In December I compared five shaving soaps to see how protective they are <http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=121328>. I compared them in pairs on each side on my face, shaving with the same side of the razor on both. I varied the lather from wet to dry and thought I found reliable differences in protectiveness. This surprised me but I thought I had covered a broad enough range of lather to make the test valid, so I posted my observations.
Since then I have revisited the issue with those soaps plus five more, and decided that my test was inadequate. I can overcome any apparent difference in protectiveness just by increasing the amount of soap on my face. Not the amount of lather, which is a combination of air, water and soap, but the amount of soap. An "unprotective" soap like MamaBear's merely requires a thicker dry lather than I had tried before.
I do find differences among soaps in how quickly the lather builds up to whatever consistency is required. This might matter if I shaved with hard water but with our soft water the differences are trivial. So far I have found only one soap whose lather I dislike: Williams. Williams shaves as well as any other soap but I find that its lather breaks down too quickly, so that it becomes difficult to see where the razor has travelled.
Since then I have revisited the issue with those soaps plus five more, and decided that my test was inadequate. I can overcome any apparent difference in protectiveness just by increasing the amount of soap on my face. Not the amount of lather, which is a combination of air, water and soap, but the amount of soap. An "unprotective" soap like MamaBear's merely requires a thicker dry lather than I had tried before.
I do find differences among soaps in how quickly the lather builds up to whatever consistency is required. This might matter if I shaved with hard water but with our soft water the differences are trivial. So far I have found only one soap whose lather I dislike: Williams. Williams shaves as well as any other soap but I find that its lather breaks down too quickly, so that it becomes difficult to see where the razor has travelled.
