My chipped stratum corneum dried down to a mild-to-moderate burn yesterday, and my skin looked like crap without any moisturizer. My sense of manhood was deeply offended by this, and so I employed the same products with all different techniques today, to redeem myself. Plus alum and, yes, "Men's" moisturizer. 8(
First the soap. My modern synthetic brush immediately mopped up what I estimated to be the right amount of water. I could have thoughtfully brushed it back onto the puck a few times and face lathered, but I still wanted the mug experience. So I pretty near fully immersed the knot and dumped all that water into the small bowl, and whisked it like I wanted to.
In so doing, I basically re-invented the idiotic, wasteful "Marco Method," sloshing suds out of the bowl until I had my lather. Enough was lost to cloud the entire basin of rinsewater. Partial credit is hereby awarded to the many who have written that Williams responds well to extra water and/or that method. I say it simply marks the death of mug lathering. You can get just as good a lather out of Williams by measuring the right amount of water in your brush. It's the even more idiotic "load for n seconds" method that makes wasting soap seem relatively okay.
Tightening the razor. I still went loose for pass 1. On final pass, I tried increasing velocity to compensate for more limited blade exposure. But I noticed I could still cut hair in the buttresses by using pressure WTG. This is normally true only for the concavities beside my chin. Now I applied it to the entire goatee region.
Just a close, comfortable shave. NMF still looked chipped. I'm not going to push this razor for more, at least not with a bog-standard lather prep. (Oh yeah, I used my first lather as the pre-shave, and hydrated fully with a wet cloth.)
To ensure all the soap was gone, I used potassium alum, and got a little sting up where I start shaving, on the cheek contralateral to my dominant hand. Odd place for it; guess I was slow to adapt my stroking to the substrate today. After rinsing that, I applied Aqua Velva Musk directly, and backed it off with a wet cloth. Finally, two dabs of moisturizer (emollient equivalent to 1 drop of shaving oil) were quickly absorbed, so I let them sit.
Appearance is a little blotchy, but hey, I wasn't asking for perfection -- just freedom from injury. I think I succeeded. Williams' greatest strength, I think, is that it feels great on my face during the shave. Lacking any moisturizer, it just goes about its business gliding the razor along, softening hair and stratum corneum in a moderately well-balanced way. If you want to especially protect or nurture your skin, well, that's all up to you.
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