Face Lather: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boar.
Hello,
I recently had a very strange thing happen. See when I got started I went right for a Best Badger it felt luxurious, worked well with the cream I was using and played really well with the bowl lathering I could manage as a total newb. Shortly thereafter I thought I'd experiment and got a VDH Boar brush from the local CVS. I Figured I might as well try and at that price point I just couldn't go wrong.
So I took the VDH brush home gave it a good cleaning and attempted some lather. It was an absolute disaster, my lather was was watery, sloppy, and just wrong. I picked it up again the next time I shaved and tried less water got what looked like a decent lather in the bowl but again it turned to nothing once it hit my face. So I blamed the poor VDH, chucked it to poor quality, inferior materials, the works. I mean, this thing had to suck couldn't be me....
Well it's a couple months later and I decided to pick up the boar once again. The first time I went for the scuttle. A little AOS unscented cream, a little BAirley Farms Cucumber Soap, a couple drops of glycerine and BOOM! fantastic lather up to my elbows in what seemed like 3 swirls (my badger whips up a great lather but never this fast!). The bristles had just the right backbone when they hit my face and when I massaged that awesome hot lather in with the VDH it seemed like a shave revelation!
This was yesterday...I never shave two days in a row but I just couldn't resist, I had to see if it was a fluke. So I reached for the VDH yet again, this time no fancy stuff; the brush would be all alone. I went for a cold face alther with just soap. I figured the little VDH couldn't do it without the help of the Becker scuttle and the uber but boy was I wrong! The boar really performed. I'm blown away at the difference that a little experience made. So I post this as a public apology to all boar kind! It wasn't you, it was me!
So has anyone had this happen? And what else is out there? I've got two horse hair brushes in the mail that I was just taking a flyer on, now I'm thinking this could be the beginning of a new brush journey of discovery? Well done VDH I think you just gave me the B.A.D...BAD!
