Thread: OK fellas, what am I doing wrong?

You haven't been doing this to long, making a good lather takes time to master. Play around with how you do it add more water more lathering time. That is part of the fun of the hobby is it takes time to get things right but when you do it is amazing. Just like shaving play around with your formula and you will find it.

Use enough water, and make sure your brush is loaded with enough soap.

How is your water quality? Hard water can make things difficult and some soaps don't take kindly to hard water.

I live in eastern Mo. Our water is as hard as it gets. That could be part of it.

Ray

Originally Posted by kalerolf

Use enough water, and make sure your brush is loaded with enough soap.

Yeah that! Make sure your face is plenty wet, and your brush is only a shake or two off full wet and loaded very well with soap. At the end of the day, if none of the above adequately fixes the problem re-applying lather as required is OK, I don't think the shaving soap police will break the door in and arrest you.

Originally Posted by RayCover

I live in eastern Mo. Our water is as hard as it gets. That could be part of it.

Ray

One solution is to grab one of the water jugs for steam irons in
the local market. If you have hard water it will be easy
to find. If your water is not hard it will be less common.
Today it will be deionized water twenty years ago it
was distilled. Go for the cheep stuff you will often find both.

Then take about 1/4 cup a nuke it in the microwave in
a heat proof microwave safe container. Not boiling but
about as hot as tap water... Soak your brush drip a little
on the puck drain the brush and lather up. As your brush needs more
water dip or in or dribble from the cup of hot water.

A 1/4 cup is a lot... with practice you can use less.

By the time you have worked through a jug you
will know if it is your tap water or something else.

Yeah that, distilled water is what I use. It makes any soap or cream a viable choice.

Thanks Gents

I have a few things to try now. Thanks to all of you for the input. It is a help.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

It may simply be a time issue. Lather the first half of your face, shave, then lather the other side and shave.

That's what I do and it works out great for me. When it's time to do the other side of the face, I rewet the skin with hot water before applying the lather.

Lot of good suggestions here, I'll add my experience. I fought lathering for months. At first it was like you, lather was thin and by the time I got done with one side of the face it was gone from the other side. So then I well screw it. I loaded, I mean LOADED the brush with soap before I worked up the lather. What I got was a real thick lather that was still not ideal so I added a few drops of water. Worked the lather. Few drops of water. All of a sudden I was back to too thin. Long story short what I finally realized was that I wasn't working the soap in the bowl near long enough. I went off of a couple youtube videos I seen and worked the lather for just as long as they did. Turns out I needed to go about 30-60 seconds longer. After that it was much much better.

If you use a bowl I suggest starting out working with too little soap then add two to three drops as you go. Once you get to the point where you have that start of a lather but thin look, stop adding water and work it over. Just my two cents.

edit to add: I also use mama bear soap