Hydrolast/Method Shaving Journal

[jwcarlson]

Until this thread I had always been a casual observer of Hydrolast products and Method Shaving. I'd seen some of the videos Charles Roberts posted on YouTube and I'd seen the Method Shaving series that Mantic59 (Mark) did on YouTube as well. I won't get into the exact reasons why, but I decided to purchase a starter kit. $25 and a chance to try pretty much everything they offer for wet shaving.

Here's the kit. It includes the shave cloth (about a square foot which is bigger than I imagined), cutting balm, activator, primer (soap), shaving paste, and some aftershave conditioner. I got an "Ocean" scented soap and Peppermint aftershave conditioner (Ocean by chance Peppermint by request).

Here's a closeup of the paste for Manco:

Before I jump into the actual shave let me give you a little background of where I'm at in my facial hair removal journey. I've been traditional wet shaving for a little over a year. DE first... then a SR... then a SE. Got decent shaves with all of them pretty universally. But recently I've had pangs to venture beyond my mild, two pass shave (my standard shave is WTG then XTG result is irritation free and perfectly presentable). I have very light colored facial hair on most of my face so every other day is fine, but I do shave daily on occasion. I want to reach a little deeper and get some extra hair off my face. Two particular areas drive me to do this. They're the very last inch to inch and a half of the hair on my neck, they grow in a strange pattern and they lay, literally, flat on the skin. The left side grows south to north and the right grows north to south with the final inch or so being south to north. This obviously creates some issues trying to shave WTG in these areas because it's impossible to cut each hair individually. While I can remove and make these areas presentable with a standard shave... if I'm trying to get these spots more smooth I open myself up to irritation if I get too aggressive. So this brings me to one of the main reasons I found Method Shaving interesting... disregard for beard grain.

The shave...

I started by soaking the shave cloth and the soap (primer) in the sink for about a minute. I'm a cold water shaver so I used cold water, but not the coldest available out of the tap. Is was no where near warm, however. The first observation... when I run the water over the soap it releases this "sheen" on top of the water and the water gets kind of "infused" with some sort of slippery substance (oil?). You can kind of see the sheen in this picture:

Then I worked the soap in the cloth as Charles describes in one of his YouTube videos. As others have noticed some of the techniques seem to change each time but this is another reason this "method" appeals to me. Customization. So after getting some soap going I realize I haven't added any activator. I have no clue what this is but I throw three pumps into the cloth and work the soap a little more. This is a very slippery mix! So now the video calls for cutting balm, I grab the bottle and I encounter my first issue. I can't grip the bottle to toggle the top. Finally I use two hands and grapple the top open and add some cutting balm. It looks a little like olive oil, has a nice scent, and is slightly thinner than olive oil. I take the puck of soap out of the mix and place it by the sink. I work the cutting balm into the mix and it gets even more slippery. Now I'm supposed to work the mix into my face with my fingertips. Done.

Observation: This looks thin and I was thinking the same thing when I was putting it on my face. I'm sure my mix is not 100% "perfect" but it sure felt pretty good. A simple wipe of the hand across the face and it turned into a uniform layer... hard to get a picture of with my cellphone and being by myself. By the time I rinse and scrub enough to get my hands on my phone it looks like this picture again. I think Charles shows it in one of his videos maybe? He wipes his hand across his face and the "lather" or mix comes right back. It's kind of interesting.

The leftovers scraped off my hands and onto the towel:

Now the shaving paste... and my second issue. It took me at least a minute to get the top off of the shaving paste. I had to rinse and scrub my hands on a towel to get enough grip to be able to twist the top off. Note to self: have all products ready to go before beginning the shave. I finally get the top off and snag some paste. I think I grabbed too much as it pretty visibly darkened the tint of the mix on my face.
No pictures here because nothing really significant occured or changed. The mix just changed color a little and thickened up a bit because of the paste.

Now for the shaving... my Method Shaving techniques need a little study here. I know the first and second cutting forms but I have no clue what the third and fourth are. I'm mainly concerned with the first and second at this point anyway. So I'm lathered up and I have a brand new Feather loaded in my Merkur 34C. First form (north to south) on my cheeks, jaw line, and upper lip are uneventful and comfortable. No issues. North to south on my neck, which is actually ATG on a good portion of it goes similarly... I'm surprised in a good way. It's worth noting that I'm shaving faster than I normally do, mainly because I wanted to test some of the claims. I don't have a video but I shaved my cheeks and did way more passes than I needed without relathering or anything. So first form is done, time for ear to nose pass (second form). I splashed some cold water on my face... this stuff has amazing staying power in regards to slickness. I have no qualms admitting that it is more slick/slippery than Arko soap... which I didn't believe to be possible.

After the quick rinse, and working the soap little more in the cloth, I added some more cutting balm and activator. Did I need to? Probably not. Put this mix on my face and added some shaving paste and mixed in like before. Form two goes dandy except I forgot I have a DE and slice a pretty good cut into my right ear lobe. More blood than expected and I have not alum or stypic since I haven't cut myself in months. I throw some of the mix over it and move along. The rest of form two is not an issue. Had I stopped there it would have been a great shave... but I wanted a little more on my neck. So I went to town on my neck going fast and using pressure (bad technique). I spread ("stretched") the mix a little and shaved several passes on my neck. Towards the end I could feel some irritation and I stopped. No blood (one possible weeper but hard to tell) and no visible irritaion despite my best efforts. I jumped in the shower for a cold water rinse of my face and to hopefully stop my ear from bleeding. It worked.
Here's a couple pictures of my face right after hopping out of the shower and before applying any aftershave:

I have red spots on my face all of the time, so don't mistake it for shaving irriation... just a crappy complection.

Normally I'll throw on an alcohol based aftershave or just witchhazel but I wanted to keep this a stictly "Hydrolast" shave. So with a little water on my face I took a very small amount of the Peppermint Aftershave Conditioner (similar to what Joel shows himself using in the Method Shaving thread he made awhile back). One surprise with the aftershave was how well and evenly it spread. I've used balms before where I keep having to go back to the bottle to get enough to cover everything. This took such a small amount I was shocked. The peppermint offered a nice amount of cooling and there was no oily residue that I noticed.

So I'm done with the shave... At this point I know I've irritated my neck... But the irritation never shows how bad it is until the next morning. So I've put off writing this for 12 hours to see how badly I irritated my neck. Normally I'd have some light bumping and there'd be visible red spots on my neck. These areas are smooth to the touch and there's just very light redness. I just took this picture... right around 12 hours after the shave:

I'm wearing a bright red/orange polo so the center of my neck seems to be reflecting that a little bit. The only redness is about even with Adam's apple on either side.

It's far far too early to say anything for certain, but I am impressed. While I don't expect any product to prevent irritation entirely it says a lot that I could shave ATG on my neck with no prior beard reduction passes without having tons of irritation. The aftershave must also be pretty high quality to be able to tame what I did on my neck as well as it has.

I'm sorry this has got so long but I'm hoping this can be a relatively honest, objective look at some of the products available in the Hydrolast line. I'm going to read up on the actual methods a bit more so I can perform all the "forms" for my next shave.
My plan is to post in here after each shave or so to allow some folks who are curious to be able to see my progress/opinion of the products over time.

Thanks for reading!

Jacob

 

[global_dev]

Jacob,
i too learned after my first method shave was get it all ready and open.. it's the slickest stuff i have experienced.. i don't see you mention it but IIRC my cloth size diminished after a couple of uses... One thing of note to those reading this, is that it's not readily evident that there are different pastes, mine was a grey-greenish color (maybe a #3) where Jacobs is obviously not. I thought it might be affected by location humidity, season, etc. or something like that.... it's not really evident online

here was my sampler kit

​

per "stretching" the mix.. i really enjoyed that with hydrolast whereas with regular lathers i find it not impossible, but clearly not the same.

what i wanted to see was if you did some "bracing"... but alas i didn't see it.

good job!

 

[jwcarlson]

Jon,
What's "bracing"? I recall maybe hearing it in a video or something.

Thanks, I agree, the different paste numbers isn't really evident online but he does mention something about them at one point in time. I think #2 is middle of the road?

 

[finotti]

Thanks for this. Really informative post.

 

[justinp]

Glad to see you enjoyed it! It's fine stuff.

 

[global_dev]

Jon,
What's "bracing"? I recall maybe hearing it in a video or something.

honestly, i don't know, but i saw a glimpse of it a video and i think i saw a thread. had something to do with using the cloth to apply something or what not. thats why i was hoping to see your interpretation of it.

 

[jwcarlson]

That actually looks like something I'm going to do for sure. One thing I really missed was the exfoliation of the boar brush that I'm used to. The idea of the brush, of course, is to lift the hairs as well. "Bracing" seems to be using the cloth in the same regard as you would a brush.
It looks like bracing is rubbing the cloth ATG to lift the hairs and then cutting them (nothing earth shattering, just another little piece of jargon). That may have helped my issues on my neck if I can lift the hair and then cut it... Doing it in rapid succession may help the hair still be up before cutting.

 

[mars]

Nice post. Please keep us posted. One thing to mention is that the cloth is really rough the first few uses. It gets much softer and making the "mix" gets much easier after you've used it a few times. I suggest soaking it in water overnight or using it in the shower a few times to get it broken in.

 

[Quintar]

nice review of the products. I was wondering if you've ever tried making an "uber-lather" like is talked about often on the boards here? From what I see of the hydrolast products it seems like that's basically what's going on and I'd be curious how it compares to just doing it with soaps and creams you already have?

They posted the ingredients of some of the hydrolast stuff on the method forums:

Hydrolast Wet Shave Conditioner:

Purified Water, vegetable emulsifying wax, vegetal oils, rose hydrolate, aloe vera gel, soy lecithin, vegetable glycerin, seaweed extract, botanical extracts, xanthan gum, sea buckthorn, vitamin e, rosemary extract, grapefruit seed extract, essential oils.

Hydrolast Wet Shave Shaving Paste:

Purified water, vegetal oils, potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide, glycerin, sodium cocoate, aloe vera gel, vegetable emulsifying wax, sea salt, rosehip seed oil, xanthan gum, citric acid, grapefruit seed extract, essential oils.

Hydrolast Wet Shave Cutting Balm:

Proprietary blend of vegetal oils; proprietary blend of essential oils

i'm assuming the soap is regular shaving soap and the paste ingredients read like a cream so the activator seems like it'd be a glycerin based solution...put them all together and you have uber-lather

 

[jwcarlson]

nice review of the products. I was wondering if you've ever tried making an "uber-lather" like is talked about often on the boards here? From what I see of the hydrolast products it seems like that's basically what's going on and I'd be curious how it compares to just doing it with soaps and creams you already have?

They posted the ingredients of some of the hydrolast stuff on the method forums:


i'm assuming the soap is regular shaving soap and the paste ingredients read like a cream so the activator seems like it'd be a glycerin based solution...put them all together and you have uber-lather

While super, uber, etc lather get tossed around I don't really know if I've made uber lather before. I have, on occasion added a few drops of glycerin to Arko soap, Proraso cream, and a variety of other soaps over the past year. I've also used Arko Soap and Proraso cream and Arko soap and Arko cream on a few occasions. None of them are anywhere near the slickness of the "mix". I agree that this is esscentially what's happening with the mix. Perhaps I haven't used the right combination of components yet... but just the first whack at the Hydrolast stuff knocked my socks off. Arko soap is very slick and this stuff pretty well blew Arko out of the water.

As far as the soap, I'm not sure if it's marketed as shaving soap, I don't think it is. Lepi de Provence is the brand. http://www.lepideprovence.com/soap.html
It's one of the 150g soap rounds. Pure vegetable soap with shea butter. Whatever it is it's slippery.

The paste I have looks and feels nothing like a traditional cream. Honestly, it looks like wet clay or mud. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't some sort of clay as that seems to be a popular ingredient in some shaving soaps if I recall. I can tell you for sure that if you dipped out the paste I have and tried to lather it you wouldn't do anything but spread it around in your brush.

One thing I forgot to mention was that once I got the cloth wet I never had to add any water, the lather/mix/whatever seemed to stay wet better than, say, Arko. I find if I screw around for a few minutes with Arko lather on my face I have to rewet and refresh the lather. I was messing around with this stuff for about 20 minutes and never once did it dry out or need anything more than a wipe of the hand (no additional water except when I rinsed between passes). I'm sure shaving with a wet razor and rinsing of the razor added some water, but the bottom line is that I didn't have to add water like I'm used to with other product.

 

[Quintar]

As far as the soap, I'm not sure if it's marketed as shaving soap, I don't think it is. Lepi de Provence is the brand. http://www.lepideprovence.com/soap.html
It's one of the 150g soap rounds. Pure vegetable soap with shea butter. Whatever it is it's slippery.

The paste I have looks and feels nothing like a traditional cream. Honestly, it looks like wet clay or mud. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't some sort of clay as that seems to be a popular ingredient in some shaving soaps if I recall. I can tell you for sure that if you dipped out the paste I have and tried to lather it you wouldn't do anything but spread it around in your brush.

Strange that you got that soap in the kit? what happened to the "cube" did charles stop selling his own soap?

The ingredients for the paste I listed above. there's no clay in it and they look like ingredients for a shaving cream. but yeah maybe it doesn't lather, could be a non-lathering type of cream. Or he may have changed his formula since he posted those ingredients

 

[mars]

The paste is definitely clay-based. Not sure why that isn't in the ingredients... Maybe that's an old ingredient list.

 

[jwcarlson]

Strange that you got that soap in the kit? what happened to the "cube" did charles stop selling his own soap?

The ingredients for the paste I listed above. there's no clay in it and they look like ingredients for a shaving cream. but yeah maybe it doesn't lather, could be a non-lathering type of cream. Or he may have changed his formula since he posted those ingredients

The scented soaps aren't the same as the old cube. He does still sell the cube, however. It's possible they're both made by the same company? Don't know.

The paste is definitely clay-based. Not sure why that isn't in the ingredients... Maybe that's an old ingredient list.

I'm guessing it's an old ingredient list. Actually, where did those ingredient lists come from, Quintar?

 

[Quintar]

I'm guessing it's an old ingredient list. Actually, where did those ingredient lists come from, Quintar?

His wife posted them on the hydrolast forum from what I gather...

http://www.hydrolast.com/shaving/index.php?topic=108.0

 

[justinp]

Strange that you got that soap in the kit? what happened to the "cube" did charles stop selling his own soap?

The ingredients for the paste I listed above. there's no clay in it and they look like ingredients for a shaving cream. but yeah maybe it doesn't lather, could be a non-lathering type of cream. Or he may have changed his formula since he posted those ingredients

Charles' line these days is that the cube works best for more experienced method shavers; apparently the rounds and bars (I started with the round and will prolly be buying a cube or bar eventually) are better suited for beginners due to [insert Charles Jargon that I think meant that the rounds float the blade a little bit higher than the cube does, thereby providing a little more protection to a beginner, but who the hell knows].

And I think that has to be an old formula for the paste; I think these days it's more or less a solution of clay slip and some other stuff. Who knows, alchemy and all.

 

[DFSDAILY]

My interest is peaking with this stuff, and I think I may have to order a starter kit, just to try it.

 

[Quintar]

I think these days it's more or less a solution of clay slip and some other stuff. Who knows, alchemy and all.

Doesn't the law require that all products sold for cosmetic use must have the ingredients listed on them? It's not listed on the website and I don't know if the full sized products list them or not, but it seems that no one knows whats in these things...

 

[justinp]

Doesn't the law require that all products sold for cosmetic use must have the ingredients listed on them? It's not listed on the website and I don't know if the full sized products list them or not, but it seems that no one knows whats in these things...

No idea!

 

[Manco]

Manco, here. Thanks for the pic haha! I will add some comments a bit later as I'm in a bit of a rush but I'm glad how much effort you've put in this thread!

1. Always open the stuff first. Sorry, I should have said haha.
2. Don't rinse between passes, for me it gives a much better shave.
3. I personally still shave with my beard growth, but see what suits you best. YMMV!
4. If you have any irritation, add some cutting balm in with the conditioner. This works wonders, trust me and try it.
5. If you go ATG, "thin" out the mix.
6. Spot cutting. After your shave and before you rinse your face, feel for rough patches and add some paste then blade buff.

The paste is clay, they go in "speed". Information below.

Credit this following information to the member MSandoval

These are what I consider the three basic varients of pastes that I have been personally cutting for the past two months. I have standarized to one primer and am sticking to what I learned to Method Shave with, the cube. Many have used these with some of the rounds and had outstanding results. My samples have all been pure unscented however, I'm sure EO can be added to any of them just like any other paste Charles has offered in the past. I personally like my pastes unscented and leave all the aromatic qualities to my tonic and conditioner.

#1 White:

The main characteristic of this paste is I find it to be richer in density and much "slower" than the other two pastes. It is buffered with a white clay agent that makes the mix building process very easy on the brush. I've actually been able to build good quality mixes using brushes not normally considered optimal for Method. By "slower" I am talking about it's slickness and stability. The mix forms nice and thick, very much more cream like than the runny product most are used to with the paste/cube combo. Because it is stable and doesn't fall off your face so fast, it is ideal for cutting with a straight razor in my opinion. A local barber here in Austin has started doing all her client shaves using this paste and has had tremendous success with its performance. For those super close finishes using the blade buff, j-hook, etc. I find that a finish product like cutting balm is still needed.

#2 Pink:

This one is without a doubt the most well rounded paste for majority of DE shavers. Those who are very proficient with the straight and are comfortable cutting on something super slick would also benefit greatly. This paste more demanding on the water capacity of the brush so we're back to where we have been before, large fan shape brushes such as the Shavemasters are best suited. With the DE/Feather combo, the blade glides beautifully and the skin is well protected.

#3 Red:

This one is an entirely different animal. Charles often uses it as a blender for adjusting the prior to pastes to meet a certain persons preference. When using this one straight, the properties of the clay component will absorb water very rapidly. It is extremely demanding the brush to get a good wet mix created otherwise the mix will gum up and the brush will look like it's running dry. I found that I had to use this a few times to get the hang of it. Keep in mind I only use the cube, so I'm not sure what would be different with another primer. When you do get the mix right, you get the most hyper slick cutting mix I've ever used. Using a straight with this would be a bit difficult because the slickness is abnormally high both on your face and hands if you are not careful, and the mix is not as stable as the white produces. I think that most people would have too much difficulty getting the mix correct in the brush. I have the large V200 Shavemaster which holds an insane amount of water and I wouldn't consider using anything else.

So what is the "tiering" thing all about? Basicly what Charles calls a tiered paste is a combination of the above blended to give you the result you are looking for. I have been using a two tiered white/pink mix for my straight shaves that has been outstanding. To me this is a great find as I can keep a couple of different pastes around for those mornings I'm in a hurry and want to blast away my beard with a Feather or when I want to enjoy a long luxurious straight shave.

If you have any problems just tell me and I'll help as best I can or shoot Chas and e-mail.

 

[Manco]

No. The same with supplements. " Proprietary Blends " etc.