First chance I had to really take my time and go through the process. Used a nice little Simmons from Larry and my long time favorite soap (I've been wet shaving a long time with a Fusion): Crabtree Sandalwood. Makes lovely lather and smells good too. I have a basic Prorasso bristle brush that is very large (which I like) though maybe not as sexy as a badger brush.

Anyway, I usually make lather right on my face because the prorasso can hold so much lather all by itself. Plus it works it into the beard nicely. This time I used bowl just for kicks and it worked fine. It climbed the sides and was smooth and silky.

Being the stubborn wretch I am, I kinda got on a roll once I finally got the feel of how it works. "Scraping" is exactly the concept needed. It was balls to the wall after that. Did WGT and XGT with the straight though I did cheat and use the Fusion for AGT. Gotta save something for next time. In truth, the Fusion didn't have to do much. Just a few of the spots where it was really hard to get a right angle for XGT (like under the neck).

No razor burn and only one cut: on my thumb of my off hand. Saw a video of a Turkish barber and he was wiping his razor on the back of his thumb. More I thought about it, the wiser that sounded: no water on the razor, no lather on the towel, and the base knuckle of the thumb gets right in the hollow of the razor and cleans it out nicely. Got slightly careless and got the blade into the meat of the thumb there. Styptic pencils are a wonderful thing! Amazing how fast they work! If only my dad and his old Gilette DE had known about them. He wouldn't driven us to work with little dabs of tissue on his face so often.

Now one caveat needs to be mentioned here: I have a goatee and do not shave lip or chin, so I didn't really get into the hard parts. But it was fun. Took a little while, but I'm sure that'll improve a bit with experience.

Off to learn how to strop properly now!