Dove Men+Care: Miracle Superlather Ingredient & Very Good for Shaving When Mixed with Ivory in 50/50 Blend

[Lane101]

As promised in my post on Big Jim's thread (link below) I've further experimented and tested Dove Men+Care (DMC) in various shaving soap blends. Overall results were as follows:

• Dove Men+Care is an excellent superlathering ingredient when combined with other shave soaps either per shave or in a home made blend. Just a little, mixed with other soaps, significantly enhances lathering ease and quality.
• A 50/50 mix (by weight) of DMC and Ivory Soap performs well as a shave soap that easily lathers and delivers very good slickness. Excellent option for those on a tight budget or looking for a bar soap option for shower use.

Big Jim tested Dove Men+Care (DMC) as a stand alone shave soap (link below) and found that the lather was too thick without enough slickness. That gave me the idea that it could be the ideal superlathering agent in a multi soap blend. The specifics of what I tested were as follows:

1. Loaded my boar brush on DMC for a few seconds before creating 100% Williams Mug Soap lather. Result was faster lather creation and enhanced lather resiliency. Slight reduction in slickness. Since I like Williams by itself and it's now a rare commodity no future plans to molest it.
2. Next I sunk a small chunk of DMC into one of my existing Van Der Williams blends (roughly 40% Van Der Haagen (VDH) Deluxe, 40% Williams & 20% Ivory) and was able to create lots of thick creamy lather much more easily than before while still retaining excellent slickness. Synthetic brush use here and on subsequent experiments.
3. Third was creation of a from scratch blend of a puck of Williams, one ounce of Ivory, one ounce of Dove Men+Care (roughly 15% of total) and a 2.5 ounce puck of VDH Deluxe (grate and mix the first three, melt the VDH and mix liquid into grated mix). Similar excellent results to the second test above. Note that since the melted VDH coats the grated soaps the full benefits of the blend don't manifest until a second use. Will continue to enjoy using this blend. As Williams is now scarce I may try this with Arko (have a dozen on the way) in the future.
4. Created a 100% bar soap blend of half Ivory and DMC out of curiosity. It was surprisingly good. The Ivory provided the missing slickness while the DMC contributed easy to produce rich and long lasting lather that is absent from Ivory alone. The great part of this simple mix is that it has the potential to be easily adjusted for personal preferences. Add more Ivory for slickness or more DMC for thicker lather. This is an excellent option for anyone on a tight budget. Definitely an option should I run through my reserve of Williams and inbound Arko. Note method was to grate and mix both with a small amount of water and then allowed the mixed puck to dry out.

Note that with DMC the blends are a bit more thirsty so anyone trying this will want to adjust how much water they use for their lather. While lots of our fellow shavers have posted on standalone use of DMC and Ivory no one has focused on DMC as a superlathering ingredient or posted on a DMC/Ivory blend hence the creation of a new thread was warranted. Only caveat is that Dove Men+Care, while a mild soap, is based on synthetic ingredients as others have noted. Will post some pictures in the near future when I have more time. Will continue to use the DMC as a superlathering ingredient option in my future blends since it works so well. Have been using Proraso in this way and the DMC works better.

Bottom Line: Dove Men+Care is a versatile low cost superlathering ingredient that can be used in a variety of ways to generate enhanced shaving lather. Mixed with Ivory it's and effective shave & shower option.

Dove Men+Care 3 in 1

I decided to give this a spin. So far I'm not particularly impressed. My speculation is that it is intended for shower shaving. With a lot of effort I could get it to bowl lather. The lather I got using a brush while holding the soap bar was too heavy, didn't provide mush slickness, and...

www.badgerandblade.com

 

[Lane101]

Promised picture of my 50% Dove Men+Care and 50% Ivory Soap brush/lather after my first pass of face lathering. Dove/Ivory blend is in the repurposed Van Der Hagen Deluxe soap container next to my brush. Plenty of lather that built further (added water as Dove is thirsty) for two more passes with lots left in the brush after my shave.

Second shave with this soap blend. After loading my brush the lather built easily and was plenty slick and did not dissipate. Almost as slick as my Arko, Williams and related blends. Did notice less residual slickness than the above soaps. Definitely a good option for anyone on a tight budget. Brush used is a Razorock synthetic Plissoft Monster brush with a 26mm knot and 63mm loft. Weishi long handle razor with a Dorco Prime blade on its' 11th shave for a BBS result. You can see my Blondie Boar brush (Zenith 80N) and one of my apothecary mugs in the background. While I normally start to build lather in the mug and finish with face lathering for this experiment it was 100% face lathering.

The one challenge with this is that unlike my other blends (Van Der Williams with small amounts of extras like Proraso, Ivory of Dove) the mix remains a bit crumbly (you can see this in the picture) even though I added some water to the mix and let it dry. Believe this is due to the Ivory being a malleable hard soap with the Dove a very dry/hard product. Suspect one would have to melt at least the Ivory in double boiler for this to hang together. In my other blends the microwavable Van Der Hagen is a very effective binding agent that allows the blends to hang together nicely as a reconstituted hard puck of soap.

Definitely a worthwhile experiment. Time now to go back to my Williams, blends and recently acquired Arko sticks.

 

[Lane101]

Just a quick note that Dove changed on of the main ingredients in its Dove Men+Care replacing the sodium tallowate/sodium palmate with sodium oleate. Some other minor ingredient changes such as the titanium dioxide (for color) may now be substituted with kaolin. Noticed this on a newly purchased package. Don't know if this will affect effectiveness for shaving though, based on others reports of recently purchased bars, best guess it the impact, if any, will be minimal.

 

[dmshaver]

Fascinating post, thank you for sharing!