Razor: Merkur 37c
Blade: Gillette Wilkinson Sword
Brush: The Copper Hat – ‘The Journey’ Synthetic
Soap: Mike’s Natural Soaps Orange, Cedarwood & Black Pepper
Post Christmas I tend to avoid the boxing day shopping craze. This year I made a single exception, this synthetic brush from the Copper Hat. I had my eye on this exact brush for quite a while. It has the long handle styling of the vintage Rubberset brushes I long for. On Boxing Day, the Copper Hat had a few of these anodized aluminum brushes on sale as imperfect. I figured at the price point it was worth giving a shot. Yesterday the brush arrived and I was impressed. It is a testament to the quality control of the Copper Hat that this was on sale as imperfect. You would be hard pressed to spot much of an imperfection, it is a thing of beauty. The handle is extremely comfortable and has a lot of heft, not something I normally see in a shaving brush. The knot is a tad on the smaller side (22mm?) but worked up a great lather. It has a nice balance of density and softness. I’m quite impressed.
For the soap today I’m using a matching orange soap, this offering from Mike’s Natural Soaps. The person I acquired this from did a great job of repackaging, pushing it into a Barrister & Mann style container. I printed a matching label, because I’m fussy like that. As such, I can’t really comment on the packaging of Mike’s products other than noting that the labeling has a very simple design. The soap itself ticked almost all the boxes for me. The scent itself has a natural orange scent to it, not that sickly sweet synthetic orange. The brightness is toned down a bit by the earthy notes of cedarwood and black pepper. Those notes don’t jump out at you but are there to balance out the sweet and bright orange. Scent strength is on the milder side of mid, which for citrus soap is pretty decent. Where this soap shines for me is the performance, I was quite impressed. This base will stand up against some of the bigger names. I found it easy to lather and got a nice glossy result. Slickness and cushion were quite good, as was the residual slickness. The post shave was also really nice. While the scent didn’t really resonate with me (citrus rarely does), I could definitely see trying other scent offerings in this base.
All in all, a great shave to end the work week. All for now – J
