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Load LESS Soap?Say it ain't so.

Makes sense. I'm a head shaver with hard water, and I head lather. I tend to load a little too much and then scrape some lather off onto the puck as I go. That lather then gets used (with more water introduced) for my second pass.
 
You have discovered the secret! The amount of soap you need to load will vary from soap to soap and then again from brush to brush. This makes a good case for using the same soap day in and day out until gone so that you can truly master your lather. However, that is very boring to me, so instead I use one soap exclusively for about a week and then rotate. If I don't know the soap well then I always err on over-loading the brush. Depending on the results I get from the first day I will either lower the load time or stick with it.

There also isn't one magical texture in lather like there is in emulsions. Some soaps perform best at a thicker consistency while others will need a lot of water to achieve my desired slickness. It really is one of the fun aspects of wet shaving, at least for me.
 
The ratio certainly matters but many having problems lathering describe symptoms of not enough product. It's generally easier to get them to load more and find the right ratio and then adjust down as needed. It seems to be rare that people with lathering problems have loaded too much.
 
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I'm not that good a cook, though I've broken a good many soups, so I think I get it. Popcorn seems pretty close to lather, where heat is the agitation that adds the air, the oil in the pan is the water, the corn is the soap. You can pour butter on the popcorn, but that's gross. Put some separated butter in the oil beforehand, and you can just salt it in the end, for flavor like Fritos.

I don't add any air at all when loading a brush. Water goes in first, and that dissolves the soap. The solution can be just concentrated enough for the brush to pick it up, or a cream-like liquid crystal paste. The former makes more cushion and less slick residue; synthetic and badger brushes, non-glycerin soaps favor this method. The latter makes slick residue but is more prone to go flat; boar brushes, croaps and glycerin soap favor this method.

I'm not into creams, but Kiss My Face moisture shave (liquid) makes a fascinating study. You can bend it both ways, and the wet-brush, cushiony lather consumes twice as much soap. (Measured by pumps of its unique 11-oz. bottle.) I believe it reflects an entirely different lamination of water and soap in the construction of its bubbles.
 
I would like to get a few opinions on this idea. This mostly applies to face lathering.

I cook for a living and I found myself comparing the addition of water to shave soap to many of the emulsified sauces I make.

Emulsified sauces are funny (like the perfect Lather) they blend some type of fat with some type of base liquid and air to produce a distinctly different end product. Eggs, Butter and Acid simply stirred together don't look like much but add heat, proper ratios and technique you have the classic Hollandaise. Much like shaving soaps the key is the ratio of components.
If you add too much water to shave soap it breaks just like a sauce.

Emulsified sauces also generally require cooking. I think shaving lather is more like making a proper Catalan Aioli from only garlic and olive oil with a mortar and pestle (a pinch mustard if you must cheat, but absolutely no egg (IMO egg makes it fancy mayonnaise). With garlic as the soap and olive oil as the water. At first nothing seems to happen, then it starts to work well and take a decent form and hold its shape. If you add more you'll reach peak creaminess. Add too much liquid and everything falls apart.

For both, practice and skill is knowing when to add more liquid and when to stop. At least shaving is a little bit more forgiving in that you can add more soap to fix it because the emulsion doesn't fail as suddenly when you add too much liquid. I do agree that too much soap can cause issues, but most people don't use enough.
 
Great discusion! Glad my morning observation helped a few or at least made some of you hungry.

For the record Guacamole would probably give you the best shave. The smooth kind not the fancy chunky tableside version..lol Followed by a Tequila splash of course.
 
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