the very last of it and get all I can out of it because it's truly and epic scent:

I don't know when the next one will be finished off or which one but I'm pretty sure people will go nuts about it in a good way of course.

TTFFC's Steel:

Well I am now extremely satisfied in my straight razor honing skills and that settles my craving for a straight razor shave. Through The Fire Fine Craft makes some killer soap and Steel was up next in the rotation. It has a green apple and ginger bread cookie scent to it which is incredible:

This morning's shave was epic. If I still smoked (quit 4 years ago), I'd be going for a cigarette after this one, wow. It was a nice and buttery edge that was extremely comfortable to use and yet I have an "ice rink" type of post shave and I did get it in 3 passes. I could have stopped with just 2 passes, but I wanted to go ahead and make up from where I haven't used a straight razor in a while.

New Stones Needed:

Well I knew this day was coming but NOT this soon. I was expecting this stone to last some what over a year and it didn't even come close to a year. Earlier today I did a honing session and left my stone that you see below in a dish drying rack to drain and air dry. My mom picked the stone up and a corner chipped off when she just simply picked it up. That means that this specific stone has reached its limits in terms of use. There's still a good amount of it left but it won't be long though before I'll simply have to break down and get another stone or 2 and maybe an entire set of stones. So unless I'm doing a touch up on the 8K side, I will NOT be using the 4K side anymore unless I need to: 

In terms of what stones to get, I'm looking at the Arkansas oil stones along with quite a few others. I don't think I'll be getting another Norton stone because it seems like the only synthetic stone they make that lasts is the 8K stone. I'm also more interested in natural stones than synthetics.

One Last Time:

Well as they say, things don't always go according to plan. I was planning on sending these bad boys to my friend Anthony Esposito for Jnat edges and buying another razor off him. Unfortunately one of my bills was a little higher than I expected and something came up with my mom's finances that I had to help out with. So that pretty much has wiped me out until next payday and that is also being examined as well. They decided to re evaluate my case for my disability benefits. So that means one last time on the Norton 4/8K combo stone. First I killed the edges completely and then I did 200 round trips followed by 60/60, 30/30, 15/15, 8/8, 15 round trips to reset the bevel:

The Gold Monkey Jinhou (Triple 6) kept that sequence of 60/60, 30/30, 15/15, 8/8 seconds on each side of the razor followed by 15 round trips to clean up the edge a bit:

The Gold Dollar 208 got the usual routine of 40/40, 20/20, 10/10, 5/5, and then followed that up with 10 round trips to clean up the edge:

The Jinhou on the Norton 4/8K combo stone makes an incredible slurry:

After I reset the bevel, I performed a stropping session of 10 round trips on the nylon, 25 on the scrub leather, 50 on the smooth leather and I did this again after I finished 3 rounds on the stone which will be explained below:

These razors were past horrible. I did 200 round trips on both sides of the stone to get the bevel reset and then I did the progressions listed above for each razor 3 times to get the edge I wanted on both razors. I also cut the progression itself in half each time. Basically what that means is that I did one full progression and when I started again, instead of doing 60/60 on the Jinhou, I started with 30/30 instead and on the 3rd time around, I started with 15/15 seconds instead of 30/30.