Category Archives: Friends

Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil, 2 oz.

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The Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil is next. This is one of the beard oils I use routinely. The scent screams woodshop. The notes in the scent are sawdust, the warm smell of metal saw blades and a very weak burned resin. I humorously regard this one as “An exploding lumber yard.” The oil is quite darker than anything else I’ve used and might slightly alter the white in my beard and bring out a very slight yellow tint, but I’ve never thought that a negative.

Honest Amish again delivers more product for similar cost than any of their competitors. They ship double the product for almost the same price. I seem to vacillate between applying the beard oil by hand, versus dropping the oil on my brush and using the brush to apply it. I don’t know if there is a difference in application styles, but I do think that applying it by hand seems to be a more thorough method. There doesn’t appear to be any consensus online either, as I have searched in vain numerous times.

Once the bottle at work is exhausted, I intend to rotate the Honest Amish in and carry it around with me as my go-to beard oil choice.

Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil 1 oz.

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The Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil, in the 1-ounce bottle, came damaged from Amazon. Beardoholic appears to use aluminum caps on both their bottles and tins and for some reason, the materials always seem to come from the factory bent, warped or buckled. There is little if any scent to discuss about this product, beyond the smell of some of the component oils, which are ever so slightly vegetal or woodsy, if at all.

I started using this beard oil a few times during the day but quickly grew tired of the bottle assembly. It came with an aluminum cap that was buckled from distribution if not from the factory, and so it would never retain a seal. It did not leak, but it also did not fully seat properly. There was an inner plastic dropper-hole cap, with a small plastic plug and after five or six times putting it on and taking it off, it started to warp and ultimately I had to throw the little plug away because it could no longer seal to the dropper-hole it was mated to. After about half of the oil was used, I noticed small spots of leakage, so I resolved to transfer the contents to some other bottle. This created a new comedy of errors and a life lesson on cheap scale problems for consumers. What I wanted was a Boston Bottle, brown glass, with a certain thread count and density. I learned more about bottle choices trying to fix this problem than I ever meant to. As it turns out, you cannot merely order anything like this in one piece increments. You can find lots of people to sell you exactly what you want, a brown-glass Boston Bottle with 20/400 thread with a rubber top and glass pipette. What you can’t find is anyone willing to sell it to you in counts less than 500. So, if you want to fix this one problem, you have to buy 500 glass bottles to fix just one. It’s thoroughly absurd. I have moved away from Beardoholic as a brand, not because of their product, but because of their packaging. It was the first beard oil I tried, and it was a challenge to use. In the end, I did more shopping online and discovered that many other manufacturers use rubber-top/glass-pipette bottles, which I find to be incredibly more pleasant to use. In the end, I ended up at of all places, Hobby Lobby. They were the only ones I could find that had bottles like what I was looking for, and even still, I had to buy a set of three. The cost was almost nothing, but even today, I have two unused bottles in my cupboard that I will likely never ever use since I only needed the one.

I have resolved to use up the Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil and keep it at work. In a few more days there will be nothing of it left, and I will wash the bottle and store it away as supplies. I don’t think I will be buying any more Beardoholic products, not when their packaging is so weak, or shipping is so strangely rough on them. The quality of the product that I don’t doubt and I do think it a good choice, but only when they address their bent, warped, buckled, and odd options for their products to be shipped in. When your customer has to rebottle your product, that’s not really all that great.

Honest Amish Beard Balm 2 oz.

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The Honest Amish Beard Balm is next up in my beard product review series. This product is shipped in a two-ounce tin, aluminum again, with just a product identification sticker on the front and nothing on the rear. It’s not nearly as wide as the standard tin shape, but it is deeper. The remarkable thing about Honest Amish is its low viscosity. The balm is loose, more of a kind of paste than a wax. This at first, was something I had to learn to adapt to, as the usual method of extracting product led to way too much product being used. The technique is the same, except the force used is much less. For Honest Amish, you have to be gentle because it’s so loose.

Honest Amish took a while for me to get used to, and a little bit longer to like. The scent is powerful, almost overpowering scents of clove and pumpkin and other likewise warmer scents. It is not bracing, cutting, or belting but rather smooth and crafty. As it isn’t a wax but a paste it doesn’t take much manual working to get it warmed up or slick to apply, but it does do its job very well. Over time I started to like the strong difference in the scent and began to humorously regard it as an “exploding pumpkin pie factory.”

While it is one of the stronger scented balms, it is not one of my favorites. It is satisfactory, and they certainly give you quite a lot for your money, and Honest Amish is apparently very well perceived by many online. Their ingredient lists match a lot of the other balms, so if you like pumpkin pie or clove scents, this will rock your world.

Reuzel Beard Balm 1.3oz

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The first reviewed product in my beard series is what I started with, this was used by my barber, and at first, we didn’t know what it was, but that it left an intoxicating scent behind. Over time, we did discover that it was Reuzel. The balm comes in a stout aluminum tin, in the standard shape and presentation of most of the balms, about two inches across, with the lid that screws on and off to present the product inside. The product itself is hard and waxy at room temperature, the first ingredient is shea butter, and the second ingredient is beeswax.

Reuzel was the first product that either of us experienced, and was what our barber used when we first got started growing our beards. First and foremost, this balm is my top choice, it is my favorite because the scent is inexplicably awesome. There is a mild but consistent manufacturing glitch that many customers have noticed, and our barber told us about before we even got started using it. Reuzel comes from the factory in somewhat of a grainy set. The wax comes in a manner of speaking, crystallized. It improves immensely when you gently warm the container, melt the wax to liquid and then let it set naturally by itself over time. I’ve discovered that the best way to do this for us is to open the new tin and put it on a candle warmer for a short while. When it’s fully melted, then carefully move it to a cool spot, and lid it. After that, it’s perfect. The scent is the first draw, then the quality. I got started using balms and oils early, so I’ve never known beard-itching-phase or beardruff at all.

Reuzel is my #1 favorite, and so I think I’ll always have some on hand. There was a previous blog post, Speed vs. Accuracy, where Amazon royally screwed up starting from distribution all the way through to shipping on this particular product. So for a brief while, getting this product from Amazon was somewhat of a challenge. To be very clear, I could also have bought it from my barber as well, and skipped out on all the frustration, too. It’s just a lesson about Amazon. They have a lot of products, but they don’t really know a lot about their products, at least not enough to mis-sticker 1.3-ounce container on a four-ounce container and notice something isn’t quite right.

The scent is quite something, there are notes of slate, talc, old books, with hints of leather. It isn’t strong at all in terms of perfumey, or cologney presentation, and is laidback. The scent lasts for about an hour or so once it’s applied, and never ceases to make me happy when I work it through my beard. The way I was taught to take from the container was to run my thumbnail along the surface and scrape up enough to cover the thumb. Then work it in my hands until it is warmed and slick. Almost all of the products that I will review share this method except for two, a squeeze tube one, and a different balm.

Beard Product Review Series

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The next few series of blog posts will all be about the ever-growing pile of beard-care products that I have amassed since I was inspired by Scott to give my beard another shot. I also must clearly declare that I couldn’t have pulled this off, a beard I am proud of, without the help of my barber, Junior. Sitting in a simple chair, one afternoon, and learning more about beard care in half an hour than I knew up to that point. Whenever I learn something new, that’s mightily important! It seems that these days so few things are honestly new anymore.

The structure of the reviews will cover the name of the product as the headline, how I got the product, and then a descriptive paragraph where I will include the packaging, the presentation, and some roughly quantitative measures like texture and viscosity. After the facts, then I will cover some of the more subjective qualitative measures of each product. I haven’t run into anything that I want to bin, yet, but likely if I do bin something it’s going to be a warning post definitely.

So, on to the first review, which would be the first product that I tried…

Favorite Things

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As I grow older I find simple pleasures sometimes have a resonance that I previously discounted. The younger me never thought very much about hobbies, pursuits, and things I could do all by myself as being worthy. But then age started to creep up on me, I’m 43 years old now, soon to be 44 years old.

The things I enjoy now fill me with a certain considerable thrill. I’m taking care of myself. I call it self-care and it’s very good for me. It also fills me with a twinge of regret, that I didn’t pursue this when I was younger. The past is window dressing and set design, so we don’t spend any time or energy on it. You cannot change the past, you can just forget it. A funny touch of irony is that as you frequently access memories, you damage them, so a painful memory left in the dark and never recalled is fresh, while a memory that is replayed and remembered has more resemblance to Frankenstein’s Monster than a real memory. Each time you dig up the past, you start stapling new things to it. Funny that the way to destroy the past is to pick it up, drop it, and pick it up again. Recall it, frequently. You can enhance this effect by starting to drag creativity into it as well. Perhaps an awkward conversation was awkward because you were wearing clown shoes? Maybe. Over time, the doubt that they weren’t clown shoes erodes and you’ve turned your painful memory into an absurdity. In the end, there is less and less emotional resonance with absurdity and the memory dies. Getting back to the present is the key, in fact, it’s only in the present that you can really live. The future won’t happen the way you think it will, the universe is perverse in that manner.

The things I enjoy now are taking care of myself. Being possessive of my time, what I spend it on, and selecting people in my life that are important. Important for me to be in their lives, or them to be in mine. All of life is an elaborate script, with people dancing on stage, cavorting for a time, and then dancing off, exeunt stage left, pursued by a bear. I’ve recently come into new projects, and one of them is growing this beard. It’s a feature, it’s a project, it’s a hobby. I never thought I would do this again, the hair coming in super curly and having to put up with the commentary on my appearance. Perhaps age has led me to a kinder growth pattern, or perhaps it is hormonal, as I age. But I am truly and madly enjoying the feeling of having it, and the occupation of caring for it. Nothing quite like enjoying a thuroughly strenuous workout, getting squeaky clean afterwards, and then sitting back with a glass of fine bourbon on the rocks while I slowly work beard oil in with my boars hair brush. Twinges of itch fading as the oil moisturizes both my skin and my new facial feature. What used to be wiry and chaotic is now soft and orderly. I haven’t found the silver bullet that does it all for me, but I have found many excellent efforts. These options have created a new pursuit, a new hobby. Every day it’s something new, different combinations of balms and oils, and if you get close enough, you might catch a scent that already has gotten compliments. I think that it might be one of the most unexpected parts of this entire thing, patently that nobody really bats an eye at me with such a prominent feature now, but that they comment on the scent without really understanding what it is. They enjoy it, and that makes me chuckle with satisfaction.

The older I get, the more I wish I had started sooner. I suppose the only real advice I could give anyone who was seeking it would be an appeal to the Golden Rule, and to start as young as you can with jealous levels of self-care. Nobody really will care for you as much as you will care for yourself. Find things that put a bounce in your step, make you look forward to the mornings, the afternoons, and your evenings. Things that don’t involve other people to play the part of gatekeeper, but within yourself be the gateless gate. Don’t seek happiness from without, but rather assert happiness from within and kindle the flames as best you can with your own efforts. We all have firewood, metaphorically speaking, and many of us have a rain-soaked woodpile that refuses to burn. You can’t really start a fire even with kindling unless you spend a lot of time either holding the flame to the wood or drying it out. The only way to dry your kindling is by keeping it covered and letting the air get to it. In this metaphor, life only gives you what you can handle, when your woodpile or your kindling is nice and dry.

The ice is nearly gone, the bourbon is nearly out and there is little more the brush can do other than scratch the itching that growth like I have sometimes brings about. Find something you love, cultivate it, and respect life for what it was always meant to be, to quote Brandon Sanderson in his Stormlight Archive books, one of the most fundamental ideals is Journey before Destination. Spend a while with that little phrase, see where it takes you.

Oathbringer – 84%

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I’m 84% of the way along reading Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. So far the read has been a slow go, as he is setting up a lot of backstory and covering a lot of characterization. I don’t mind it, and it’s nowhere near the level of setting work that Stephen King is known for, so I am thankful for that. The twist near the end is quite good, and reminds me, yes Virginia, Hell is Other People.

In Pursuit of Beard

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When I was much younger, in my teens, I attempted to grow a beard. It was mostly born out of curiosity, how it would come in, what it would look like, and how other people would react to it. I never had the most common issues, which is patchy growth or thin wispy scruff growing in where real hair should be. My hair was rough, strong, and exceedingly curly. Of course, when I was a callow youth I didn’t know enough to actually care for a beard, to style it and maintain it, to direct it. So when it came in, I appeared all a mess. Because it came in super curly and practically kinky, forming ringlets all by itself, I endured light mockery about being a hodgepodge of lanky button-nosed Irish dope mixed in with a Hassidic Jew. So I got scissors, trimmed it as far as I could, and then shaved it all off.

The response to that still rings in my ears, “Oh God! What have you done! Grow it back!”

So for years and years I pursued a standard goatee, shaving inconsistently because I never really felt like my appearance was anything worth fretting over, so I’d get scruffy, then neat, then scruffy, then neat, with little forays into yeti territory with event-driven neatening up. I also had a cheap and trashy pair of Conair buzzers that I would use on my own head to give myself haircuts. Ever since I was 13 and went on a trip to Florida with family, I blundered into the buzz cut and never looked back. That made self-maintenance a ten minute trip in the bathroom with a subsequent small hair explosion as I tossed my hair cuttings outside after I was done buzzing everything down. I did this for years and years.

As I aged, the same firm flow of testosterone that gave me my voice, and really fast growing facial hair also began to kill off the hair on my head. Male pattern baldness, which I’ve romantically referred to as “Sexy Bald Captain” after Patrick Stewart in his role as Captain Picard on Star Trek. I have made easy peace with balding. I could attempt any sort of coping mechanism or I could accept it. I elected to accept it.

So, fast forward years and years forward. My partner, Scott, started to grow out his beard first, and it was a certain curiosity to see how it would play out. Right along this time, during a thoughtless session of self-maintenance with the aforementioned trashy Conair buzzers, I went about giving myself a haircut. Absentmindedness led to me forgetting the usual 7mm guard on the buzzer and I took the first swipe, from the temple back, and the buzzer did its duty and sheared off the hair, practically right down to the skin. I took my goof to a professional place, a Great Clips, and they helped salvage my look from my absentmindedness by leveraging what I had done into a new style, a faded cut with a buzz on top. The reception of this new look was shockingly positive, which was a rather big surprise to me, leading me to think “Why did none of you mention this before!”

After the style recovery, Scott had made contact with a local barber in our city, who runs Junior’s Old School Barber Shop. As Scott was going to seriously pursue a beard and wanted expert care and guidance. We went together the first time, and as I sat there, pretty much an audience to the proceedings, I learned more about beard care in that ten minutes than I knew for all the years leading up to that moment. I felt like I could perhaps give it another shot myself, with the ringing chuckles in my ear about it coming back in ringlets and looking like a transporter accident between a Irish sheepherder and a Hassidic Jew. It was Scott inspiring me, and Junior with his teaching and instruction that led me to where I am now.

I had no idea about all the things that I could explore, and try out, with what nature was always trying to give me. For all the facial hair growth, not a single follicle will ever come back on my head. So perhaps it was time to see where I could take a beard myself. Properly inspired, and myself a new customer for Junior and his Barber Shop I let the wild take me.

I never thought I would be this pleased with myself. The feel of it is hard to describe. It feels nice to fiddle and futz with the growth, the longer it gets the more interesting the sensations become. As I learned more and more, starting with Junior’s advice and observing Scott pursuing his beard options, I started my own exploration. A trip down the beardy rabbit hole.

The things I didn’t know were washes, balms, and conditioners. I also had no concept of a boars hair brush. I just thought of brushes as things that my mother and sister had, paddles on handles that would help them discover snarls and knots in their hair and lead to crying and cursing. A whole new collection of things were now open and ready for me to explore, things devoted to help what I was quickly growing to grow in straighter, smoother, easier to manage, and more pleasant to have and to touch. Thankfully my IRS refund arrived just as I was looking at the pile of new possibilities. There are many brands, many makers, and as many formulations all promising a variety of positive outcomes. Junior recommended the Reuzel brand, and specifically the Reuzel Beard Balm. That’s when it struck me that there was an entirely new class of personal care products that not only could do good things for me, but also give me a very enticing and attractive scent that I absolutely loved. I think what really tipped the scales, more than the inspiration and the learning was feeling what a good Boars Hair Brush can do. From the first moment I tried it, with the Reuzel Balm, the condition of my beard improved and the sensation of using the brush became a kind of indulgent pleasure. Now I carry my brush around with me everywhere I go and if I have some time to myself, using it has become a delight.

I then visited Junior myself, with what nature was handing me and he helped me bring style into my life. He gave me guidance and suggestions, and now I can’t imagine going anywhere else to get my hair cut, my beard trimmed, and all the other careful and delightful things that a excellent barber does for his clients.

I have since then explored more products in this arena. It started with the Reuzel Beard Balm, but now it has branched out to Honest Amish Beard Conditioner, which is much looser than the Reuzel Balm, and has the unique scent somewhere between Pumpkin Pie and Honey. I also have Beardoholic Conditioning Beard Oil, which is unscented but still works delightfully well. I have also purchased and enjoy Beardsley Beard Conditioner, which hilariously gives me the distinct aroma of a fruit salad. I am also quite fond of Lush Cosmetics Kalamazoo Beard Wash and Conditioner. The last thing I bought for myself was a beard comb, not that my brush wasn’t doing wonders for me, and it was, but I thought that a nice comb designed for the very hair I was trying to grow would be a smart move, and it definitely was. It is made of sandalwood, and the scent of that is pleasant in its own distinct way. I selected the Hundred Beard Company Comb.

All of these people, and wonderful products, have all worked together to give me a wonder. I couldn’t imagine ever living without a beard now, and if you are local in Michigan, I would make the trip to visit Junior. If not, finding a barber like him would be the best way to start. There is so much they can teach us all.

Lastly, a picture of yours truly, with the hard work and careful conditioning that all of this has resulted in, at least up to this point:

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TWSBI Fountain Pen

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A few months ago while talking with a friend about technology the conversation turned to throwback items that we enjoy using. I brought up my fondness for fountain pens, which always seems to surprise people. The idea of a pen as a writing instrument goes back a really long time. Around the turn of the last century, there was an explosion in patents related to fountain pens and how they hold and dispense ink as you write. After my conversation with my friend, I was inspired to go shopping a little bit. I had some money that I set aside for small little gifts to myself that I had set aside over the past number of years. I never really touch it, so the money sits in my accounts. I came across a company that sells a highly regarded fountain pen, called TWSBI. As I got to browsing the options on Amazon, I looked at my Lamy branded Fountain Pen and realized that it was good as entry level pens go, but I wanted to move up a notch. TWSBI seemed a good option. The pen I selected was the TWSBI Diamond 580AL Silver Fountain Pen with the medium nib. I also got the “Broad Nib” as many reviewers expressed pleasure at writing with both.

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TWSBI 580AL Fountain Pen

I have to say that writing with it is quite an experience. I started writing with fountain pens back in college and found that the way the ink flows beat any other sort of pen hands down. Plus the way the nib moves on good paper makes writing longhand a pleasure. It can still work on rough stock, but it struggles with the rough material, and there is more skritch-skritch-skritch while writing on some of the lowest class papers out there.

The Lamy I have uses a piston-convertible insertable tank, while the TWSBI has its piston tank built into the frame of the pen itself. I find that the TWSBI holds more ink, way more ink than my Lamy ever did.

Another little bit to note, fountain pens aren’t meant for left-hand writers as far as I know. The ink doesn’t dry fast enough for the way a lot of left-handed writers have to use a pen. Although I don’t have many folks I know that are left-handed writers, so there is no way to see if they could use it or not without making a mess of their hands with the ink.

If you have a little bit of spending money, this pen can go a long way in both its look and its function to add a little something to your workaday life. It won’t solve problems or anything like that, but it is something nice to have that a lot of people appreciate. I always chuckle to myself when people remark on how I use a fountain pen, and what I do for a living, which makes people think I should be keyboard bound. Sometimes old things peak, and iterations afterward are all downhill from that peak. In a lot of ways, just like Windows 2000. LOL.