Help With Hard Soap Lather

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I have "Taylor of Old Bond Street" hard soap in a bowl. I've looked at many articles on forming lather and don't seem to have a problem getting a good textured lather (Illustrated Guide to Making Basic Soap Lather - Straight Razor Place Wiki). The only difference in this wiki page is that I don't use a separate bowl to mix. I just take it straight from the wooden bowl. The lather on my face is creamy, full, not runny, and doesn't allow me to see through too much. But for some reason, by the time I've lathered up my face, pick up the razor and shave a stroke or two, the lather starts to disappear. I have to put soap on my face almost before every couple of strokes before it dries up. Is not mixing the lather in a separate bowl with more water the cause? Any other possibilities?

Does anyone have any advice on what's going wrong here?... Anyone?!

Answer these questions for me and I might help you...:)

1. Do you put some hot water on the surface of your soap?

2. Do you use boar or badger hair brush?

3. How long do you soak your brush prior to use?

4. How well do you squeeze or shake the excess water out of your brush after soaking?

5. Do you towel dry your face before lathering?

At a guess I'd say you need more water in your lather mix. You can actually create thick lush lather with very little water, but it will dry out on your face quickly. need to have a little more water in the brush, but this also means you will need to work the soap a little longer.

I also build lather straight from the wooden bowl, though I do park my brush in a scuttle whilst shaving. When I need to do another pass and put more lather on, I give it a quick swirl in the scuttle which seems to keep the lather wet enough.

For soap, I find I spend 30-40 seconds making lather. With cream it's half that time.

I think that your problem is that the lather is too dry. Because you do not use a separate bowl, you keep loading your brush as you make your lather. I think that you simply have too much soap. Using a separate bowl for lathering would give you more control. If you would not like to do this, you need to modify your method and leave more water in your brush or add more as you build the lather, a little bit a the time. Lathering on the soap bowl can be wasteful too. You may want to check this video:

YouTube - How To Build And Apply Traditional Shaving Lather

Al raz.

I love Mantic's videos. So entertaining and full of information.

You can do these things to keep the lather more wetty.

* soak your brush several minutes to make sure that the bristles are fully absorbed. If you use bigger brush it might be really thirstyand needs more time than smaller one's. Try yourself how much your brush really needs soaking.

* wet your face just before applying lather to make sure that your face do not absorb water from the lather

* during lathering give your brush more water like Mantic shows in the video

Use all three and you should have a better lather.

Get a better soap. Try Tabac, Trumper's, or the Art of Shaving. Also try using distilled water instead of tap water. Hardness of water can be a big factor and if you use distilled water it's pretty soft and will aid in lather making. If you have trouble with these soaps using distilled water then your technique needs help. Hope that helps.

Regards,
EL

This video should help: YouTube - Quick lather with boar

In the video, he uses a boar but badger is relatively similar. Just let a bit more water out of the brush first...or not, actually.

It's almost certainly because you aren't loading enough soap. I used to have this exact problem until I learned that I needed more soap. Maybe because I have hard water or something, I don't know.

Anyway, try this out, it worked for me.

-Before you get in the shower, put your brush in hot water, and put a teaspoon or two of hot water on top of your soap puck and let it sit.
-When you get out of the shower, don't dry your face, leave it wet.
-Pour the water out of the bowl you soaked your brush in, squeeze the bristles dry, and give the brush 3-4 shakes. You want the brush pretty dry at this point.
-Pour the extra water off the top of your soap.
-Fill up your bowl again with hot water, to the brim, and leave it off to the side.
-Hold the brush in your dominant hand and the soap in the other
-Go to town loading the brush. Count in your head, AT LEAST 30 seconds. For the first couple times you want to load WAY more than you think you should. As you get the hang of it you can cut back to the appropriate amount, but for now, you'd rather have more than less.
-Twirl, swirl, plunge, twist, paint, do anything you can think of to aggressively load as much soap as humanly possible onto your brush. If you start to see a very very dense soapy paste starting to form in the bowl and on the brush, you shook out just enough water. If the brush is having a very hard time picking up soap, you shook out too much water. If you are starting to form what looks like the proper density lather, you didn't shake out enough water.
-When you think you've loaded enoguh soap, go at it another 10 seconds and load even more soap. Seriously, your first couple times you want to load just an asinine amount of soap. Something you would do to get your friends to laugh at you, lol.
-When your soap is loaded, put the brush down, and use your finger to grab all the proto-lather left on/in/around the bowl and smear it on your face.
-Begin to face lather with the brush, it will go on very thick at this point, but no worries.
-Once your face is covered in thick lather, dip the bristles of your brush into the bowl full of water. Not too much, maybe 1/8" deep. Give a very gentle shake so as not to have the water literally dripping off, but you also don't want to lose too much of it, and begin lathering again.
-Keep dipping your brush 1/8" and going back to the face until you have a nice lathering going. You will see that your brush will go from being very dense to the point that the lather in it allows the brush to hold it's shape (that is if you paint with it in one direction, the bristles will stay that way) to where it is beginning to be bloomed looking again.
-Your lather will be ready when it starts to get very slick. It will feel very slick as the brush passes over it.
-You're good to go! Shave away.
-Each pass when you need more lather, you may need to dip the bristles 1/16" just to refresh the lather.

Anyway, I had alot of trouble making lather from soap when I started, and I was having the same results you were, and this process is what I use now to consistently get good lather. As I said, with the above method, you will be loading more soap than you need for the first couple times. As you get the hang of it, you can scale back the amount of soap until you find "just the right amount" for what you need.

Above is a really good post on face lathering, which is my method. I don't like lathering in a bowl or mug because it just seems like a waste or time. Face lathering, to me, seems easier and quicker than all that other stuff with mugs and bowls. Now I only use a mug for soaking my brush while I am in the shower.

great thread i have had the same problems with the same soap as well . thanks for the advice on the thread ill try this tonight .
Disburden and pjrage ill try your method to night i use to to face lathering all the time but started using a bowl . i get great results with creams but i find it hard with hard soap so ill give the face lathering with soaps a go!
again some great advice on SRP thnks all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stan0045

great thread i have had the same problems with the same soap as well . thanks for the advice on the thread ill try this tonight .
Disburden and pjrage ill try your method to night i use to to face lathering all the time but started using a bowl . i get great results with creams but i find it hard with hard soap so ill give the face lathering with soaps a go!
again some great advice on SRP thnks all.

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I find when using soaps lathering on your face is just better at prepping your beard. Especially if you rub the lather into your face with your finger tips after lathering on your beard.

Not enough water

Thanks to all who have posted their ideas!

I am using a Merkur silver tip badger brush. While in the shower, I let my brush soak in the sink filled with hot water. After getting out, I tap the towel to my face (I'll try to skip this after reading some responses), empty the sink, squeeze the brush once then flick it hard twice in the bathtub. I run a little warm water over the soap, then pour it out and begin to swirl the brush on the surface.

What I've realized after watching the videos here and reading the responses, is that I for one was not spending enough time swirling the brush to form the lather. I didn't like that all the soap was bubbling over the edges of the bowl (I subsequently made myself believe I had the right consistency which was wrong); when I put the brush to my face, I wasn't spending anywhere near the time the example showed (this is where I can spend the time working the lather since I don't have a mug or second bowl). The amount of water could have been the second problem (on one or two occasions, it felt really dry) . I definitely see a difference in what the guy in the video produced and what I was getting.

I'm going to give all these pointers a try and I'm sure I'll see better results. Thanks again for the advice!