I know there are a few ways to build up a lather; hand, face, bowl, mug.... I normally face lather with a cream but recently picked up a tub of proraso white. Is the a compelling reason not to build up the lather in the tub itself?
yes, if you keep swirling and adding water, instead of making light stiff peaks, you will make a thick paste.
Well that's good to know. In the future I'll be sure not to build my lather straight in the tub. Who wants to go bowl/scuttle shopping with me?
I build lather in the tub all the time after I let the top dry out just a bit. No harm will be done and I find this technique works particularly well for the Italian soft soaps.
No harm at all. I find this is one of the most idiot proof ways really. When your lather gets to the consistency you want, start putting it on your face. Softer soaps or creams might not work well with this method since you'll pick up too much product so like richgem said, if you leave the top off for a while and let softer soaps dry out a bit, it will probably work. Some people will say this method is wasteful and uses too much product but I find the lather is better so I don't care. I have hard water so using more product helps overcome that. If a soap lasts me 2 months instead of 3, I can live with it.
Howdy! There is usually more than one way to use a product---YMMV as we say. I prefer to use a scuttle for the warm lather. Not to say that this way is better. Explore and find what works best for you! Always, Gene
For me , the swirls load the brush then moved to my face for building. I believe (I may be wrong) but he was talking about building a "finished product lather" on top of the soap. Of course YMMV, but in my experience, the more you swirl on top of the soap ( not to load but build lather) the thicker it gets. Once applied to my face, its so thick and dry it instantly dries on my face. I cannot BUILD lather on my soap and I suspect noone ealse could either, hence the lather bowl, scuttle, face lather etc. If I could build a lather worthy of going straight from soap to face without further working, I would never have started using scuttles and mixing bowls. BUT FELLAS, thats just me and what simply will not work for me maynbe the magic trick for someone ealse. You know YMMV and all.
Thats one of the cool things about this forum, it is amazing how different technics work completely different for other people.
I think water hardness plays a big part here. If I try to load a brush and then add water to build the lather in a bowl, the water just kills the lather. So working up a lather that's almost there on the puck gives me good results. The lather does get creamier as I work in into my beard so I wouldn't say I have a finished product lather coming off the puck but it's pretty close.
Yes, I was talking about building the lather right on the soap, in the tub with out transferring to a different bowl/mug/scuttle. Just build lather, apply, shave. I know just about everything is YMMV, which is why I was looking for a compelling reason to NOT do this. I know it works to get lather, because I did it this morning. I didn't have an extra bowel handy and didn't feel like face or hand lathering. I'm not too concerned on using more product by building up lather in this method, but it does make sense that the soap to water ratio can quickly get out of balance. That I do care about, so probably wont do much lather building straight from the tub in the future. Not saying I'll stop all together either. Thanks your all the replys!
Whatever it takes to make your shave the best possible it can be is the bottom line. The more you experiment with the things you pick up here, the closer you are to finding your own personal DFS. Good luck and shave on !
Ok, here is what works for me. Soak your brush for about 3 minutes, or let it soak while you shower. Step 2 Give your brush 1 quick snap shake. Step 3 hold soap dish over lather bowl and whip, thin bubbly suds will begin to spill into lather bowl. Keep swirling until it gets thick and stops falling into lather bowl Step 4 Whip like crazy for a little more than 1 minute. This is what you get. This is a HUGE cappacino mug. Oh yea, this massive mug of thick rich foam was made in less than 5 minutes with the el cheap-o Wally world Vander Hagen $1.58 soap. The trick is when you shake your brush, only give it one sharp "snap" leave PLENTY of water in the brush (more than you would think) no need to add more , it will whip up quick. I'm sure everybody has a method that works awesomely for them but for me, this is 5 minutes to a huge amount of lather. As you can see by the first pic, my mug is so big, my badger brush fits in it long ways with plenty of room to spare.
That's pretty much what I do except I don't let the water and suds run off. I just keep them in the bowl/mug with the soap and swirl in there until my brush is full of lather.
And then you face lather? Im like a big child, when I try to face lather anymore I just make a huge mess.
Yeah, face lathering forces me to spend more time working the soap into my beard which helps soften the whiskers more. That really helps my shaves. It's been quite a while since I bowl lathered. But you're right. Sometimes I do make a bit of a mess. It's not all bad though. Once I'm done shaving and the soap is everywhere, I clean it up and get props from my wife for cleaning the bathroom
lucky man, all I get from my wife is "Are you done in there yet?" Of course she never needs the bathroom until I get in there.
Well I had some extra time so I decided to build some lather for practice. I followed Cool Breeze's example above and the extra water in the brush helped a lot! I think I could have used a little more soap on my brush before I started to build the lather, but this is a huge improvement.
