Does anyone else shave with my weird technique using no Cream/Soap?

[Eben Stone]

Do any of these brushless products work with hard water? I have hard water and most of the recommendations for slick soaps have been a hard disappointment. I tried the Jack Black beard lube and I thought it was mostly terrible in terms of slickness. Maybe I wasn't using it right

 

[parham]

I am not sure if you want to go that direction, but it might be something worth trying.

I just had a chat with him a couple of hours ago, and my understanding is that his issue isn't that he can't build a good quality lather. The way he describes it is that having lather between the blade and his face doesn't give him a close enough shave. That's why he's gone the way of getting a slant razor, loosening the head, putting in an Astra blade, and even going as far as using shampoo in place of Skinfood.
I'm definitely intrigued, I'm at least going to give the Skinfood a try.

 

[parham]

Do any of these brushless products work with hard water? I have hard water and most of the recommendations for slick soaps have been a hard disappointment. I tried the Jack Black beard lube and I thought it was mostly terrible in terms of slickness. Maybe I wasn't using it right

As far as I understand, he uses the water just to wet the blade so that it'd wet the Skinfood a little. I don't think it's going to turn into lather or anything like that, and I imagine anything that's wet would do the job.

 

[Ice09]

Do any of these brushless products work with hard water? I have hard water and most of the recommendations for slick soaps have been a hard disappointment. I tried the Jack Black beard lube and I thought it was mostly terrible in terms of slickness. Maybe I wasn't using it right

Interesting thread. I've also got very hard water where I live and I never seem to get the lather like in any of the videos I've seen.
I guess I should try softer water and see what happens.

Having said that, I feel that I don't get as close of a shave as I'm looking for with the shaving soaps. I'm a head shaver, and the back on my head still usually has quite a bit of stubble left after the 3rd pass (WTG, XTG and the ATG for the third pass). I usually do a 4th and 5th pass at the back of my head with short strokes and a minimal amount of shaving cream just to get it to somewhere in between DFS/BBS (sometimes I require a 6th pass).

 

[madmedic]

Trumpers Skinfood is basically nice smelling glycerine. Nivea Menmalist would do the same thing at a fraction of the cost as it is glycerine based as well

 

[Eben Stone]

Interesting thread. I've also got very hard water where I live and I never seem to get the lather like in any of the videos I've seen.
I guess I should try softer water and see what happens.

If you're taking about lather that looks like meringue you're not missing anything. Those foamy air bubbles don't provide slickness.

Now if you're talking about lather that looks like it came out of a soft serve ice cream machine then that is something I've never been able to replicate. My lather looks like Yoplait yogurt.

A lot of soaps and creams work well for me even with hard water. SV, B&M, SW, Sudsy Soapery, Boellis Panama, Proraso, and Palmolive are all very slick and easy to lather even with hard water.

 

[DesertIguana]

I have shaved with Bar Body Soap from time to time, real shave soap works better.