My Father grew up in the depression and he used ordinary bath soap to shave with. He also used a Schick Injector. He didn't want to pay extra for a special soap. I have done it in the past too. My Father also told me of a story where he would go in to a diner and order hot water in a cup and he would put table ketchup in the hot water to make tomato soup. Let me tell you them must have been some hard times.
I get a great lather from both Proraso creams and soaps. I just have to make sure I've got plenty to work with, I use about an inch of cream or load the soap heavy on the brush. If I scrimp on either the lather suffers. For me, this applies to all my soaps and creams, too much is much better than too little.
Yes, Hugo Naturals soaps are made from a melt-and-pour base (per ingredient lists / online reviews. I have not used them). Some of their soaps contain oatmeal, flower petals etc embedded into the soap for exfoliation. Heating may damage those those embeds. Tip: With any MP soap, you should microwave in short bursts (eg 10 Seconds) as you can burn off the fragrance & burn the soap itself with excess heat.
Many times I took my brush and used it to lather Dove soap and the results were great for me. The trick is to shake off a good deal of the water.
For years i almost exclusively used bar soap to shave. When i used carts and had no idea what de shaving was all about. Id just grab whatever soap was in there wash my face then re apply the soap and shave. Only problem ihad is it would dry up so i pretty much had to lather on side, shave, the other side shave, neck shave i think ill try itsoon with the de to see how it goes
picked up a bar of Hugo Naturals. it made a nice looking lather that provided almost no cushion and faded away before I got halfway through a shave. what did I do wrong?
Too much water, maybe? Too vigorous during the mixing stage (that brings too much air into the mix)? Even Hugo Naturals is designed for cleaning, not for shaving, so it's not as nice as a good shaving soap. If you want to use, keep working at perfecting the lather. It will never be RazoRock but it should work. If worse comes to worst, get a pump bottle of Kiss My Face unscented and add one pump to your Hugo Naturals lather. That should make it work beautifully without altering the great scent of the Hugo soap.
Yup - KMF Unscented. But since I only use once in a blue moon, I picked up the smaller tube; it's a bit cheaper.