That is a wonderful update parham. You'll get no shortage of help or opinions from this group!Okay! I thought I'd share my latest results with the suggestions that I picked from this thread.
First off, a picture of the lather I got, this time on the brush. Not sure if I myself am also visible in this photo:
View attachment 1788623
I built this lather in the bowl, and applied it to my face, and started shaving. This was using the Castle Forbes Lavender.
Here are my learnings:
I think, finally, I'm more confident to go out there, experiment, adjust, and learn experientially. You guys have given me the tools to evaluate different options, get feedback on my technique, and adjust when things need fixing. I'm very grateful to you all and hope that I can learn even more from you
- The first issue I faced during the shave was that I noticed the lather was a bit dry. It was very easy to wet the very tips of my fingers and apply the water straight to the lather on my face, using what I had learned while experimenting with @AimlessWanderer
- The second issue I faced was that, since this was almost the very end of my shaving cream, my lather ran out. It was very easy to swirl my finger underneath the nooks and crannies of the cream container, gather a bit on my finger, put that in my palm, and lather straight in my palm as @Alum of Potash described
- As I was lathering in my palm, I noticed that the lather was a bit too dry. I tried two ways of adding water:
- The first was to do what @ralph029 suggested: grab some with my finger and drop it into a bowl (well, in this case, my palm). I could feel 8 or so drops fall on my palm, which is great
- The second was something I thought of, which was to very barely open the tap, until I hear the "tap, tap, tap" of drops falling into the sink. When it hit a rhythm, I held the brush under the tap until I couldn't hear the drops hit the sink any more, which meant they were falling on my brush instead! Then, since I knew the rate at which the drops were falling, I could estimate how long it'd take for 4 drops to fall on my brush
- I got to experience first hand what many of you had been saying, the last time by @ralph029: soaps/creams are very different, and so it goes with Speick vs Castle Forbes. I could add a lot more water to the Castle Forbes lather, either in my palm, or in the bowl, or directly on my face with my fingers, and the cream would still hold its shape. However, I also noticed that even at its most wet, it was too thick/dry for me
- Although many people here don't see much value in a pre-shave cream, applying the Proraso Sensitive pre-shave cream in the second and third pass gave me a really supple face feel after the shave, and also helped me get a much closer shave than just with Castle Forbes. I'm going to continue using pre-shaves while my razor and lathering technique improves, so that I can get the super smooth shave I love
- And finally, my biggest achievement: at last, I think I can tell when a lather isn't good because of my technique, versus when it is not my fault, and I just don't like the way the cream feels