Thread: Question about mug soap

I just learned a lot about this hands on with 5 teachers: 3 different methods of lathering!

1. Two mugs- (the easiest method)- soap in one mug/bowl, lather in the other. What you do is load your brush with plenty of water, let it drip til its stopped dripping then give it a light shake so a little water comes out. Then load up your brush on the puck for a bit... lots of soap. Now here's where I went wrong... I kept lathering on the soap, so my lather was too thick. So move to the other bowl and whip it till you can't see any bubbles and it has a very creamy texture. If you squish it between your fingers it should feels creamy but very wet. If not ad a few drops of water.

2. One bowl and a face- (my prefered method)- Same steps for loading the brush with soap, but work it to a lather directly on your face. I like it because it feels good, saves time and doesn't use another bowl. The way you ad water this time is by dripping a little on your brush or splashing a little on your face.

3. No bowl and a face- (for the lazy of us who don't care about saving soap, you'll see what I mean in a bit)- wash your face, leave it wet. Load your brush with the same amount of water. Rub the bar of soap all over your face till there is a thin coating. Work it into lather.

I guess the variant is one puck one bowl- Load the brush on the soap then move to the face or bowl, but this seems messy... never tried it, but from loading the brush on soap IN a bowl its starts making sloppy lather so... definitely definitely recommend keeping the soap in the bowl... cuts down on mess and you can save your lather.

Now, because I currently use slightly expensive soap, I squeeze any extra suds into my soap bowl afterwards. This saves quite a bit of soap (when I lather I have enough for like 6 passes, and I only do 2, sometimes 1, very rarely 3- so if I'm using 2 and wasting 4...), and it dries into a fluffyish texture so next time you go to load your brush its actually very easy and fast.

I used VDH and still saved the suds for the aforementioned reason, and it extended puck life about 50% I'd say. I currently use Rivivage and like it, and the puck is hardly dented.
I hope to try TGQ soaps soon, and may have to try this Colonel Conk stuff its so cheap. I got some cream samples from CarrieM and she and JoeD were generous enough to gift me some Proraso cream but I'm still a mug soap guy I think. We'll see.

If you need a budget soap, VDH is fine. I can make mounds and mounds of lather in like 30 seconds. I will also highly recommend Rivivage (from Classic Shaving). Proraso is a good cream, but CarrieM's smell better and are better I think. Still feel I'm a soap guy, but I've only used creams twice so far.