Foolproof Lather Discovery Process (TM) for any soap

[catchacoolbreeze]

Yes, I was just watching his face lathering video the other day. See, whenever I get that kind of volume of lather, his gets very pillowy and dense, I lose like all slickness and that is what I am trying to figure out. He scrubs/agitates the hell out of his and whenever I try that much agitation, I lose a ton of hydration no matter how much water I paint in and then agitate.

Yeah. He is a good example of how to get a good lather but it's not the way I do it.... That takes way to long and way to hard of agitation. It will get you tons of lather though.

I am guessing am more than double or triple the amount of light swirls or figure 8s to each medium swirl I do. Add water and repeat. My lather comes more from adding water than it does adding air.

By light pressure I mean basically no splay of brush. Seems to work great for me. I almost think of medium pressure and splay the way of think of water... Add a little at a time because too much and you blew it.

 

[Well_Groomed_Yeti]

Yeah. He is a good example of how to get a good lather but it's not the way I do it.... That takes way to long and way to hard of agitation. It will get you tons of lather though.

I am guessing am more than double or triple the amount of light swirls or figure 8s to each medium swirl I do. Add water and repeat. My lather comes more from adding water than it does adding air.

By light pressure I mean basically no splay of brush. Seems to work great for me. I almost think of medium pressure and splay the way of think of water... Add a little at a time because too much and you blew it.

Mmm, this is a great point… I suppose the splay is kinda like using a hand mixer, the more the mixer is in the bowl of mixture (brush fully splayed) the more it incorporates air into the mixture, whereas your method is gentle touching the surface adding as little air as possible while maintaining the integrity of the soap/water mixture.

My method is similar to yours.. my best results start with a heavy load, a heavy dose of water from a mister, then agitate it in, heavy dose of water from the mister, agitate, then I just do slow additions of water painted in until it gets really shiny. That’s the best way I’ve found to get a real slick lather… but that’s just what has worked best for me thus far. Marco Method has worked well for me too.

 

[EdHeart]

I am a Lather Master!

Not being braggadocious, just stating a fact. And you can be too! I'm here to teach you. No need for a Brotherhood of Lather Masters, every member of B&B should be a Lather Master.

Unfortunately, with so many people who enjoy this activity so much, and the more OCD of us probably tending to experiment and post more, I think some of us are confusing the dickens out of new shavers. We're well-meaning, but we're not helping. What follows is a 100% totally guaranteed lather method that works for any soap (or cream) with any brush, except possibly for stuff like Mitchell's Wool Fat or Williams Mug Soap.

If you are not using a scuttle (some soaps do not hold up to heat well), there are only three things that can go wrong with a soap lather.

1. Not enough product
2. Too much water
3. Not enough patience.

Different soaps do have different hydration requirements. If you don't have enough product, the product/water ratio becomes critical. If you start with too much water, there is no recovery from that, you toss your lather and start over. And it takes a little elbow grease to make a great lather. If you don't have the patience, go with Barbasol.

So, are you ready for the secret to the Foolproof Lather Method (TM)? Before the hand-wringing and recriminations begin, let me say this. This is not the best or the only way to make lather! There is the Marco (Italian Barber) method, the Modified Marco method, the contraption methods (glue pennies in the bottom of your bowl), and any number of other methods that work just fine. But if you are having trouble getting good lather and/or you are slinging it all over your bathroom, start here. Just start here. Play with the other stuff the OCD's post later, that's fine, I sometimes use other methods or I shortcut with products I know like the back of my hand.

Here are the secrets

• USE LESS WATER- DAMP BRUSH
• USE MORE PRODUCT
• CREEP UP ON THE WATER S-L-O-W-L-Y
• TAKE YOUR TIME

Example 1 - Soft Italian CROAP with Boar brush

Razorock Don Marco and a Sterling 24mm boar brush

So, first thing it to get your brush nearly dry, you can always add water, you can't take it out. You are going for LOADING THE BRUSH, not proto lather, not some thin soup that you hope will congeal into something workable later. Shake it, squeeze it. You want to load from the soap into the brush. If you are not picking up any soap, carefully dip just the very tippy tips of the brush in water and keep going. The top of the soap will look very, very dense, even gummy with some soaps, and the stuff in the brush will be very dense indeed. Get that off the soap with your fingers and onto your face.


View attachment 1323612

Now, work the brush in the bowl a bit. Notice this is a plain ceramic mug, no ridges, no glued pennies, none of that is bad, but none of it is needed, either. After about 15 seconds you'll have something like this, which obviously needs water.

View attachment 1323613

Now, dip just the tippy tips of the brush in water and continue whipping it up, doing however many dips are needed and however long it takes. I think this took about 4 little dips of water and about 90 seconds, but I hesitate to say that, because you don't count or time! This is not a recipe it's a method. The recipe is different for each soap. Counting swirls, or load time or water dips is where the problems start. This is where I go to my face.

View attachment 1323614

Now, lather on your face for a while, maybe 30 seconds. It will continue to build. If it needs it, dip the tippy tips in water and add some. S-L-O-W-L-Y. The photo below is after my first pass. I whipped the soap from the face lathered brush with what was in the bowl again for 15-20 seconds, vigorously. You may add water again, but it likely won't be necessary.

View attachment 1323611

The key to all this should make perfect logical sense. If you start with more product and less water than needed, you will be able to creep up on the proper hydration level slowly. If you start with either not enough product or too much water, or both, you cannot salvage things.

Damp, nearly dry brush
More Product
Add water slowly

Guaranteed success

Really appreciate your post, the instruction and the photos.

This technique is analogous to the technique I stumbled upon as a teenager doing the dishes after dinner (3 boys and my parents raised us doing all sorts of chores around the house. My position was dishes (among other things.) My brothers gave me the nickname "Chief Flush" if that gives you any idea of the other chore I had when we cleaned the house for my mom every Thursday after school.

But, I digress...Dishes!

Being bored and inquisitive I stumbled upon making bubbles with the dish soap while forming my hand into the "OK" sign to create the soap film.

- Too much water, bubbles didn't really form or burst too quickly.
- Too little water the film would not form and no bubbles.
- Goldilocks amount and you get large strong bubbles and can form bubbles within bubbles.

You get the idea and the analogy.

As I started out...I really appreciate your post, sharing your observations and experience. I also appreciate the utter simplicity in this approach to making great lather.

Hail to the Lather Maestro!!! May you slide smoothly and slipperly (coining a new word here) into the annals of DE shaving history.

 

[Relitaliano]

Example #3, an Artisan soap

Barrister & Mann, Reserve lavender and a TGN Best Badger 22mm reknot of an old Ever Ready handle.

This one can be finicky, and there's a half hour video on YouToobz talking about how thirsty this stuff is (and it is) and how it's a low-structure lather (won't be in stiff peaks, won't hold the brush up in the bowl). That's all true, but ... you guessed it. Use a damp, nearly dry brush and load a lot of product. I dipped the tips of the brush in water once for this load.

View attachment 1323617

Half a minute of lathering, obviously not ready yet.

View attachment 1323618

After adding water slowly and working it for a long time (this one took at least two minutes, for sure, again I don't time it) but you will creep up on the right hydration level. Do not be tempted to dump water in it because it's "thirsty". You go too far and you're cooked. Creep up on the right lather slowly. I took it to my face right here.

View attachment 1323619

After the first pass, mixed back in with the bowl lather for the second pass.

View attachment 1323620

When Bowl Lathering (captains choice obsidian) with Barrister and Mann “Lavanille” excelsior base (White tub with Horse on label) I usually use 1/4 tsp of soap and 10 ml of water added from a syringe for accuracy. I have noticed that adding the water slowly doesn’t seem to mix soap and water properly, while leaving too much water in the brush after squeezing out the lather by hand. If I dump 10 ml of water on top of the soap to begin with and then work it in to the soap, I seem to produce more consistent results?!

Would anyone know how many ml of water I should add to 1/4 tsp soap to lather perfectly? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

This is the method I am using: (I’m using a bigger brush 26” knot)

 

[Keto]

Probably depends on one's thought of a good mix, might just experiment .

 

[rally]

When Bowl Lathering (captains choice obsidian) with Barrister and Mann “Lavanille” excelsior base (White tub with Horse on label) I usually use 1/4 tsp of soap and 10 ml of water added from a syringe for accuracy. I have noticed that adding the water slowly doesn’t seem to mix soap and water properly, while leaving too much water in the brush after squeezing out the lather by hand. If I dump 10 ml of water on top of the soap to begin with and then work it in to the soap, I seem to produce more consistent results?!

Would anyone know how many ml of water I should add to 1/4 tsp soap to lather perfectly? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

This is the method I am using: (I’m using a bigger brush 26” knot)

I don't measure out my soap and water and I can't speak for Excelsior specifically, but I do have Omnibus. I load the brush straight from the tub for about 15-20 seconds, put some heavy drops of water in my bowl, and swirl the brush in the bowl with low intensity as the lather starts to build. It starts out very bubbly and the brush drinks up a lot of the water, so my solution to that is to gently squeeze the brush near the glue bump while the bristles are pointing down so that the water drips down to the tips. When I've done that, I start swirling the brush again and add water when it looks like either the lather is getting too airy or the brush isn't picking up any more water. Regardless, I always have to finish lathering with extra water on my face because of how thirsty Omnibus is.

Lathering is mostly feel-based in my opinion, and the cost in terms of time and frustration is too high to try to turn it from an art into a science. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Keep tinkering and have fun.

 

[JCinPA]

^^^^^ what he said, about feel.

I never understood the syringe thing, except if one was trying to accurately gauge the width of the hydration window when getting to know a new product, which I do with every new soap.

With what I stock regularly in my den,

• S.V Felce Aromatica
• Ethos Dragonsbeard
• Cella
• Tabac (tallow)
• Stirling Varen
• Proraso red cream
• Ach. Brito Lavanda
• TOBS Peppermint cream

I have done the foolproof process to discover how they behave. Now, whenever I pick one up, I nail the perfect lather for that particular product almost immediately. That's the purpose for this process, so you can discover that for a particular product. Ethos is about as far from Cella as you can get in terms of hydration window, but I get superlative results from both of them.

Once you go through the process, then you don't need a syringe, and you certainly don't need to overthink it. I don't think at all. Switching to Varen this morning for this fall week. I expect to nail the lather almost perfectly right out of the gate, maybe I'll need one, or at the very most, two dips of the brush tips in water, and I'm dialed in.

Because I did this process and I understand this product. People largely overthink this thing, IMO, and while this process may sound pretty involved and the very definition of overthinking it, it really is not. You take a few days (or in the case of the old B&M Reserve base, maybe a week) to figure the soap out, then you approach it with reckless abandon. You now own that sucker. No thinking required.

And certainly no syringes.

 

[Keto]

Again I think a perfect lather is in the eye of the user.
One person might think it's perfect for them but another might think it's to dry, to wet to many air bubbles etc..
Like @rally said keep tinkering and have fun with it.
My opinion if you want to measure it, go for it, write yourself some notes if you like so you can come back later and adjust to get to your perfect lather.
I've heard of a lot of people logging every shave with the products down to how many uses on a blade Etc with the spreadsheet. Personally I see no fun in it, but more power too if that's what they want to do it's kind of fun to see from the outside.

 

[rcg]

I am floundering with my lather, and CANNOT WAIT to come home and try your technique. After reading this, I already know I am using enough product, WAY too much water, and I am very impatient in general!

 

[rcg]

I hope you know I was using the Lather Master tongue in cheek, trying to get across the idea that anyone can do it. But to answer your question, I wasn't a total beginner, I had used Williams Mug Soap for nearly 20 years when I started here, with multi-blade carts. It was the only soap I used, every day, but I quickly started playing with other soaps here, and I would guess it was about 6 months to a year when I felt I could lather anything. But I was using some pretty easy soaps, too, Proraso green, Mama Bear, Tabac, Cella, the first "artisan" soap I tried was Queen Charlotte. I think all of those are fairly easy to lather, and while there are some very, very good soaps around today, some of them are a little more difficult.

Take the Barrister & Mann Reserve line, for instance. If you do a search, it stymied a fair number of experienced shavers here when it came out, and I mean experienced guys, not beginners. It's an altogether different type of lather than many of us were used to. But using the method I laid out I figured it out in about 6-10 shaves, I'd guess. Now I start with a wetter brush, load the proper amount and get to where I want it to be in a couple minutes. I was not the biggest fan at first, but now I love it, it's really slick. I would think SR shavers would love it. But it's a very different product from what I used before.

I think the reason so many new shavers have such troubles lathering is that they get into the long, detailed discussions of the old heads trying to figure out something like the B&M Reserve line, and get all wrapped around the axle. That's why I did this. Again, it's not the only way, it may not be the best way, but it is a way, and the only one I know of guaranteed to get beginner's on track. ylekot could lather B&M Reserve line like a bauss in a handful of shaves using this method.

One thing I think we old heads do wrong here is to get new shavers all excited about getting a half dozen razors right away, we recommend blade samplers so they can "find their blade", etcetera. I used to rail about this years ago, but gave up, we're such an enthusiastic bunch, it will continue. But I really wish more of us would tell them to get 100 Astra SP's, an EJ DE89 or a Muhle R89 (or a vintage tech), one cream or soap (maybe one cream and one soap), and one brush, and tell them to not get anything else until they shave for a month or three. Then go wild.

You'd be making great lather inside of a few days that way, and having much better shaves! Much of the frustration with newer shavers, I firmly believe, revolves around not locking anything down. The go from Gillette carts and Foamy every day, to three razors, a dozen blades, a half dozen soaps, and then get a ton of different advice ... it's a wonder to me any of you pick this up!

[/rant]

So, noobs, lather this way and don't worry about twisting hairs out of your brushes, lol, you'll be Lather Masters in short order.

So true, I wish I had taken your advice for that first month!