Thread: time for soap or cream to absorb water?

^^^^ Yup on all posts. Soap and creams need to be hydrated well to perform well, some more than others, and water hardness IMO makes a huge difference, in fact I'm on holiday on the fair isle of Feurtenventura and the difference in sickness with TOBS Coconut compared to back home is night and day. Then again they say the water we have from the Thames river goes through at least 4 people before we get the pleasure of using it

Making lather takes a bit of time. The soap must be worked and hydrated to become lather.

The more you work the soap, either in a bowl or on your face, the better the lather will become. The more water you incorporate the slicker the lather will become. It takes effort.

I would guess this explains the improvement in your lather as you progress pass to pass.

Good luck on Forged in Fire

Soaps vary so much in what they need to be at peak performance.

You have to learn the soap and the brush. Then you should have more consistent results from the beginning of the shave to the end.

Originally Posted by rolodave

Making lather takes a bit of time. The soap must be worked and hydrated to become lather.

The more you work the soap, either in a bowl or on your face, the better the lather will become. The more water you incorporate the slicker the lather will become. It takes effort.

I would guess this explains the improvement in your lather as you progress pass to pass.

Good luck on Forged in Fire

Forged in Fire?
Do tell.

Originally Posted by RezDog

Forged in Fire?
Do tell.

April 17th

I've never noticed this.
If I use sufficient water to hydrate my soap when I face lather, then it is very slick and it stays that way for the two subsequent passes.
It could be that you might be using the greater amount of lather on your first pass and then on your subsequent passes, the lather may be of lesser quantity accounting for more hydration in the lather. Try using more water in the initial stage when generating your lather to see if it makes any difference.
Good luck.

True that. IME, the 1st pass is loaded with facial hairs to contain the lather. A bit thicker lather on the 2nd pass and so on seems desirable as the hairs are gone.
That seems where the ratio needs to be at it's best.
No shame in a few swirls of soap or water to get it right.

Originally Posted by BobH

Could also be that not enough water was used for the first pass. That has happened to me making the subsequent passes seem slicker.

Bob

This. I notice it every shave. But when I try to get the lather to 'second pass state' on initial lathering, it ends up too wet and runny. I've come to accept that for some things there is no shortcut...

Sounds as if our own Mr. Calton will be on TV on the 17th!
Looking forward to it and the best of luck!

that is a tough thing to do, to stick with one soap or cream and really learn it when there are so many out there that smell so good. but this just seemed to be so consistent with all of my soaps and creams and it just struck me the other day what it was. and I'm still learning brushes, I have a couple of the cheap synthetic ones from maggards, and then the other day I orderd one of their badger knots and made a handle for it and it is really nice.

thanks dave and Sharpton for the good luck wishes! Yes I will be on forged in fire on april 17th at 7:00 mountain time. its season 5 episode 6 for those out of the us that might be on different tv schedules. I went to new York last august to do the episode, but they said I couldnt say anything about it until they emailed me yesterday.

I cant say how it turned out, but I can say that it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be {I wasn't going to go, but my wife told me she thought it would be a good idea}. I do hope that it is a good episode :}