Lathering with a shave stick(to help someone out)

[Flanders]

I have decided that in order to help out an unnamed person that I was PMing with, I would post a bunch of photos with descriptions of the stages of building enough proto lather before attempting to add any water. I thought it would be helpful to others, sometime, if I posted this publicly. This is going to be spread across several posts that will each represent a distinct stage.

-First off, what am I doing here? I am palm lathering a Speick shave stick in order to simulate face lathering. I will later move the lather to a shave bowl to be finished instead of on my face because it's easier to photograph. The main point here is to get enough proto lather before attempting to build the final lather.

-Second, what equipment am I using and what prep am I performing? I am using a synthetic brush, a G5C knot. I have thoroughly saturated it and given it one big shake. This is important because synthetic fibres hold water on their surface, not in the fibre itself like badger. If you shake all the loose water out, you are basically shaking all the water out! That is going to make getting your lather started more difficult(HT Mr Shavington).

This is what two minutes of work gets you! Not very good, these shave sticks take some time to activate. I am dipping the end in running water, lathering and repeating. This should go faster on your face by adding water to the larger surface area. This is only for demonstration purposes, but be careful about adding too much water and getting a face full of foam instead of proto lather!

These two photos show what this amount of proto lather looks like after trying to get all of it out of my hand. Notice that the shave stick is finally starting to soften up, it gets easier from here. Do you think this is enough proto lather? If your answer is anything other than no, continue to the next post...

 

[Flanders]

So after nearly five minutes, eek, we have this:

Not very impressive? Hmm, how about I squeeze the knot:

There we go and I still had some on my hand! That's a brush full of proto lather, no water additions yet, and here are a couple more photos showing the amount generated:

As far as I am concerned, this is about the minimum that you want to have to build a lather for a full shave. I will try to make my case in the next couple posts...

 

[Flanders]

First up is a couple pictures working the brush around the bowl before I add any water, yep you saw bubbles on the last post:

This would represent what you are doing on your face as you pick up the proto lather directly instead of the way I did it. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to not get enough proto lather the first or second try and have to re-wet my face and use the shave stick. The lather in the brush can build in layers until you have enough, you can always squeeze the knot to check!

Here we are after the first water addition and integration:

That looks pretty good for only adding about a Tablespoon of water, you could stop right there!

But don't, because:

Bam! That's as good as if I used a hard soap puck, which you could actually use directly on your face. I have two more pictures and some final comments...

 

[Flanders]

So there it is, that's the amount of lather that I think of as a minimum to provide good protection and slickness. I hope this shows why getting enough proto lather at the beginning is so important and I only did two water additions so this is still doable every day. I think the resulting lather speaks for itself, it accomplishes the goal of being just short of dripping wet without loosing skin protection. This is only possible by loading enough soap, a merely wet lather is just a short cut that is going to cost you later in skin irritation. Lather like this almost erases any blade feel present, like little ball bearings between the blade and your face. Poor lather may glide well and fool you into thinking that everything is fine, but will not protect you from the blade edge.

I hope this is helpful to somebody. This is not intended as a comprehensive lathering tutorial and I have omitted some steps as my primary objective is to demonstrate the process of generating a proto lather, the lathering steps are just thrown in extras and assume that the reader knows how to add water and integrate it.

 

[CANES]

Good job, buddy. Thanks for taking the time to do all of this. I'm sure it'll help someone down the road.

 

[musicman1951]

Well done. I would definitely agree with the "eek" over the nearly 5 minutes. I don't think I've ever spent more than 2 minutes building lather, usually less.

 

[lasta]

Good stuff!

Although, our definition of minimum might be different!

I'd say X3...to start!

 

[Flanders]

Thanks everybody for the comments! These sticks are so hard that I made this unnecessarily difficult on myself, palm lathering ain't easy. I wanted to mention that I rebuilt and shaved with the lather this morning. Usually I can re lather better soaps, but this didn't go perfectly. I was able to complete 3/4 of my shave and the lather was adequately protective, but somewhat lifeless.

I'd say X3...to start!

Yes, well you obviously bite off the end of the stick and start the lather in your mouth!

 

[Mr. Shavington]

It is sacrilege to bowl lather with a shave stick. But since you’re already in hell I guess it doesn’t matter.

 

[Flanders]

It is sacrilege to bowl lather with a shave stick. But since you’re already in hell I guess it doesn’t matter.

But muh BOSC Science!

 

[brucered]

Don't you just rub it all over a wet face and then brush away?

It always worked for me.

Outside of creams, shave sticks are the next easiest to lather and great for anyone learning to lather with a brush and hard soap.

 

[Flanders]

Don't you just rub it all over a wet face and then brush away?

It always worked for me.

Yes, but how do you photography that process? I thought palm lathering a reasonable compromise, the bowl was admittedly poorly thought out and I was tired of my experiment. I just wanted to get the water additions over with and wasn't going to shave until this morning.

 

[brucered]

Yes, but how do you photography that process? I thought palm lathering a reasonable compromise, the bowl was admittedly poorly thought out and I was tired of my experiment. I just wanted to get the water additions over with and wasn't going to shave until this morning.

You post a series of photos or a video of the application.

You can't really simulate it with a hand and bowl. The shave stick needs whiskers to adhere to when you apply to your face on the first pass.

 

[silverlifter]

The problem with palm lathering is there is, one hopes, no stubble on your palm. And stubble is what makes a stick work it's magic. The stubble holds the soap in place while the brush does the work.

 

[brucered]

To be honest I feel this tutorial is going to confuse people more than help.

My method:
Step 1: rub shave stick on wet face and neck.
Step 2: lather with a damp brush.
Step 3: shave.

 

[Mr. Shavington]

The problem with palm lathering is there is, one hopes, no stubble on your palm. And stubble is what makes a stick work it's magic. The stubble holds the soap in place while the brush does the work.

Aaron has loads of stubble on his palm. Don’t worry about that.

 

[Flanders]

You can't really simulate it with a hand and bowl. The shave stick needs whiskers to adhere to when you apply to your face on the first pass.

100% correct, I was too ambitious and didn't think first.

To be honest I feel this tutorial is going to confuse people more than help.

Also correct, but luckily it will end up buried in a week until somebody finds it this summer and bugs all of you to help them!

Aaron has loads of stubble on his palm. Don’t worry about that.

Well, how do you think I wound up in hell!

 

[Ron R]

I have decided that in order to help out an unnamed person that I was PMing with, I would post a bunch of photos with descriptions of the stages of building enough proto lather before attempting to add any water. I thought it would be helpful to others, sometime, if I posted this publicly. This is going to be spread across several posts that will each represent a distinct stage.

-First off, what am I doing here? I am palm lathering a Speick shave stick in order to simulate face lathering. I will later move the lather to a shave bowl to be finished instead of on my face because it's easier to photograph. The main point here is to get enough proto lather before attempting to build the final lather.

-Second, what equipment am I using and what prep am I performing? I am using a synthetic brush, a G5C knot. I have thoroughly saturated it and given it one big shake. This is important because synthetic fibres hold water on their surface, not in the fibre itself like badger. If you shake all the loose water out, you are basically shaking all the water out! That is going to make getting your lather started more difficult(HT Mr Shavington).

This is what two minutes of work gets you! Not very good, these shave sticks take some time to activate. I am dipping the end in running water, lathering and repeating. This should go faster on your face by adding water to the larger surface area. This is only for demonstration purposes, but be careful about adding too much water and getting a face full of foam instead of proto lather!

These two photos show what this amount of proto lather looks like after trying to get all of it out of my hand. Notice that the shave stick is finally starting to soften up, it gets easier from here. Do you think this is enough proto lather? If your answer is anything other than no, continue to the next post...

You had me wondering when I saw the first pictures you posted and not a lot of folks palm lather I have seen but if it works that is all that counts.(good results with little waste)
I do my Speick stick slightly differently than your procedure, all I do is cut a few slivers off with my pocket knife and press the soap in the grooves. (if soaps crumbles all I do is gather them in small bunches & press in bottom of bowl and take a my wet finger to smooth it out.)
I usually have enough for 2 shaves of that great stick soap and have been using this 2 minute method of cutting and pressing for the last 5 years with all my soaps.
I load the brush and produce the proto lather in the bowl & add water as needed all at the same time with excellent results, I always have a little left over if you want to wash your face or hands and the soap is really good for slickness and ideal for a shave soap for softening the whiskers also (one of the best) + nice mild spicy scent that Speick has incorporated into the stick that comes out when you make lather.

Have some great shaves!

 

[rockviper]

One of the earliest posts on B&B (#40!) still demonstrates the process fairly easily: Tutorial - how to use a shaving stick - https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/tutorial-how-to-use-a-shaving-stick.40/

 

[Ron R]

One of the earliest posts on B&B (#40!) still demonstrates the process fairly easily: Tutorial - how to use a shaving stick - https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/tutorial-how-to-use-a-shaving-stick.40/

Three different ways to use a stick if you like those methods on this thread, maybe even more ways possible.
I have used the stick as the tutorial has shown and it is a good one, some soaps do not work well on my skin when scrubbed to much so I use a bowl to take the brunt of the scrubbing needed when applying directly.
The Speick stick is a excellent triple milled soap that I recommend.