Thread: anyone elses soap drying up on them (dr harris)?

I'm so incredibly frustrated by this soap right now that I'm necroposting from a 2009 thread. It either dries too fast or is too thin to offer me any protection or won't rinse off the blade. soaps drive me crazy

You beat me to it, more water. I did the same thing face lathering DR Harris Arlington and not getting the water ratio right.

Bob

i love bowl lathering arlington soap.

next.

I exclusively bowl lather, and DR Harris seems to work fine for me. The trick is to load the brush really well and then hydrate slowly until you reach the desired consistency by sight. Here's a tip about bowl lathering: it is a good way to get nice lather consistency BEFORE applying it to your face, but it is most definitely possible to over-process your lather. If you think about it you're whipping lather up in a bowl first, but if you continue to swirl repeatedly over your face you'll end up breaking the lather down prematurely, which makes it disappear more quickly than usual. Use your brush to lightly coat your face and a few paintbrush strokes to even it all out and that's it.

Harris soaps are thirsty and in my early days with them, had similar issues. I tend to load my brushes now from a fairly wet state. I soak my brush for 20-30 seconds, give it two gentle shakes to remove some of the water, then load. Starting with a wetter brush can get messy, also uses more soap, but after a minute of loading, I then face lather, adding more water as necessary.
This wetter brush approach is my preferred method for most soaps now, not only because of the lather quality I get from it, but also I feel there is less strain on the brush knot too.

Originally Posted by kwlfca

I'm so incredibly frustrated by this soap right now that I'm necroposting from a 2009 thread. It either dries too fast or is too thin to offer me any protection or won't rinse off the blade. soaps drive me crazy

So your soap is 5 years old. If the soap has been stored incorrectly that could create your problem, otherwise you are not using enough water or working up to the correct lather mix. You may want to just switch to a cream and see how you like that. I have zero trouble with all of my DR Harris soaps.

Originally Posted by lz6

So your soap is 5 years old. If the soap has been stored incorrectly that could create your problem, otherwise you are not using enough water or working up to the correct lather mix. You may want to just switch to a cream and see how you like that. I have zero trouble with all of my DR Harris soaps.

I just bought this soap. I'm still getting used to it, it does indeed seem to be a thirsty soap.

I've noticed there is a fine line between under hydrated and over hydrated with Dr Harris and other tallow based. Under hydrated and its drying up prematurely which leads to razor burn. Over hydrated and the razor is skipping (scary). But when the water to soap ratio is right, Dr Harris is great.

I had this problem with Mitchells Wool Fat soap, which I tried with very high expectations from all the enthusiasm you hear about it. But it was hard to lather up and dried on my face really quickly. So, ironically I went to VDH Deluxe, which is like $2 a puck, and found it lathers up nicely and stays with me the whole shave. The "Deluxe" can be melted gently in a microwave and poured into your shaving mug to solidify.

Others here like to malign the cheaper and more widely available soaps, but really…it's just shaving. I find the VDH soaps and the Poraso creams do a very fine job. For luxury, I think more of my razors themselves and my aftershave. Soap and cream in the end is just soap and cream.

With all triple milled soaps, MWF, Harris, Trumpers, I found leaving some water on top of the puck for 5 or 10 minutes, dumping some of that water into the lather bowl helps. Tabac is another that I've had difficulty with. I can lather to beat the band with glycerin soaps every time but the aforementioned soaps require more labor on my part ........... and some luck.