Face, bowl, mug

Is there a benefit to lathering one way or another or is it just preference? I've mainly been lathering right from my stirling containers since I started wet shaving. I'm open to suggestions.

I face lather with harder soaps. Bowl lather with creams.

Face lather with Arko sticks. Mug lather with Williams pucks.

Face with everything.

For me, I like to scuttle lather my creams, face lather Cella (for best performance), face lather Stirling, and scuttle lather my Tabac soap(unorthodox way of scuttle lathering, as I load the brush hard and squeeze the brush into the scuttle). Then I fine tune the lather from there. Tabac can be finicky. I guess it all depends on the soap or cream.

I bowl lather most of the time. I only face lather when a bowl is not available, like when traveling.

It's all personal preference. No one method is better than the other.

I've done them all, liked them all. Mug lathering is good for if you have a soap you use most of the time and simply keep it in its own mug. Bowl lathering is good of you want to use a soap one-time, and flake some of it into a bowl. Shave sticks are ideally formed for face lathering. Some, such as Turkish Master, do not lather well with other methods. The only drawback of face lathering is that for additional passes, what is left on the brush is all you have unless you apply and lather some more. If the brush is rough, repeated face lathering may sting.

Oh boy you done did it. This thread might explode . I always bring out a large soup mug during my shave and use it to bowl lather 90% of the time but the other times when I'm face lathering I still bring it out just to add my excess to so I can go back to it if I need. I also like to keep my brush in the mug with the knot facing down and the handle in the air so water doesn't flow into the knot. Just a little OCD

captp said:

It's all personal preference. No one method is better than the other.

Click to expand...

What Georg said. I face lather most of the time. But when I first started shaving I used a mug. In fact, it was only when I joined B&B that I tried face lathering for the first time after many years of shaving.

I use my scuttle at all times. I store the brush handle up too!

It really is all up to you. I also just started and I tried it all:
Face lathering with a stick: for me it takes time and I have to reapply soap between each pass.
Face lathering with a loaded brush: again takes time but I don't have to reload.
Bowl lathering: I'm poor, I had a old instant noddle bowl that was had in the kitchen. I just grabbed it washed it like crazy, left it alone for a week and now its just my soap bowl . Again it takes time to dial the soap.
Dry brush: just a cleaner way to make a lather.
Wet brush: just makes a big mess. Lather may go flyin.

I may not have to clean my bathroom (because someone else does it,) but others do use it besides me. So, I have have picked using a Dry brush and Bowl (will be buying a new scuttle, (I still go to college, So I may just ask someone in the art department to make me one, Oh on that note maybe a brush too.) I have one stick that I will use to travel with, that's why I learned to face lather. I just hope I can learn how to dial in the stick, so I don't have to reapply (It could very well be the soap and not me or both.)

Back to the point at hand, it is really up to you and what you want to learn. I just ask that you try them all. Any way you make your lather is not hard to learn its just a YMMV.

Creams: Bowl / Scuttle with Silvertip

Soaps: Depends on my brush- I prefer a scuttle using my boar brushes with shorter bristles.
-I prefer a face lather straight from the mug with my Omega 10098 with the longer bristles. I mostly use this brush and method in the warmer months when a cooler shave does me more good.

I always face lather with soaps & sticks - always with a fan shaped horsehair brush
Sometimes I face lather with croaps, sometimes I bowl/mug lather - fan shaped horsehair brush for face lather, fan shaped dark badger brush for bowl/mug lather
I always bowl/mug lather with creams - always with a bulb shaped best pure badger brush
I always use a mug/bowl for mixing superlather - always with a fan shaped dark badger brush

Mug of choice with Dark Badger Brush (Horsehair Brush in background)



Bowl of choice with Best Pure Badger Brush (Dark Badger & Horsehair Brushes in background)



Palm lather with Horsehair Brush

I'm in the group that says it is all personal preference. Personally I face lather exclusively as using a bowl/scuttle does nothing for me but add clutter to the counter top and is just another item to clean and store.

Never thought of "mug lathering" as a separate method. It is just another type of container that holds the soap that you load the brush from before either face lathering or making your lather in a bowl/scuttle.

Bob

I always face lather. It's very quick and easy - less than a minute. Working up a lather in a bowl is way too much work to me. I wanna shave, not work up a lather.

Purely personal preference

Only face lathering, because that's how I learned, and that's how I shave from the first day I stared shaving, every other way of doing it is alien to me, even using canned goo.

captp said:

It's all personal preference. No one method is better than the other.

Click to expand...

+1 this.

I only face lather. Tried bowl, but didn't work for me. The part of building up lather on my face is probably the most enjoyable part of my shaving routine.