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Silly question: should I have two bowls - one to keep my soap and one for lathering? Or one bowl is enough? Do I keep soap there or soap comes with some plastic holder?
Will soap get all wet since I put my wet brush in there?
I'm about to switch to wet shaving, and want to have essentials in place first. If it was already discussed, please, forgive me asking and give me a link to that discussion.
Thank you!
Welcome to wetshaving, I am sure you will enjoy it.
If the bowl you are using is deep enough you can just lather in the bowl right on top of the soap, which is how one uses a shaving mug. After you finish shaving, just let the soap dry out. This will not harm the soap at all.
If you wanted to, you could just drop your soap puck into a big mug, which would give you a handle to either hold or to hook your thumb into while you make the lather.
If you look around here you can find advice on milling your soap by hand (basically running it through a cheese grater) and then pressing it into your container. This will mold the soap into the shape of your bowl or mug, and will keep you from having to "chase" the soap around with your brush. Just be sure not to melt your soap in the container in a microwave as it can damage many soaps.
Enjoy!
If you want to lather on your face just swirl your brush round in the bowl and face lather, if you have any creams a different bowl may them be required.
I have about 9 soaps I rotate and have them all in a variety of covered bowls and pots. I make the lather right in each bowl and then complete the lather on the face.
Welcome to SRP. A lot of guys like to lather on the puck and then face lather. I used to be one of them. I found, for me, that lathering in a separate bowl gives me better lather than the way I used to do it. YMMV. Check out the link in my sig line below for more info.
I used to have a lather bowl. Nowadays it is not my lather bowl anymore, it's my "soak" bowl. I use it to soak my brush and face lather.
Welcome to SRP.
As the previous posts recommend, ther are various ways to make use of your shaving soap. There is no "correct way" to do so. There are "ways." Do what is most comfortable for you. You can begin by lathering the puck and then face lather like Jimmy. Later, make use of a coffee mug from your kitchen to store your soap in and a small bowl to craft lather. Any of these techniques will work.
Take care--and smooth shaving.
Thank you guys!!!
I will try to lather first on my face. My batroom space is very limited, and I would try to avoid bringing one extra bowl into it.
But eventually I will everything, and what suits me best :-)
I would definitely experiment as everybody has a different way of creating lather. I used to place the soap in a mug and whip up the lather right in the mug on top of the soap. Just let it dry up when done, and this is a very compact way of doing it.
Now I use Proraso soap that comes in a plastic bowl. It's difficult to work up a lather in the bowl, so I twirl a wet brush around the soap, paint my face with it and then work up a lather directly on my face. The more water I apply to the brush the wetter and lighter the lather gets. Assuming what the lather is supposed to do, this method makes a lot of sense to me and works well with DE or STR8.
There are also ways of keeping the lather hot, if that's what you want. Using both bowls you could work up the lather in one bowl that's sitting in the second bowl filled with hot water.
I use a mug from the kitchen and put a little each of the different soaps I mix together to make lather with in it. Then I put the mug in the sink and fill it to just below the level of the rim of the mug with the hottest water I can get out of the tap get the brush wet with the hot water and then whip up the lather in the mug. I leave the mug in the sink so the lather stays nice and worm.
My brush handle isn't very long so I picked a rather short mug (The mug also has sentimental value to me) This has made Shaving turn from something I detested when using a can and despicable into something I now look forward to. I am pretty new hear on the forums and wet shaving also and chose this method after watching several video's and reading the forums. And also because It is very cost effective. Hope this helps.
BTW welcome to the best place to learn about shaving, The people hear have been great. Good look and I hope you as much have fun with it as I am.
I put my pucks in a pretty deep tupoware and just agitate the soap with the brush right there. I then lather up on my face with it. I used to lather in a seperate bowl but I felt it took too long for the same shave results.
Until I began to use a SR, I used a soap in a bowl that I bought as a kit a couple years ago.
When I tried to add a new soap after just putting it on the top of the old one for a few weeks, I decided to use the microwave to try to melt it... Well, it is true that it doesn't work well and can damage the soap :rant:
When I bought new shaving soap, I picked up a tube of Proraso. So now I make the lather in my old bowl even if I could just use the shaving cream without the bowl, because I prefer to make it into a bowl.
I am new to SRs but not to wet shaving, and it seems tro be the way I prefer to do it.
Gilles