JCinPA
The Lather Maestro
@ylekot Buckle up, buttercup, we're about to put the hammer down now!
So, for those of you who followed my Foolproof Lather Method (TM) - Any soap, Any brush, it may have sounded a little braggadocious, but it was...
You cannot fail to stumble into a good lather if you start way below the proper hydration level and slowly sneak up on it. I also mentioned in that thread that my method was not the only method. It was not the best method. I said there were plenty of other methods that worked. So why did I post that?
Well for folks like ylekot having trouble learning to lather, and for us more experienced shavers trying to dial in a new product that method is foolproof and guaranteed (I know, because I am a fool!), because it guarantees you will come up to the proper hydration level from underneath. From waaaaay underneath, because you use a lot of product and not much water. The excess product makes for a wider acceptance window when you start adding water, as well, so a learner is more likely to stop with something acceptably hydrated rather than overshoot it by a bunch. Apparently, it helped ylekot in very short order.
The thing that is confusing to new shavers by all our nuanced discussions about lathering is we've been at this a while. If someone says don't shake the water out of the brush, and I see he's using a 22mm best badger knot, and I have a 24mm finest or a 24 mm synthetic, I'm experienced enough to know I must shake some of the water out of my brush to equal the water retention in his brush. For someone new, I'm not at all sure that would be obvious.
Brushes hold a very variable amount of water. Very variable. You couldn't make marinara sauce with instructions like, "soak your brush and don't shake any water out." Yikes, that's not a recipe! But as was pointed out in the last thread, making such stiff initial lather probably stresses the brush, and it takes a while to get to a decent lather. You don't want to stop with that technique. It's guaranteed to work, which is why I did that tutorial, but where do you go from there?
Well I thought I'd start with a much-beloved soap, but one which has posed a bit of a lather problem to many of us experienced shavers. It's Barrister & Mann's Reserve base. It's an extremely thirsty soap, and starts out kinda gummy if you don't use enough water. And if you start out getting a lot of that gummy lather it can take forever to hydrate it and then you're left with like a quart container of Cool Whip-looking stuff. Yeah, there's a 30 minute video by West Coast Shaving with the proprietor of B&M, but who has time for that?
So, I started with my Foolproof (TM) method to get a feel for the soap and how it behaves. @ylekot the process I am about to describe is called "Dialing It In". It may not take too long, but you don't want to shortcut it. The key is starting out with the hydration level below where it should be so you can sneak up on it. The Foolproof (TM) method assures this, but once you use a product enough to know what neighborhood it lives in, you can start out closer to where the correct hydration is, rather than very dry. The Foolproof (TM) method is meant to be a starting point, that's all.
So, in the B&M video I see the proprietor wants to start out with a wet brush (not defined, the brush size/type or what 'wet' means) and do "25 swirls" on the soap. This is the kind of non-specific nonsense that is totally unhelpful. So. Once I discovered the gummy stage with B&M Reserve, using the Foolproof (TM) method, and wanting to go beyond that, I got to this.
(continued next post)
So, for those of you who followed my Foolproof Lather Method (TM) - Any soap, Any brush, it may have sounded a little braggadocious, but it was...
You cannot fail to stumble into a good lather if you start way below the proper hydration level and slowly sneak up on it. I also mentioned in that thread that my method was not the only method. It was not the best method. I said there were plenty of other methods that worked. So why did I post that?
Well for folks like ylekot having trouble learning to lather, and for us more experienced shavers trying to dial in a new product that method is foolproof and guaranteed (I know, because I am a fool!), because it guarantees you will come up to the proper hydration level from underneath. From waaaaay underneath, because you use a lot of product and not much water. The excess product makes for a wider acceptance window when you start adding water, as well, so a learner is more likely to stop with something acceptably hydrated rather than overshoot it by a bunch. Apparently, it helped ylekot in very short order.
The thing that is confusing to new shavers by all our nuanced discussions about lathering is we've been at this a while. If someone says don't shake the water out of the brush, and I see he's using a 22mm best badger knot, and I have a 24mm finest or a 24 mm synthetic, I'm experienced enough to know I must shake some of the water out of my brush to equal the water retention in his brush. For someone new, I'm not at all sure that would be obvious.
Brushes hold a very variable amount of water. Very variable. You couldn't make marinara sauce with instructions like, "soak your brush and don't shake any water out." Yikes, that's not a recipe! But as was pointed out in the last thread, making such stiff initial lather probably stresses the brush, and it takes a while to get to a decent lather. You don't want to stop with that technique. It's guaranteed to work, which is why I did that tutorial, but where do you go from there?
Well I thought I'd start with a much-beloved soap, but one which has posed a bit of a lather problem to many of us experienced shavers. It's Barrister & Mann's Reserve base. It's an extremely thirsty soap, and starts out kinda gummy if you don't use enough water. And if you start out getting a lot of that gummy lather it can take forever to hydrate it and then you're left with like a quart container of Cool Whip-looking stuff. Yeah, there's a 30 minute video by West Coast Shaving with the proprietor of B&M, but who has time for that?
So, I started with my Foolproof (TM) method to get a feel for the soap and how it behaves. @ylekot the process I am about to describe is called "Dialing It In". It may not take too long, but you don't want to shortcut it. The key is starting out with the hydration level below where it should be so you can sneak up on it. The Foolproof (TM) method assures this, but once you use a product enough to know what neighborhood it lives in, you can start out closer to where the correct hydration is, rather than very dry. The Foolproof (TM) method is meant to be a starting point, that's all.
So, in the B&M video I see the proprietor wants to start out with a wet brush (not defined, the brush size/type or what 'wet' means) and do "25 swirls" on the soap. This is the kind of non-specific nonsense that is totally unhelpful. So. Once I discovered the gummy stage with B&M Reserve, using the Foolproof (TM) method, and wanting to go beyond that, I got to this.
(continued next post)
