Thread: Lather always dries out...Help!

Originally Posted by Man

...Think it could be a bad brush? I use an EJ medium Best Badger...

I really don't think it'd be the brush. I think it's the soap or the method. Can you video making the lather? That would certainly help fault correction. Do you have another soap or cream to try? Even a cheap cream like Palmolive...

Additional info - I use a very old badger brush. It's probably twenty years old by now. Probably "Best" badger, and it still has a fair amount of backbone to it. I really mash my brush down into the soap puck when making my lather. If your brush is very soft, or won't allow you to dig down into your soap, or if you are timid about possibly ruining your brush (I'm not) that may be an issue.

Brush has nothing to do with the issue,nor the soap,Hydration is the answere,as said above,you need more H2O.plain and simple.is not rocket science.

I'm having this problem with every soap/cream I have, which includes most of the usual suspects.
I will certainly use the honedright method tomorrow and report back.
I have been considering making a video, so I think I'm going to do that this week.
I'm not very timid with the brush when loading, usually pretty firm to try to get the soap into the center.
Thanks for the ideas, gentlemen.

By chance, does your water go through a water softener? I have had lots of problems trying to get a lather at the home of my friend who has a "softener" installed.

1/2 inch lather and 1/16 inch hair.... Does that make sense? Use plenty of water soap is cheap.

Try Palmolive with beard softening ingredients as a pre lather agent. Then lots of very, very moist lather on top of the Palmolive. Works great.

Jerry
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Originally Posted by Magpie

By chance, does your water go through a water softener? I have had lots of problems trying to get a lather at the home of my friend who has a "softener" installed.

Nope, no softener here.

Originally Posted by 32t

1/2 inch lather and 1/16 inch hair.... Does that make sense?

No, sorry. Are you saying that the lather should be a half inch thickness on my face? I've never gotten it to be that thick. After I "paint" it on, it's pretty thin, almost transparent.

Just spent a long time practicing building lather. On second look at honedright's method, I found that it is very similar to what I've been doing, minus the oil. I added water a little bit at a time. When I thought that it was hydrated enough, I lathered my face. After a minute, the lather is drying out every time. I rinsed my face clean, added a little more water and relathered each time until the lather was runny and transparent and bubbly on my face. At no point did it not dry out on me after about a minute. I have no problem "refreshing" the lather after I finish the first side of my face, it's just that by the end of my shave, I will relather under my nose and my chin, and by the time I'm done with the chin (less than a minute), under the nose is already almost dry. Do you guys add water to your lather to maintain its hydration during the shave or between passes?

In my experience, when i have had trouble with lathers going thin and bubbly, its been because the soaps I was trying to use were harder than normal and I wasn't getting enough soap on my brush to start with. I'd say if it was going on thin and drying out, then you don't have enough soap OR water. If you add more water and it goes bubbly but stays wet, then you need more soap to go with it Try loading it up more with a not quite so dry brush for longer than you'd normally load it and give the soap a good scrubbing with that brush to get it in there.