The excellent Maggard V2 open-comb, with Phoenix and Beau Specialist

Phoenix and Beau’s Specialist (a limited edition for West Coast Shaving) has a fragrance profile that fits my taste — or, perhaps, smell: “vanilla, vetiver, malt whiskey, hops, barley, & freshly picked tobacco leaf.” The lather was excellent, thanks to the Wet Shaving Products Baroness (a very nice little badger brush), the technique improvement I got from a few days of bowl lathering, the softness of the water here, and (of course) the soap itself, whose ingredients are:

Potassium Stearate, Glycerin, Potassium Tallowate, Potassium Ricinoleate, Potassium Safflower Seedate, Potassium Lanolate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Cocos Nucifera Fruit Juice, Potassium Cocoate, Aqua, Allantoin, Tocopherol Acetate, Stearic Acid, Adeps Bovis, Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil, Carthamus Tinctorius (Seed) Oil, Lanolin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Cocos Nucifera Oil, Parfum

I’m sort of tempted by P&B Spitfire (“notes of leather and tobacco. Add to those warming notes the crispness of juniper as well as bergamot and cedarwood”), named after the British fighter plane of WWII and in honor of the maker’s grandfather, who presumably piloted one.

Maggard’s Version 2 open-comb razor head (V2OC) is excellent is included in my list of recommended razors, and seems to be a clone of the Parker 24/26 (see this post). Once again, it did a superb job — very comfortable, very efficient.

A splash of Chatillon Lux’s Gratiot League Square aftershave toner, and the day is launched.