After a few weeks of Method-like shaving (albeit with non-official components), I thought I’d take a break for a day, and go back to a traditional superlather shave with the Palmolive shave stick and Palmolive (Belgium) shave cream – two of my all-time favorite products – applied with the Simpson #10 brush. I also decided to use the traditional 3-pass approach of WTG, XTG, and ATG, but added a 4th touch-up pass to equal the 4 Method passes. Prep with MR GLO. A fresh Treet Blue Special blade in the E.J. Chatsworth completed the shaving armamentarium. All in all, a shave representative of some of the best products I’ve discovered over the last couple of years of intensive “gourmet” shaving experimentation.

The result: An excellent shave, a solid 9.4 and on a par with the best Method shave I have achieved to date, but with one caveat…there was definitely more irritation from the against-the-grain pass…not too much mind you, but the alum block told the tale – a little more sizzle than I’ve been getting lately. Finish was with The GR and a splash of Coty Pure Vanilla. Mmmmmm……