Such a great scent and Monica’s soaps as always is enjoyable to use. The Ascension gave a perfect glass BBS. Smelling great, feeling great. Off to another midnight shift.
Bowl : Van Yulay Resin
Brush : Friendship Shaving’s Macy G4 Synthetic by Frank Shaving
Pre-Shave : Shower, PAA’s The Cube
Soap : Van Yulay’s Black Dragon
Razor : PAA’s Copper Ascension w/Treet Black Beauty blade (1)
Post Shave : Van Yulay’s Black Dragon’s Aftershave Splash and Balm
Others : Ginger’s Garden Dragon Spice Roll On(not pictured)
Pulling overnight shifts the next few days so night shaves are my “daily” shaves now. Don, I hope that Himitsu will never go away, amazingly beautiful lemon and rose scent. Off to work!
Bowl : Van Yulay Resin
Brush : Friendship Shaving’s Macy G4 Synthetic by Frank Shaving
Pre-Shave : Shower, PAA’s The Cube
Soap : WTF’s Himitsu
Razor : Tatara Masamune w/Treet Black Beauty (2)
Post Shave : WTF’s Himitsu Aftershave splash , Prep
After last night’s shave I had to wonder if my experience was really as good as it is or if I was just in a “Honeymoon” mood and giving the new formula more credit then I should. So this evening I decided to shave with both soaps, Col Conk’s Original Bay Rum for the first two pass, and New Formula for third pass and clean up.
Pass 1 – 2 Slight blooming of the soap and loading it heavy on the brush, then into Monica’s bowl to whip up a lather brought out the scent that we know so well. Light Bay Rum with a hint of floral. Lather Porn 101, Monica’s bowls make damn fracking good looking and functional lather.
Going through the first and second pass, I immediately picked up on the issues that the original Col. Conk soap puck has. That is, it had very decent slickness, some residual slickness after the blade rides past, immediately seem to dry off and on wash off, almost zero post shave feel. Skin feels “squeaky”. For the price that you pay though, this was a fair trade off. No one expects artisan levels of slickness and post shave from a $6 (well, $5.90 for a 3 & 3/4oz) bar of soap.
Pass 3 + Clean Up Cleaning and rinsing out the brush and then medium soap loading the brush with the new Reformulated Bay Rum, this time I face lathered and you immediately notice two differences.
The first is that the new formula seems to be a little more thirsty, and the scent.
Scent is slightly stronger and this time you can tell that the floral note is clearly that of Rose, very similar to British Rose riding on top of bay rum.
Soap performance once you give it enough water is outstanding. Very slick to start, good residual slickness that still will dry out if left on the face for a time after the blade has passed. The wash off and the post shave feel is where you see a huge spike in improvement. No longer tight and squeaky, your skin now feels a little slick requiring a longer wash off to take it all off, and that rubbery skin feel is no longer there with the skin feeling smooth with fingers able to easily glide across the surface of your skin.
Conclusion All in all, the new formula on this second shave is a definite marked improvement over the old Original. Scent while improved is still light. 3/10
I’ll bowl lather with the new formula next time to see if there is any degradation in performance over face lathering. And $6 for a three and a quarter ounce of soap this good, that is really good value.
As far as I know the only way to be sure that you get the new Formula is to get it from Colonel Conk’s official online store. I’d recommend anyone who likes the Bay Rum scent to give it a try and see for yourself, while the rule YMMV still holds true, I am pretty confident you’d come to the same conclusion as I did. If not you can always use the puck in the bath.
Bowl and lather : Van Yulay Resin (Col Conk’s Original Bay Rum -its almost gone! – Two Passes)
Bowl and Soap : Col Conk’s Santa Fe (Col Conk’s New Formula Bay Rum – Third Pass and Clean Up)
Brush : Friendship Shaving’s Macy Dualband Manchurian Badger by Frank Shaving
Razor : Tatara Masamune w/Feather Blade (3)
Post Shave : Col Conk’s Bay Rum Aftershave Cologne
Steve's Wet Shaving in Singapore 