Japanese suribachi bowl for 95% of my lathers. I can wet my brush with the bowl. Then I dump the water out leaving it holding a bit of water in the textured surface. Load my brush and make lather in the bowl, adding water or more soap as needed. Fine tune glossy wet for a DE, or just a little wetter for shavette.
I face lather and bowl lather. I lather in a bowl probably 80% of the time because I like to have the same consistency in my lather for all three passes. When I face lather the lather gets thinner each subsequent pass. Sent from my Galaxy using Tapatalk
Hmm, I never really thought about it. I usually splash a bit of water onto the soap with my fingers, lather, splash, lather, ... Then i'll splash a bit of water onto the brush before going to the face. It's a technique that continuously maintains balance between too wet and too dry while loading up just enough soap for three passes. Takes a bit of practice to get the ratio and loading just right, but works like a charm.
bowl latherer here..used tabac today.. soaked an omega boar.. loaded the wet/not dripping brush ,added water to the bowl a few drops at a time ..built a really slick, shiny lather..
They are excellent. Three of the five soaps I use are made by TFS. And looking back, I should have stocked up for life when they still had the original "Dure" soaps.
I've been on this experimental lather gig for the past couple of weeks, I start off with what my old self would have thought was way too much water, wow! Eye opening experience. Ive found that all of the newer artisan soaps can take everything you throw at them, use lots of water and don't worry about it. Remember. It's called wet shaving