I have enjoyed many an hour spent reading through the threads here. A couple weeks ago I happened on a discussion regarding the use of scuttles (or not) to achieve warm lathering. Now, I’m a science kind of guy up until math is involved, at which point I respectfully tap out. One thing I really enjoy about B&B is how many guys like to see what the Great Oz is up to behind the curtain, and so went my curiosity as regards a warm brush and lather.
I’m not certain I’m a scuttle kind of guy. It would seem to me that to arrive at and maintain any consistency in temperature would require a metal inner bowl and a ceramic outer shell. To my knowledge no such beast exists — metal is a conductor, therefore it will essentially transfer/move heat away from the lather . . . ceramic is an insulator, so it should be able to more capably retain, or at least retard, heat transfer/loss.
I suppose ideally you’d want something like a thermos—something with an inner chamber which contains a vacuum. Again, I have yet to see such a shaving unicorn anywhere.
I have noted someone who floats his metal bowl in a sink full of hot water; not a horrible idea but as someone else stated you have to be careful about how you balance the brush in it . . . if you leave the brush in the lathering bowl, that is.
My routine:
So by the time I’m applying brush to face the lather isn’t really warm, per se, but it’s not cold either. The brush seems to be just warmed through enough to prevent a cold froth upon the face. But I couldn’t resist the urge to tinker a bit and see if there might be another approach.
What follows is nowhere near as cool or scientific as this thread of different blades scanned by an electron microscope. But it's something I could have a little fun with and learn something at the same time.
Clearly there are lots of variables affecting the ability to have consistently warm lather for an entire shave: ambient room temperature, loss of heat simply creating lather and moving brush around the face, movement of heat from bristles into cooler soap. But I can control—to some degree—the brush soak water. How to get the brush [understanding, of course, that different brushes react to or retain heat differently, if at all] to retain the greatest amount of warmth and transfer that to the lather on the face . . . at least for the first pass.
So I picked up a USB mug warmer for under $8 to satisfy my inner Bill Nye.
I know it’s inarguably against best practice to use really hot water on brushes, and certainly don’t want to get it on or too near the glue/epoxy of the knot’s end. So I wanted to be reasonable in my approach to my little experiment.
Control/Reference Temp:
Hot water from my tap is 103.8˚F
Ambient temp from water filter (explained below): 68.5˚F
Thermometer type: Digital Probe; not the ultimate accuracy I would like but’s it what I have to work with! I would love to have an infrared reader, though.
Apparatus: Two coffee mugs of slightly different construct/materials/thickness; one USB mug warmer; small sandstone trivet. None of my mugs are flat bottomed, all have a lip and these two have a very slight difference in that lip thickness.
Water used: obtained from 3-stage under-counter filter system in kitchen to reduce/minimize variables due to extra minerals in straight tap water. Water passes through sediment filter, then granulated activated carbon (GAC) filter, then ‘polished’ through an extruded carbon block filter.
Warming plate temperature: approximately 120˚F
Control: Placed hot tap water (not filtered water) in mug (the one with the thicker lip). Let it sit on the counter at room temperature like I had been up to now:
Starting temp: 103.8˚F
After 15 minutes: 90.1˚F
Within about 60 sec it fell to 89.4˚F
Having my amateur baseline in place I set upon further experimentation to better understand all the variables at play. So I plugged in the warmer and let it get up to temp.
Mug 1 (thicker bottom lip): Filled mug with filtered water up to the point where only the bristles would submerge. Heated mug in microwave (no, not with brush inside!) for 30 seconds on high. Temperature rose to 110.3˚F. Placed mug on warmer plate and set timer for 15 minutes—roughly the same amount of time as a shower, dry off, etc.
After 15 minutes: 105.3˚F
Another 15 minutes: 97.7˚F
Monitored the temp during another 20 minutes and it dropped slowly but steadily. I didn’t wait to see where it ultimately leveled off.
Worth noting that since neither of the mugs are flat-bottomed only the lip is in contact with the warming plate. In theory there should be air trapped between the flat plate and the concave bottom of the mug, although I would imagine there are enough microscopic holes in the ceramic/material to allow for sufficient heat loss as opposed to a bubble of insulating warm air beneath the mug.
C'mon . . . you're not surprised it had penguins on it, are you?
Mug 2 (white/thinner bottom lip): Added a small sandstone trivet (circular, made to fit in a vehicle cup holder); placed that on top of the warmer so the mug can sit directly on the stone. Perhaps the stone will provide more thermal load and transfer to the wider surface area of the mug bottom. With the only contact being the lip much less surface area is utilized for heat transfer which would mean the heat loss would far outweigh any heat input. Heated water in this mug for the same 30 seconds . . . temp after heating 108˚F.
After about 7.5 minutes: down to 105.6˚F
15 minutes: 101.8˚F
Another 15 minutes: 94.7˚F
Removed the trivet from the warmer and it was indeed warm. I was concerned perhaps it wasn’t going to heat through, but it did. Placed the mug directly on the warmer (again, this mug has a thinner lip on the bottom) to see what the drop is like without the trivet . . .90.1˚F after around 20 minutes.
Objective Results: The temperature difference between the two mugs—even when using the sandstone trivet—wasn’t what I would consider substantial, although it wasn’t minuscule either. I guess the best word would be ’negligible’ .
Now that I had a better understanding of the objective elements it was time to see what the carryover was using two different brushes: a Vie Long horsehair and Lather & Wood Pure badger. I would use the same water, same mug (#1), and same soap—Stone Cottage Oxford , one of 5 samples from Stone Cottage Shaving (a rationalization that I wasn’t fully committing to any SAD, but seriously, who am I kidding?)
As a side note, Oxford is my third sample from this artisan (the other two were Basilico and Rain Fields) and all of them have had fantastic, slick, creaminess to them. Lather easy and they spread like warm butter, an absolute joy to use so far. I could shorten my shave time if I didn’t spend so much time indulging in the application of soap/lather, but it’s probably my favorite part of the shave.
My bowls--in case anyone was really wondering. The one on the right is my daily use bowl, the left my travel bowl . . .
Horsehair: Bristles were warm but certainly nothing approaching hot, which was the goal. Lathered well in the bowl and once the brush was satisfactorily loaded I started lathering my face. I could easily discern a gentle warmth to the soap, but frankly not the kind of warmth you get when you pull a towel fresh out of the dryer. . . . not that close-your-eyes-and-sigh kind of warmth. But it does beat applying cool lather on a cool morning. It was nice but not quite the kind of “ohhhhh yeah, that’s the stuff!” kind of warm I was hoping for.
Badger: Right away I sensed a little more warmth than yesterday with the horsehair—to be fair still not the holy grail of shave euphoria I sought, but warm nonetheless. The sensation attenuated at about the same rate as yesterday. Overall, when taking the entirety of the first pass into account, I’d say they’re very similar in total heat/warmth delivery, but I think I liked the initial application with the badger just a little more for its extra touch of warmth.
An interesting plus to keeping the fresh water warmed was being able to set the razor in the warmed water while re-lathering between passes. I’m sure this warmed the blade a little and it actually made wiping the razor down easier at the end.
The ‘heat delivery’ part is so subjective, I get that. Hard to quantify something like that because everyones skin sensitivity varies. But then, I think ketchup on eggs is disgusting, so what do I know?
I’m not certain I’m a scuttle kind of guy. It would seem to me that to arrive at and maintain any consistency in temperature would require a metal inner bowl and a ceramic outer shell. To my knowledge no such beast exists — metal is a conductor, therefore it will essentially transfer/move heat away from the lather . . . ceramic is an insulator, so it should be able to more capably retain, or at least retard, heat transfer/loss.
I suppose ideally you’d want something like a thermos—something with an inner chamber which contains a vacuum. Again, I have yet to see such a shaving unicorn anywhere.
I have noted someone who floats his metal bowl in a sink full of hot water; not a horrible idea but as someone else stated you have to be careful about how you balance the brush in it . . . if you leave the brush in the lathering bowl, that is.
My routine:
- Shower to fully clean and hydrate my face and stubble
- Just before shutting off the water I fill a small container with hot (not screaming hot, as you'll read below) water, turn off the shower, then immediately place the container on the bathroom counter and place the day’s brush into it to soak while I dry off, etc.
- I tend to use softer soaps (or croups). I do have a couple harder pucks in my rotation, so if I use one of them I will place some hot tap water on the puck to blossom while I shower, then use the blossom water to sort of pre-treat the beard.
- Load the brush and start the lather in a bowl then, once nicely loaded, build the remainder on my face.
So by the time I’m applying brush to face the lather isn’t really warm, per se, but it’s not cold either. The brush seems to be just warmed through enough to prevent a cold froth upon the face. But I couldn’t resist the urge to tinker a bit and see if there might be another approach.
What follows is nowhere near as cool or scientific as this thread of different blades scanned by an electron microscope. But it's something I could have a little fun with and learn something at the same time.
Clearly there are lots of variables affecting the ability to have consistently warm lather for an entire shave: ambient room temperature, loss of heat simply creating lather and moving brush around the face, movement of heat from bristles into cooler soap. But I can control—to some degree—the brush soak water. How to get the brush [understanding, of course, that different brushes react to or retain heat differently, if at all] to retain the greatest amount of warmth and transfer that to the lather on the face . . . at least for the first pass.
So I picked up a USB mug warmer for under $8 to satisfy my inner Bill Nye.
I know it’s inarguably against best practice to use really hot water on brushes, and certainly don’t want to get it on or too near the glue/epoxy of the knot’s end. So I wanted to be reasonable in my approach to my little experiment.
Control/Reference Temp:
Hot water from my tap is 103.8˚F
Ambient temp from water filter (explained below): 68.5˚F
Thermometer type: Digital Probe; not the ultimate accuracy I would like but’s it what I have to work with! I would love to have an infrared reader, though.
Apparatus: Two coffee mugs of slightly different construct/materials/thickness; one USB mug warmer; small sandstone trivet. None of my mugs are flat bottomed, all have a lip and these two have a very slight difference in that lip thickness.
Water used: obtained from 3-stage under-counter filter system in kitchen to reduce/minimize variables due to extra minerals in straight tap water. Water passes through sediment filter, then granulated activated carbon (GAC) filter, then ‘polished’ through an extruded carbon block filter.
Warming plate temperature: approximately 120˚F
Control: Placed hot tap water (not filtered water) in mug (the one with the thicker lip). Let it sit on the counter at room temperature like I had been up to now:
Starting temp: 103.8˚F
After 15 minutes: 90.1˚F
Within about 60 sec it fell to 89.4˚F
Having my amateur baseline in place I set upon further experimentation to better understand all the variables at play. So I plugged in the warmer and let it get up to temp.
Mug 1 (thicker bottom lip): Filled mug with filtered water up to the point where only the bristles would submerge. Heated mug in microwave (no, not with brush inside!) for 30 seconds on high. Temperature rose to 110.3˚F. Placed mug on warmer plate and set timer for 15 minutes—roughly the same amount of time as a shower, dry off, etc.
After 15 minutes: 105.3˚F
Another 15 minutes: 97.7˚F
Monitored the temp during another 20 minutes and it dropped slowly but steadily. I didn’t wait to see where it ultimately leveled off.
Worth noting that since neither of the mugs are flat-bottomed only the lip is in contact with the warming plate. In theory there should be air trapped between the flat plate and the concave bottom of the mug, although I would imagine there are enough microscopic holes in the ceramic/material to allow for sufficient heat loss as opposed to a bubble of insulating warm air beneath the mug.
C'mon . . . you're not surprised it had penguins on it, are you?
Mug 2 (white/thinner bottom lip): Added a small sandstone trivet (circular, made to fit in a vehicle cup holder); placed that on top of the warmer so the mug can sit directly on the stone. Perhaps the stone will provide more thermal load and transfer to the wider surface area of the mug bottom. With the only contact being the lip much less surface area is utilized for heat transfer which would mean the heat loss would far outweigh any heat input. Heated water in this mug for the same 30 seconds . . . temp after heating 108˚F.
After about 7.5 minutes: down to 105.6˚F
15 minutes: 101.8˚F
Another 15 minutes: 94.7˚F
Removed the trivet from the warmer and it was indeed warm. I was concerned perhaps it wasn’t going to heat through, but it did. Placed the mug directly on the warmer (again, this mug has a thinner lip on the bottom) to see what the drop is like without the trivet . . .90.1˚F after around 20 minutes.
Objective Results: The temperature difference between the two mugs—even when using the sandstone trivet—wasn’t what I would consider substantial, although it wasn’t minuscule either. I guess the best word would be ’negligible’ .
Now that I had a better understanding of the objective elements it was time to see what the carryover was using two different brushes: a Vie Long horsehair and Lather & Wood Pure badger. I would use the same water, same mug (#1), and same soap—Stone Cottage Oxford , one of 5 samples from Stone Cottage Shaving (a rationalization that I wasn’t fully committing to any SAD, but seriously, who am I kidding?)
As a side note, Oxford is my third sample from this artisan (the other two were Basilico and Rain Fields) and all of them have had fantastic, slick, creaminess to them. Lather easy and they spread like warm butter, an absolute joy to use so far. I could shorten my shave time if I didn’t spend so much time indulging in the application of soap/lather, but it’s probably my favorite part of the shave.
My bowls--in case anyone was really wondering. The one on the right is my daily use bowl, the left my travel bowl . . .
Horsehair: Bristles were warm but certainly nothing approaching hot, which was the goal. Lathered well in the bowl and once the brush was satisfactorily loaded I started lathering my face. I could easily discern a gentle warmth to the soap, but frankly not the kind of warmth you get when you pull a towel fresh out of the dryer. . . . not that close-your-eyes-and-sigh kind of warmth. But it does beat applying cool lather on a cool morning. It was nice but not quite the kind of “ohhhhh yeah, that’s the stuff!” kind of warm I was hoping for.
Badger: Right away I sensed a little more warmth than yesterday with the horsehair—to be fair still not the holy grail of shave euphoria I sought, but warm nonetheless. The sensation attenuated at about the same rate as yesterday. Overall, when taking the entirety of the first pass into account, I’d say they’re very similar in total heat/warmth delivery, but I think I liked the initial application with the badger just a little more for its extra touch of warmth.
An interesting plus to keeping the fresh water warmed was being able to set the razor in the warmed water while re-lathering between passes. I’m sure this warmed the blade a little and it actually made wiping the razor down easier at the end.
The ‘heat delivery’ part is so subjective, I get that. Hard to quantify something like that because everyones skin sensitivity varies. But then, I think ketchup on eggs is disgusting, so what do I know?
