Monday Morning Quarterback

Looking at film from the weekend, here's a recap of what's going on behind the scenes at Grandad....

Shave Soap:
The first feedback is in from those who have received samples of Grandad's Shave Soap for Sensitive Skin. The initial outside review is that the soap lathers easily, does, in fact, like lots of water, is slick and creamy; is not drying on the skin, and rinses off easily. The requests for full-sized quantities of the soap have started to come in.

Clean, left-over lather from Grandad's Shave Soap for
Sensitive Skin after this morning's shave.

Also have had a request for adding fragrance. I will be looking into that. The delay in this process is that it isn't as simple as dumping in something during the soap-making process. This added-during-the-cook process of getting a pleasing scent into the soap is the way many hobbyists and amateurs do it, but it's wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessarily drives up the cost. A better way to add fragrance to soap is to add it after the soap is done.

Professional producers often add fragrance by milling the soap; that is, by grinding it into small bits in a no-heat process and adding the fragrance to the cool bits. This milling may be done several times to achieve greater homogeneity in the finished product. Hence that is why you will often see soap advertised as triple milled. So before Grandad's Shave Soap for Sensitive Skin can be offered in two versions, scented and unscented, I need to pick an initial fragrance and then get the gear necessary to mill the soap.

I will also soon be offering for purchase the unscented version in a full, not sample quantity and the sample offer will be going away. What has delayed the full-quantity offering is pretty basic stuff; in this case it's finding shipping packaging that will be optimally cost effective to maximize the value to users of Grandad's Shave Soap. (I'm not called "the frugal shaver" for nothing; and I'm always trying to help other maximize value -- not just for me. Some others can testify to that; I have refunded some sample purchasers part of their pre payment when the post office has charged less than predicted for postage fees.)

Actually a second minor delay is getting the gear and process to form the soap in the desired finished shape. I'm working on that too.

Reviews of Products, Shaves, and Other Issues:
I often have former reviews in the back of my mind. This is because I find the process of testing shaving products to be subjective and changing. I may have an opinion at a point in time, then after revisiting the issue later, find that my opinion has changed. I don't think this is terribly uncommon, but the difference is that I usually put my thoughts in writing and publish them for the world to see.

I guess the lesson here is that unless I'm discussing the technical aspects of razor design, in which the only thing that has changed is my choice of terminology to be more consistent with the rest of the world, everything else is built on shifting sands.

For example, today I'll be shaving again with the Dorco Prime TTO razor, which appears to be a twin for a Weishi 9306 product. Yet after using the Dorco for more than a week and comparing it directly to the Weishi, I'm still not sure if they shave the same of if the Dorco doesn't provide a slightly closer shave. Today will help to decide that answer (I hope). The results will be available in the "What I Learned this Week" section of Saturday's weekly shave review article.

That's it for now. Hope to see you again....

Happy shaving!