.

Part of the problem with shavegeeks is that most of the guys who're into this trip don't understand the difference between "classic" and "olde-timey":

Classic = using a hand-cranked churn and elbow grease to turn ice and rock salt into the kind of ice cream that makes you spit "feh!" the next time you taste store-bought.

Olde-Timey = ordering the Pig's Trough at Farrell's and thinking that you're somehow kickin' your butterfat dollar old-school by patronizing a genuine turn-o'-the-century "Ice Cream Parlour" despite the fact that you're eating Cisco instutional ice cream (same as inmates get) in a Japanese-owned chain restaurant that's only been around since the mid-1960s.

Another straw--sorry, styrofoam boater-based example:

Classic = King Oliver.

Olde-Timey = every local "Dixieland" band, everywhere (extra points awarded for one or more members with round-rimmed glasses and if the banjo player's got an electric pickup running into a Peavey Bandit and/or Roland Cube amp, and triple double bonus if (if?) the entire band also works at Farrell's and in fact met there while running Pig's Troughs out to the 8-tops while humming "Who Let The Dawgs Out?" on kazoos).

Which brings me to shaving mugs. Those cool-man Old Spice mugs from the '50s aside, I've always felt icky about shaving mugs. They served a purpose and served it admirably back when lather meant whipping a wet brush over a cake of hard soap, but it's 2006, and most men, even hardcore shavegeeks, use soft shaving cream. And if you shave with cream, you don't need a mug.

What you do need is hot lather. Oh man do you need hot lather! Hot lather is why men fight wars, son. Not for democracy. Not for oil. We fight wars to decide who gets to shave with hot lather and who doesn't. If you've never shaved with hot lather you won't understand, and if you have, you do.

Hot lather can only be had with a heater of some sort -- no matter how hot the water is when you soak your brush, it cools off almost instantly the moment you start lathering cream on your face. Companies like Con-Air have been doing electric hot lather machines for use with canned foams and gels for ages now, but you know better than to shave out of a can, right?

The classic Lather King hot lather dispenser works with high quality shaving creams, but I hunted down one of these beasts to try and I have to say it's not really worth the rigmarole. Yes, it makes hot lather, but the quality isn't all it could be, plus you have to smear it on your face with your fingers, not a brush, and the heat disappears the moment the cream touches your skin. It's there for a fraction of a second, and then it's gone. You go to all that trouble and leave the @%#$ machine plugged in and running 24/7, and all you get is a few picoseconds of hot lather. Barbers use these things because they spew lather all day long on a tankful of cream, but for home use, they suck.

Recently, in an attempt to finally solve the problem of long-lasting hot lather, noted shavegeek Dr. Christopher Moss of Novia Scotia, Canada came up with a novel spin on the age-old "shaving scuttle" used with hard soaps:


A traditional shaving scuttle like the one pictured above has a shallow holder at the top for a cake of shaving soap, and a wide-mouth spout on the side for water and brush access. Men used to fill these scuttles with boiling water from a tea kettle, and then periodically dunk their shaving brush into the spout to heat it up before swirling it around on the soap resting in the receptacle on top. Works great with soap, not at all with shaving cream, because of the little drain holes beneath the soap that keep it dry between shaves. Use cream with a traditional scuttle and all the lather drips down into the hot water.

But what if there were no drain holes? And what if the front spout was done away with entirely, replaced with a mere slit of an opening for the hot water, to keep the cool air from cooling off the hot water inside the scuttle? Dr. Moss drew up some diagrams, faxed them to his friend the noted potter Sara Bonnyman, and the Moss Scuttle was born.

Now, I'm not a mug guy -- I think I've made that abundantly clear at this point. But after using this thing for a week, I never want to shave without one again. It's that simple. And here's why you should buy one, too, immediately.

Warm lather. For the entire shave. Every time you raise brush to puss, the lather warms your skin and stays warm, and your last lathering is just as warm as the first. It feels so good I add an extra pass or two to my shave, which I don't even need but who the hell cares -- like Pia Zadora said in "Butterfly", if it's right, it's good.

Here's how you use the Moss Scuttle:

First you fill both the inner chamber (note the small spout) and the cup with hot tap water, as hot as your tap will get.


Then you let your brush sit in the water while you Q-tip your ears, slather your pits, splash warm water on your face, put your nipple rings back in, etc.


Dump the water out of the scuttle and refill only the inner chamber with hot water. The hot water inside the Moss Scuttle surrounds the cup and heats it for the entire shave.

Dap a small bit of shaving cream on the tips of your wet brush, and begin swirling it around in the Moss Scuttle -- you should get an instant eruption of thick, rich lather that covers your brush.


That's it! Lather your face and neck, and then return your brush to rest in the Moss Scuttle as shown, so the hot water inside the chamber keeps your brush and lather heated.

I love this thing -- at $40 Canadian (about $35 USD), the Moss Scuttle's a steal. Unlike the traditional scuttles which frankly look like a medieval precursor to the Pocket Pal, the Moss Scuttle is a beautiful piece of hand-crafted pottery (comes in brown or cobalt blue) that looks great on a bathroom counter. And once you try it, you won't want to shave without it again.

In terms of keeping shaving cream lather heated (and when I say heated, I mean warm, not "hot" -- the lather is noticeably warmer and feels much nicer on your face than room-temp lather, but it is not burning hot) for the entire shave, the Moss Scuttle works even better than I expected it would, albeit with a few adjustments I needed to make to get the best out of it.

For starters, my favored Simpson Wee Scot brush was just too small for the Moss Scuttle, even though Sara sent me the small Scuttle (she makes two sizes, small and large, same price) -- the handle on the Wee is so wee I ended up with lather up to my wrist. Subbing a longer-handled brush like the Vulfix #2234 worked a lot better, and in fact this brush and the small Moss Scuttle are a match made in heaven.

I also found that certain shaving creams worked better with the Moss Scuttle than others. All of the old-school English creams from Taylor and Trumper worked fantastically well, better in fact than I've ever experienced with these creams. But the more modern-type shaving creams I like to use like Nancy Boy, Acqua di Parma, and Maine Shave didn't lather as well in the Scuttle as they do when I lather up straight from the jar to my face. The English creams were a much better match with the Moss Scuttle, and the combination gave me a new appreciation for creams like Taylor's Rose and Trumper's Violet, which I thought I knew about as intimately as you can know a shaving cream. But the sustained heat raised these creams' performance to new heights I didn't know they were capable of.

Ever since I got into all this shavegeekery, I've read about guys who came up with all sorts of crazy kludges to get hot lather. Microwaving glass bowls. Floating metal dog dishes in a sink of hot water. There's even a shavegeek subset that, sigh, actually keeps an electric kettle in the bathroom to pour scalding hot water onto the brush before lathering (is it right to call it "skewering" when the dumb beasts throw themselves onto your pointy stick?)

None of these schemes works. The Moss Scuttle, on the other hand, works like a charm, is easy to use, looks gorgeous, and is priced right. Who'd have thought someone could reinvent the shaving mug and actually make it better? If you shave with English creams, you need the Moss Scuttle.

You can order the Moss Scuttle here.

The Internet has long been a place where the "You Must Be This Sane To Ride This Ride" sign is a mere ha'-proton above the floor. Only fools are forgiven for being shocked anymore that someone tetched enough to have a hankering deep inside for some good old-fashioned Photoshop conjoined porn has the Webwithal to actually quiet the shrieking voices inside his head or at least organize them into a tuneful choir long enough to register a domain, buy a hosting plan, BitTorrent Dreamweaver and throw his slab up on the counter alongside Amazon, eBay, and Taquitos. (Best. Use of bandwidth. Ever.)

Planet Shavegeek has its fair share of awe-inspiring depthplum, what with the door-to-door urinal cake salesmen from Modesto posing as landed gentry on the chat boards, but for the most part, the online wetshaving corn-munity is the same stupefyingly boring cookie cutter male hobbyist black hole of slo-mo entropy as any Ham radio chat room, audiophile usenet group, or Chrysler P.T. Cruiser "Krewzerz Korner" -- it couldn't be more typical of a genre that already had a fork in it back when Compuserve at 2400-baud was the shit.

But then there are those giants who suddenly appear, their genius fully-formed, to breathe new life into the shavegeek rock opera. Towering futuremen with eyes lit as from behind like Rasputin's, who spelunk vast, uncharted caverns the rest of us can't even see. King Gillette was one such dreamer, as were the Brothers Kampfe before him. And then, for a hundred years, the giants stopped coming.

But lo, it may be time to dust off the mantle and make room for a new face on Mt. Shavemore! Gentlemen, I give you Vivek Baptiwale.

I'm proud to report that the Ray Dupont Memorial shavegeek rig on eBay was taken with a whopping winning bid of $810! Congratulations "ForestFace"!

So the Simpson Chubby #3 Super Badger shaving brush donated by Lee's Razors plus the Merkur Vision DE razor and the Classic Shaving hard shaving soaps I added to the kitty are currently banging around in the hold of a FedEx jet on the way to Houston, and a check for $810 is on its way to the Visiting Nurse Association of the Inland Counties Hospice.

Did I say $810? Even though that was the winning bid, ForestFace -- a family and emergency medicine physician in Houston who would prefer to remain anonymous -- explained in an email after the auction ended that he'd seen first-hand the difference hospice makes to the process we'll all have to face someday, so instead of $810, he was sending a check to the VNA for $900!

Words don't often fail me, but I just don't know what else to say except jeez louise, wotta guy! Really, I don't even know where to begin, so just read what the good doctor told me in his email:

"I only wish I had more to give to worthwhile causes such as hospice. Most individuals don't really appreciate all that they have in this grand country and in their lives. I lived in Bolivia for a few years when I was younger, as an LDS (Mormon) missionary from 1986-88. What I found is that we indeed have much in our existence to be grateful for -- but I was even more impressed with the lesson I learned from seeing just how happy individuals who were living in a two room adobe structure with a tin or thatched roof and 2 bare light bulb could be. They somehow seemed to usually have a smile on their faces. I was also impressed with their generous nature. I came to realize the relationship between giving and happiness, and I enjoy sharing what I have been given if it really will help others -- hence my interest in really jumping in when you posted this auction."

I'm blown away by this man's generosity and spirit, and honored to know him. On behalf of the Dupont family, Lee Cantor of Lee's Razors, and the VNA Hospice, I want to thank ForestFace for his extraordinarily generous donation, and the other bidders for their support of a worthy cause. Thank you!

Shaveblog has teamed with Lee Cantor of Lee's Razors to auction off a brand new Simpson Chubby #3 Super Badger shaving brush to benefit the hospice which helped care for our friend Ray Dupont of Classic Shaving, who passed away on Saturday, April 8th.

Those wishing to bid on this brush may do so here, for eBay auction #6621529102. The winning bid will be donated to the Visiting Nurse Association of the Inland Counties in the name of the winner.

As all card-carrying shavegeeks know, Simpson is the most respected name in high-end shaving brushes, and the hand-made Chubby #3 in Super Badger is the largest and most expensive Simpson brush of them all. Retailing for $385, the CH3 Super is a true classic, considered by many experts and collectors to be the finest shaving brush ever created.

Aw hell, it's late, I've been hitting the Chianti, and I'm in a misty-eyed mood -- I'll also throw in a Merkur Vision DE razor (retail value: $100) a 10-pack of Merkur Platinum DE blades, and two cakes of Classic Shaving shave soap! That brings the retail value of this state-of-the-art wetshaving rig to a whopping $500!

This is what they call a "win-win" -- you get to own and enjoy Simpson's biggest and most expensive brush, Merkur's biggest and most expensive DE razor, plus a few month's worth of blades and Ray's own superior hard shaving soap, and the wonderful folks who gave our friend comfort and care get a generous donation in your name.

No PayPal on this one, kids, and no S/H fee either -- I want every penny going to the hospice, and I'll eat the shipping. The winning bidder must send a check made out to "VNA of the Inland Counties", and they'll receive an acknowledgement of their donation for tax purposes.

I miss you, Ray. We all do. Rest in peace, friend.

Ray Dupont, whose lifelong fascination with old-fashioned straight razors and safety razors changed the way legions of men shaved every morning and led to the creation of ClassicShaving.com, the Internet's largest and most successful shaving goods store, died on Saturday, April 8th at his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 54.

The cause of death was cancer. Mr. Dupont had been a cancer survivor for eight years, having successfully undergone surgery when he was first diagnosed with the disease in 1998.

Mr. Dupont's first exposure to traditional razors and men's shaving products began as a teenager watching his father shave in the family bathroom with a single-blade safety razor. Despite the evolution of the men's shaving market in the ensuing years and the appearance of multi-blade and electric razors, Mr. Dupont remained a straight razor stalwart his entire life, believing the old way was the best way. It was a belief that was only strengthened as the blade wars of the last decade led to twin, triple, quadruple, and even quintuple-bladed razors systems which Mr. Dupont felt delivered an inferior shave when compared with a classic straight or safety razor.

A cancer diagnosis in 1998 led Mr. Dupont to sell his first business, Capitol Marine, a Washington DC boat dealership, and after successful surgery he and his wife Laurie bought a new Airstream trailer and set out to travel the country in quiet retirement. But Mr. Dupont soon became restless, and began thinking about turning his vintage shaving collecting hobby into a business. At that time, devotees of old-fashioned straight and safety razors, shaving brushes, and other bygone shaving products had a difficult time finding supplies. Mr. Dupont decided to make it easier for them.

Mr. Dupont launched ClassicShaving.com as a small virtual store on eBay, and when sales outgrew that venue, he re-launched the store with its own web site and expanded offerings, selling everything from hard-to-find English shaving creams and badger-hair shaving brushes to German, French, and Japanese straight and safety razors. Any doubts that a virtual Internet shop could be successful selling old-fashioned men's shaving products in the age of the Mach3 were dispelled when its first sale, of a $64 straight razor, clocked in at just eighteen minutes after the web site went live for the first time. During its first year, sales doubled each week, and it wasn't long before Mr. Dupont's Internet-only venture was bigger than his successful brick-and-mortar boat dealership had been.

Not content to rest on his laurels, Mr. Dupont also taught himself traditional soap-making in order to develop and manufacture his own house brand of traditional hard shaving soap, because as he put it, no cake of shaving soap should cost more than five dollars. So he made his own, and it too became an instant sensation with shaving enthusiasts around the world.

In recent years, Mr. Dupont was instrumental in furthering interest in traditional shaving among the online community, launching the influential Wetshavers discussion group on Microsoft's MSN site, where legions of men learned how to shave with old fashioned razors and techniques.

In 2005, Mr. Dupont was responsible for successfully pitching a TV segment on traditional shaving to NBC's "Today Show", which aired the segment in January, 2005 to great acclaim. Viewer response was so overwhelming that the segment, which featured products Mr. Dupont supplied, caused a worldwide shortage of traditional shaving goods as ClassicShaving.com and its competitors around the globe did a year's worth of business in just the week following the airing.

In the last year of his life, Mr. Dupont was able to reach millions of people and share his passion for taking a man's shave as seriously as it used to be by generations past, and by doing so he was single-handedly responsible for the unprecedented boom in straight razor, safety razor, shaving brush, and traditional shaving cream sales which benefited all of these cottage industries, a far-flung community in which he was universally beloved and respected by manufacturer and competitor alike.

Ray Dupont was born in New England to working class parents. After leaving home to join the Army at age 17 he returned from duty in Viet Nam with a Purple Heart for wounds received. Ray met and married his wife Laurie in 1969 and raised his one daughter, Danielle. Other accomplishments include service as a District Commander in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, running a successful Marine Towing and Salvage company, creating and running Capitol Marine, one of the largest Mid-Atlantic bass boat dealerships, and serving on the board of the Accokeek Foundation. Visitors to this site will know him best for the creation and stewardship of ClassicShaving.com, which will continue on under the direction of his family.

Ray Dupont is survived by his wife Laurie, daughter Danielle, granddaughter Samantha, two sisters and three brothers.

Shaveblog gets a lot of shaving products sent here for review, but Maine Shave is the first line of men's shaving products that was actually inspired by me, which is more than a little weird, I have to say. Flattering, certainly, but still weird. Tom Jones inspired women to throw panties -- I inspired a shaving cream? Doesn't seem right, though we both love stuffing.

Maine Shave's main man Herb Pressman says he got the idea to launch his new company after seeing my wetshaving segment last year on the "Today Show". That same day he bought a shaving brush, a DE razor, and some of the other products I recommended on the show, and got such a bite from the wetshaving chigger he decided to launch his own line of 100-percent all-natural wetshaving products.

What's Maine Shave cream got? Let's get out our Romper Room magic mirror:

I see glycerin, and I see olive oil, and I see coconut oil, and I see castor oil, and I see grapefruit seed extract, and I see sea kelp, and I see shea butter, and I see Jojoba, and I see aloe, and I see lavender, and I see rosemary, and I see bentonite clay, and I see wheat germ extract.

What's Maine Shave not got? Parabens, quaternay compounds, hydantions or ureas, according to Pressman. Parabens I've heard of. That other stuff? Beats me. I could Google them and spit wise but would you buy it? Probably not. Suffice it to say, Herb doesn't like them, so Maine Shave doesn't have them.

Maine Shave also doesn't have much of a scent either, by design. Pressman wanted the shaving cream to be virtually unscented, with "only the subtle, non-lingering scent of its all-natural preservative system -- no competition for your favorite cologne". I did smell a very faint scent, sort of a buttery, puddingy kind of thing, but it's subtle and goes bye-bye as soon as you rinse your face off, which is nice.

I've noticed that all of the cologne-scented shaving creams I've tried do tend to leave a lingering scent behind, though the florals like Taylor's Rose, Trumper's Violet, and Nancy Boy smell incredible during the shave but rinse away completely when you're finished. Maine Shave seems tailor-made for guys who don't care for floral-scented shaving creams but don't want to go the cologne-based route either because they don't want anything clashing with their spoor.

The Maine Shave cream comes in a 3.75 ounce jar for $20. The cream itself is very different from both the old-school English creams like Trumper/Taylor/Truefitt, and the new-school skin-friendlier creams like Nancy Boy and Cremo Cream. Maine Shave is more like a buttery paste than a fluffy soap-based cream, and you can't really scoop out a fingerful and expect it to disappear into a thick, creamy lather with a few swirls of a water-logged badger brush. It wants to stay a glob of butter-paste, and doesn't readily explode into a big mound of lather like the English creams. Pressman recommends swirling the tips of your shaving brush in the jar of Maine Shave till you get enough on there to start making lather on your puss.

But even then, don't expect the same thick, meringue-like peaks you get with the English creams -- the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. I was able to whip the Maine Shave up into a decent pile of lather in the new Moss Scuttle (more on this interesting product later this week), but once I began brushing it on my face, I got the same thin layer of lube I did when applying this cream with just my fingers.

I shaved with Maine Shave for several days in a row with my usual 1940's Gillette Super Speed DE razor, "no-name" Israeli Personna blades, and a Simpson Wee Scot brush. Aside from the adjustment of shaving without any real scent to enhance the experience, I got some very close, very comfortable shaves with this cream. The thinner lather and near-total lack of scent take some getting used to if you're coming off something like Nancy Boy cream, but once I got down to the shave itself I was very impressed with Maine Shave.

As you'd expect from a shaving cream with moisturizing ingredients like shea butter, olive oil and Jojoba, Maine Shave left my skin feeling much smoother and more conditioned immediately after the shave than it does with the old-school English creams. I almost skipped applying my usual rosehip seed oil aftershave because the Maine Shave cream left my skin feeling so good. Guys with sensitive skin should definitely try Maine Shave -- it's one of the more skin-friendly shaving creams I've come across.

Now, I'm not convinced that a shaving cream has to be all-natural and free of things like parabens and fragrance in order to deliver a world-class shave and be nice to your skin. Many of the English creams are chock full of stuff you sort of don't want to know about if you shop at health food stores and/or are named Ethan, yet they've been shaving generations of men superbly and without anyone's cheeks falling off. Even the new-school, superbly skin-friendly Nancy Boy shaving cream has -- gasp -- parabens, and frankly, I'd kill or at least allow myself to be slowly killed by Bad Chemicals to have skin like the gay guys who mostly use this stuff.

I know lots of guys who can't use this or that shaving cream because it gives them a burning sensation, irritates their skin, and just generally doesn't do what a good shaving cream's supposed to, which is lube and protect and leave your skin feeling great afterward. For these guys, Maine Shave will be a godsend. If you've ever wanted to try Kramer's Butter Shave, this is probably the closet you'll ever come without unwrapping a stick of Land o' Lakes.

I was halfway out the front door in pre-workout Hobo Lite regalia -- shorts (okay, so they're bathing trunks from the Gap, but they have this netting inside that kinda sorta subs for a jock) , t-shirt, hadn't shaved yet (saving that for the Y) -- when friends of ours showed up at the appointed time for a visit I'd completely forgotten about, their car pulling up in front of the house just as I did a whiplash 180 and hauled ass back inside to throw on some pants and catch a rush-job shave.

You know the drill. No time to shave but no way you can go without one, so you pretend the fuse is lit and you've got thirty seconds to look presentable. To hell with "baby's butt smooth" and all that shavegeek hoo-ha. If you don't shave in under a minute, your boss will fire you/your wife will leave you/your puppy will die.

I know lots of guys who do this every morning -- they sleep till the last possible second, then tear ass through their grooming before running out the door to work. I used to do it myself, back in the days when shaving meant scraping a wretched Good News! disposable razor across my face with nothing but a squirt of canned goo for lube.

As soon as I slammed the bathroom door behind me I flashed through my options --

1. Nancy Boy shaving cream
Pro: Excellent shave, even when applied by hand without a brush.
Con: No time to unscrew the tub lid! Next!

2. Hot water-only shave
Pro: I've done it before and I'll do it again if I have to.
Con: Sucks unbelievably, lousy shave, beats up the face, I could go on. Think dammit think!

3. Ultra Shave
Pro: Excellent shave, no need for water, works as own aftershave.
Con: Now where did I put that can? I'm fucking hosed!

4. Just skip the shave
Pro: Saves 30 seconds I can apply toward expertly adjusting baseball cap that makes me look even more like a jackass than just walking around with bed-head.
Con: I would sooner greet guests wearing crotchless panties than skip shaving. On the other hand..

Then I remembered catching a shave once with Pacific Shaving Oil all by its lonesome, and you know something? It wasn't half-bad. Not as good as a full-on brush'n'cream geekathon, but it was pretty good and more importantly, fast as hell.

I didn't have a bottle of Pacific oil on hand but I did have some rosehip seed oil -- I've been using this as an amazingly effective aftershave, so I grabbed the bottle and hoped for the best. All I had time for was one downward pass, so I quickly splashed my face with hot water, rubbed about 10 drops of rosehip seed oil all over my face and neck, and started in with my Gillette Super Speed DE razor.

Bad, bad move. If I'd had a few more seconds to actually think this one through, I would've realized that rosehip seed oil is very different from sunflower oil, avocado oil, and all the other lube-happy ingredients in the various shave and pre-shave oils. Rosehip seed oil absorbs into the skin very quickly, and what lube there is doesn't last very long. So basically, I got a hot water-only shave after all.

And man, did it suck. The DE blade painfully tugged and pulled on every single whisker, like it was trying to yank them out by the roots instead of lop them off cleanly at skin level. And this was with an Israeli Personna blade in a 40s Super Speed, which isn't an aggressive rig at all.

In fact, this horrible shave was like a flashback to the old days, when I used to hate shaving because it hurt while I was doing it and then my skin felt raw all day long. I've got it so good now with the brushes and the high-quality creams and the old-school safety razors that I forget how dreadful a shave can be without all this stuff I've grown so accustomed to.

I think the one thing that doesn't really get spelled out to newbies in all the "How To Shave Old-School" essays on the Net, mine included, is that the whole drill of using hot water, a badger brush, and quality glycerine-based shaving cream on your face is all about softening your whiskers so the blade cuts through them like wet spaghetti. It's not just about making your skin slippery.

Keep your face wet with hot water for at least 2 minutes and lather up with some good glycerine shaving cream, and you can get an easy, painless shave with pretty much anything above a Flicker. Most guys who try it for the first time wonder why the razor isn't cutting anything, because all the hair-tugging and pain they've gotten used to is suddenly gone, forever.

My face looked like hell and stung all day long. I looked worse than if I hadn't shaved and just joined our guests looking like a comfortable bum instead of a pained jackass in a baseball cap pulled low on his bed-head and wearing a pair of jeans over swimming trunks so the telltale bulge made it look like I was wearing adult diapers.

How am I married?