Thread: I broke my shaivng bowl, so I'm building lather with a sock.

Originally Posted by sharked

I'd be interested to see if you could make decent lather with just your face and hands. I might give it a try, but I'm not optimistic.

When I was super-busy with my career, I frequently used my hand to face lather. You can manage a very decent lather with a good cream and some water on a well prepared face for shaving. I've used Cremo, Proraso, Nivea, Cella and Arko (cream). They all lather-up nicely with your hand in a pinch. You could do the same with soap, but it's just easier to build a lather on your face with a cream when you are hand lathering.

What I used to do was use my left hand for face lathering. I'm right handed, so I shaved with my right and held extra lather left over from my first shave for a 2nd lathering with my left hand. DE razor was the razor of choice for hand lathering for me because I need 2 hands for my straight razor. I can shave my whole face well with only my right hand with my DE.

Again, I didn't do this because I wanted to, I did it because I was pushed for time every morning trying to squeeze 25 hours into a 24 hour day. I hardly had time to shave, let alone use a brush and/or bowl for lathering.

I usually shave with a straight razor, but I might give the barehands method a try. I'll film it if I get any success with it.

I think you'll be surprised with hand lathering.

I understand, that before shave brushes, men used some type of sponge for building a lather.

Salsa bowl from Walmart- around $2
Coarse sandpaper to rough up inside - around 50 cents (one sheet)
3 pennies epoxied to inside of bowl

BOOM! Great lather bowl.

Originally Posted by slim6596

Salsa bowl from Walmart- around $2
Coarse sandpaper to rough up inside - around 50 cents (one sheet)
3 pennies epoxied to inside of bowl

BOOM! Great lather bowl.

I feel so dumb, I spent $3 on a baby cereal bowl. But, it does have dinosaurs on it, so I guess that's worth a little extra.

Probably nothing new; but I usually use two cereal bowls. One is a bit wider than the other. I fill the smaller bowl with hot water, and I "glue" the puck of soap in the middle of the wider bowl. I wet my brush, put the wide bowl on top of the hot water in the small bowl and lather up. Refill the brush with hot water from the bowl underneath as needed. The lather will be kept warm by the hot bowl underneath.

Originally Posted by sharked

I usually shave with a straight razor, but I might give the barehands method a try. I'll film it if I get any success with it.

A couple of points - and sorry for the delayed response;

1.) When I do hand lathering, I always do DE shaves, not straight razors. I'm right handed, so I like my left hand to hold lather between shaves for a 2nd application, and my right hand (my dominant hand) to do all the shaving work. I can't do this efficently with a straight razor. However, any of us that have been wet shaving for decades can easily do a total face shave via a DE with the dominant hand without any worry. Especially with a mild DE razor like a Jagger DE89 or a Merkur 34c.

2.) As time went on with rushed mornings and hand lathering, I migrated toward using Cremo almost exclusively for hand lathering. Now this gets tricky. We are programed as wet shavers to "build big lather with peaks" for a close and comfortable shave. You won't do this with Cremo. Not even in a bowl with a brush. Cremo is a different animal. It's super slick and protective, yet it is designed to build perhaps 1/2 the lather of conventional shaving cream. Still, I can get a highly superior shave with Cremo, especially with a DE when I'm in a hurry, even with low-lather content on my face. That's what the product is designed for.

Again, thinking back to my super busy career weeks and months, I had no time to worry about building a rich thick lather. Building big lather may be important for some creams and most soaps, but not with a product like Cremo that is designed to give superior protection with little lather generation. I remember my bare-bones shaves were a Merker 34c razor, Cremo (usually Cremo Cooling Menthol), and 50 percent Wintergreen Alcohol from Walmart used as an aftershave. Sometimes I'd treat myself and do an aftershave balm like Nivea Sensitive if I had a spare 30 seconds in the morning (rarely).

And honestly, for me, pairing Cremo hand lathering with a Merkur 34c razor and a Feather blade gave me incredibly comfortable and close shaves in record time every morning.