Thread: Trouble making good lather

OK, so I searched...a little... to find out why I'm having such a hard time building a good lather. I've got the Truefitt & Hill Sandlewood soap in the nice little wood bowl they send it in, and it looks great, smells good, and seems to do ok, BUT for the life of me, I can't seem to work up a good lather. I don't know if it's the water here, (which really wouldn't surprise me) or what, but the best I've gotten is a really weak mess. I've tried using more water, less water, swirling both directions, across, up and down, everything that I can think of or have seen, and dad gummit, nothing that looks anything like lather. I have still been able to shave with the thin little slick of soap that I can get out, but it's not what I imagined when I started. Anybody have ideas that I can try?

Distilled Water... You Would Know If It Was Your Water That Has Been Giving You Troubles At Least....

It seems some soaps give me fits like this. At Martin's advise, I have tried swirling a damp brush in and face-lathering them, dipping the end of the brush and going back at it until perfect. Lots easier, faster, and more effective. YMMV!

Was going to say the same as chevhead, any softened water would work, even a spring water with low mineral content. And you could put some onto the soap to soften it.

The previous advice is all good. I have never used T&H soaps so did a quick web search and found that the new versions of their soaps are getting panned quite a bit in the shaving community. Most of the criticism has to do with lather-ability or lack there of.

Bob

Never used that soap before...are you able to load the brush well enough? If you can't, maybe put a bit of water on top of the soap and let it sit for a bit to make loading easier (assuming you haven't already tried that).

I usually load, lather in my bowl, add a bit of water, lather some more. At a certain point I'll then squeeze everything out of my brush and whip the lather some more. This kind of lets me see where I'm at in terms of water to soap ratio and also helps even everything out in my lather.

Usually works for me.

I started squeezing the excess lather out of my brush and leaving it on my soap at the end of my shave, my soap is always soft and lathers easily.

have you got a boar brush? they work better with soaps

Thanks for all the tips. It looks like I may have been doing it, well, we'll say not so right. lol. So best practice is to load the brush and not try to lather it in the bowl provided, then lather in a separate bowl? I saw some pretty cool looking scuttles. Seems like the soap stays underneath the bowl, you load the brush then move up top to the bowl. Thought that was just for the extra fancy folks. As far as distilled water, best I'm gonna get my hands on is some bottled due to my location. I do have some more brushes coming in, another badger, two horse and a boar so I'll give those a shot too. Thanks again for all the tips.

No, the lower chamber of a scuttle is for hot water, the top bowl is where you whip up your lather, it is to keep your lather warm.
Give the bottled water a go, I use the cheapest stuff I can get . The water where I am is mineral heavy and it really does make a differentrence, if you heat the water in a kettle, don't heat the water to boiling point. I learned from that mistake, used to put boiling water in the bottom of the "scuttle" I used then throw the brush in. Eventually the glue gave way, and my brushes caught alopecia.
I now cold shave, but my "scuttle" was just a big bowl of water with a smaller bowl inside it.
I whipup my lather in the bowl that holds my soap, I think this might be unconventional though, bear in mind that I also put glycerol and shave cream in on top, and the soap is Palmolive which costs $4 for 100 grams, so it doesn't really matter if I get through it a bit.
Anyway do one thing at a time, try getting some warm bottled water and covering the soap and just leaving it to soften, like a bar of soap that has been left in the bath for a while, obviously dump the water eventually.