How to lather Ballard Organics Bay Rum?

I picked up 2 pucks of Ballard Organics Shave soap this weekend. Tried shaving with it once and it did not work out well. The foam was ok in the scuttle and first applied to the face. However, the foam almost immediately started to dry up like bubbly hand soap. I tried to face lather it to "recover" the foam and rebuild but it would not work. To recover the shave, added some Bigelow shave cream for super lather, just to finish up. The soap and cream did not want to mix and took a lot of mixing to get a super lather.

The set up was: badger brush, tap-water hot (not boiling) water in the scuttle and to build lather, and started with very dry brush and slowly added water.

Have no problem lathering MWF, Mama's, or proraso.

Any tips for lathering Ballard Organics shave soap?

If it's anything like Ogalalla Bay Rum soaps, you are going to need to use A LOT more water than you think. I've also switched to boar/badger blend brush, as well as straight boar brushes and that seems to help in general with soaps as opposed to badger.

Plus, if you are using hot, hot water in the scuttle and not enough water in the lather, then you are pretty much just cooking the lather and that's why it's drying out.

Also, I bought a couple of bottles of Campbell Liquid Lather, diluted the 8oz bottle in a good 24oz of water and use that to help "save" the soaps that don't lather so well.

I hope that helps!

Cheers!
-Greg

Greglam said:

If it's anything like Ogalalla Bay Rum soaps, you are going to need to use A LOT more water than you think. I've also switched to boar/badger blend brush, as well as straight boar brushes and that seems to help in general with soaps as opposed to badger.

Plus, if you are using hot, hot water in the scuttle and not enough water in the lather, then you are pretty much just cooking the lather and that's why it's drying out.

Also, I bought a couple of bottles of Campbell Liquid Lather, diluted the 8oz bottle in a good 24oz of water and use that to help "save" the soaps that don't lather so well.

I hope that helps!

Cheers!
-Greg

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Great tips. Will keep adding water and see what happens. And, will use the Omega Boar on it.

And, will have to see about getting some of the Campbell Liquid Lather in case i run in to add'l hard to lather soaps. good idea. have a puck of Ogalalla in reserve too, so may need it.

thank you.

I have never heard of this company, which means it could be one of the many so called "shaving soaps" that really is nothing more than a bath soap + clay. These so called "shaving soaps" are a disaster as shaving soaps go, and can't be made to lather properly no matter how hard you try.

Unless it smells phenomenal, I wouldn't bother trying to save it with adding other products to fix it, I would just pitch it in the garbage, and buy a product that is known to work properly.

michiganlover said:

I have never heard of this company, which means it could be one of the many so called "shaving soaps" that really is nothing more than a bath soap + clay. These so called "shaving soaps" are a disaster as shaving soaps go, and can't be made to lather properly no matter how hard you try.

Unless it smells phenomenal, I wouldn't bother trying to save it with adding other products to fix it, I would just pitch it in the garbage, and buy a product that is known to work properly.

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And then there's that.

Leonard1 said:

Great tips. Will keep adding water and see what happens. And, will use the Omega Boar on it.

And, will have to see about getting some of the Campbell Liquid Lather in case i run in to add'l hard to lather soaps. good idea. have a puck of Ogalalla in reserve too, so may need it.

thank you.

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Tried it again. This time, I used a lot more water and lowered the temperature of the shave water a bit more. All that happened is that I got a lot more bubbly, hand soap type lather. Very thin and not very protective.

Going to mail the manufacturer and see if they have tips.

EDIT: emailed the manufacturer for tips on how to lather their soap to get a thick shave lather. Will see what I get.

They are a soap company, so it may well be that they simply added clay to hand soap and thought it would work.

It does smell great, though.

I live in Seattle, so when I saw that Ballard (a traditionally Norweigan/Scandanavian neighborhood in town) Organics had a shaving soap, I sprung for it.

This was before their new packaging and release of the Bay Rum flavor. I don't know if the older puck I bought has an obsolete scent, but I couldn't stand it. It smelled sacchariney sweet, kinda in a minty way. No complexity to the scent, either.

When I lathered it, I also got a foamy lather that was neither terribly dense nor very protective. After a handful of lathers, I gave up. Too many things rubbing me the wrong way and I couldn't get it to work.

Please let us know if you do get this soap to perform properly. I sniffed the Bay Rum and like the scent much better than the original puck I got. It would be good to have an environmentally conscious choice out there, but if it doesn't perform then it's a non-starter.

I hope they reformulated it to perform.

It's very weird seeing this post. I just got a puck of this soap yesterday from my wife. (I really need to write her a list of soaps I want) I tried lathering it last night with the same bubbly frustration. It doesn't seem to build a lather worth shaving with. I also got another one called Camamu. It's equally as bad.

Based on all the user feedback, I'm guessing it's the soap.

Just out of curiosity, tho, have any of you chaps tried lathering it with a boar brush?

-G

Greglam said:

Based on all the user feedback, I'm guessing it's the soap.

Just out of curiosity, tho, have any of you chaps tried lathering it with a boar brush?

-G

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Yep. My combo this morning was an Omega Boar 49, DB Scuttle, and warm-ish water. I really loaded the brush for a while. Worked the lather in the Scuttle - lots of bubbly foam. Then, tried face lathering, built only a little more bubbly foam. Couldn't seem to find a combo that would get the shave-foam consistency.

Leonard1 said:

Yep. My combo this morning was an Omega Boar 49, DB Scuttle, and warm-ish water. I really loaded the brush for a while. Worked the lather in the Scuttle - lots of bubbly foam. Then, tried face lathering, built only a little more bubbly foam. Couldn't seem to find a combo that would get the shave-foam consistency.

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That's what I figured. Either use it for shower soap or toss it in the garbage and chalk to up to experience. There are a million other soaps out there just dying for you to add them to your den.

-G

No response from the Mfg on how to get this stuff to lather. So, the Bay Rum is becoming a shower soap and I am returning the other puck. I guess if they get enough returns, they may take notice.

If they do respond, I am just going to point them to this thread, so leave any of your feedback on this soap here.

Will also offer to be a "tester" if they decide to try to reformulate the shave soap.

Thanks everyone.

Such a shame there are so many artisan soapmakers that make a "shave soap" without KNOWING how a shave soap is supposed to work or behave.

Good thing we have Mama Bear, SCS, QCS, etc.

michiganlover said:

I have never heard of this company, which means it could be one of the many so called "shaving soaps" that really is nothing more than a bath soap + clay. These so called "shaving soaps" are a disaster as shaving soaps go, and can't be made to lather properly no matter how hard you try.

Unless it smells phenomenal, I wouldn't bother trying to save it with adding other products to fix it, I would just pitch it in the garbage, and buy a product that is known to work properly.

Click to expand...

I have to agree. Good soaps don't cost too much more than the cheap ones do, when you consider the work that goes in to making a cheap soap worthwhile. That is why, even though I could get a good lather from it, I never use Williams anymore. DR Harris soaps have 10 times (conservatively) better lather with 1/5 the amount of work.