Mitchell's Wool Fat (MWF): Optimization Results Help SOLVE the MYSTERY!

[Big Burly]

I tried to like MWF. I tried the hell out of it. All different lathering methods. First puck was given up on and used as body soap. Bought more thinking that maybe I was doing something wrong the first time. All different lathering methods were used. Second puck was given up on and used as body soap.

Now modern Williams, another notoriously hard-to-lather shave soap? I love it and have no problems lathering it.

 

[rockviper]

Bowl lathering with an Edwin Jagger Super

Loaded brush, shaken lightly but not squeezed after soaking, gentle circles to load, no pumping

Big bubble proto-lather, no water added, pumped the brush a few times to release the retained water

Thick and rich and creamy, no water added, just slow circles to build lather

 

[rockviper]

Bowl lathering with the B&B Essential boar, Sue edition

Soaked brush was shaken lightly, but not squeezed and loaded without splaying

Proto-lather displays bubbles again, as expected

Scooped out the lather from the bowl with the brush. No bubbles here!

 

[rockviper]

Bowl lathering with a horse brush

The remainder of the soap started crumbling while loading, but I think/hope I have enough

Less proto-lather than with either the boar or badger, maybe not enough product. The horse knot retains less water than the boar or badger, which might account for the smaller volume.

Lather volume and texture not as good as with the badger or boar. Again, probably due to loading. Adding more water did not help much.

After 5 lathers (face, palm, 3xbowl), there is almost no soap remaining. Not enough to load again with anyhow.

Since My face lather this morning was weak (no whiskers to grab soap as noted by @nemo ) , I will combine that used product with the small bit left at the end and say that the 3g of MWF sent to me was sufficient for 5 shaves.... or 0.6g/load. That would extrapolate to a full 125g puck providing 208 shaves, or approximately 7 months. As MWF is triple milled, that guesstimate would seem to be in the right ballpark of a half-year or so that I would expect from it or Tabac.

 

[nemo]

Lathers look good, Sam. I'd be happy shaving with those -- thanks for the pics. Optimized!

I always find it difficult to use such a small sample, you did well.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

@rockviper: Thanks, Sam! Good pictures! You sure did make plenty of lather. Based on your pictures and comments, it seems to me that our opinions of what makes a lather thick and rich (and probably slick, too) are different. It looks like we are drawing different conclusions from the same or similar lather. This might be going on a lot with MWF.

 

[rockviper]

.... It looks like we are drawing different conclusions from the same or similar lather. This might be going on a lot with MWF.

This could very well be true, which is why pics help a great deal when folks talk about lather issues.

I used to like a thicker, almost paste-like lather before I started using straights, but I quickly learned that if the lather doesn't easily rinse off a straight blade under a light sink tap flow, then it's too thick. Now I aim for the same lather consistency irrespective of whether I use a straight, DE, SE, or cart.

In the end, it's all about what works for you.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

This could very well be true, which is why pics help a great deal when folks talk about lather issues.

I used to like a thicker, almost paste-like lather before I started using straights, but I quickly learned that if the lather doesn't easily rinse off a straight blade under a light sink tap flow, then it's too thick. Now I aim for the same lather consistency irrespective of whether I use a straight, DE, SE, or cart.

In the end, it's all about what works for you.

I think that we have a lot of agreement here. I've transitioned from my earlier days with thicker lather to appreciating wetter lather that rinses easily. Also, you're right about pictures helping a lot. Your pictures were a great help! Thank you! When I evaluate the MWF sample from @AlphaFrank75, I'll take lather photos, hopefully including at least one really close-up shot.

 

[TheKman]

I'm a little confused, did we just conclude that the exchanged samples are all the same? That points to opinion as the real mystery.

You'll have to pardon my boggling. Evidently the truth can be stranger than fiction!

 

[patrickBOOTH]

Sometimes the lather that looks the best and feels the best going on isn't the best to shave with. I was getting yogurt-like lathers on my first pass, but noticed it would get tacky quickly. After rinsing my face and relathering with a "wetter" face I would get a better second pass. It occurred to me that these thicker lathers aren't actually the way to go to maintain slickness.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

Sometimes the lather that looks the best and feels the best going on isn't the best to shave with. I was getting yogurt-like lathers on my first pass, but noticed it would get tacky quickly. After rinsing my face and relathering with a "wetter" face I would get a better second pass. It occurred to me that these thicker lathers aren't actually the way to go to maintain slickness.

You're right that you have to shave with a lather to truly evaluate it. However, what @rockviper did was fine. He was already familiar with MWF and didn't notice anything different in how the lather looked or felt between his fingers.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

I'm a little confused, did we just conclude that the exchanged samples are all the same? That points to opinion as the real mystery.

You'll have to pardon my boggling. Evidently the truth can be stranger than fiction!

Making that conclusion may be premature, but it does seem that @rockviper is using different words to describe the same or similar lather with my sample of MWF. Differences of opinion could be at the heart of the controversy over MWF. MWF is still a tougher soap to lather, in my opinion, when loading it with a brush and building lather with it in a normal way without mass measurements, which would account for some of the difficulty encountered by some with MWF. However, at least in this case with my sample in @rockviper's hands, it looks like we interpret the same thing differently. It's also possible that, in another case, MWF might have an aging problem, which was touched on earlier in this thread when someone talked about picking up his same puck of MWF and making worse lather compared to what he was used to with MWF. That doesn't seem to be what's going on with my MWF based on @rockviper's evaluation of the sample that I sent him.

It will be several days before you guys get my results on the MWF sample from @AlphaFrank75 because I'm going to shave with it a few times. I will keep an open mind when evaluating the lathers and shaves, as I always try to be objective when making judgments about that, even though my personal bias at the moment is for @AlphaFrank75's sample to act the same as mine. That bias is acknowledged, but I will take photos and I will be on the lookout for anything different.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

Update: Lather Photos for ShavingByTheNumbers's MWF and Waters of Various Hardness

In my new thread on water hardness (B&B URL), I included a series of photos for lathers built with my puck of MWF and waters with hardness values of 0 mg/L, 100 mg/L, 250 mg/L, 500 mg/L, and 1000 mg/L. (The waters were made with Epsom salt and distilled water for the controlled experiment.) Here is the composite picture that you can click on for a full-resolution version that is 3000 pixels wide with each of the five photos being 600 pixels wide:

(Click on image for full-resolution version)

The best lather with my puck of MWF is with distilled water with a hardness of approximately 0 mg/L, and as the hardness increases, the lather produces more friction, less cushion, and drier post-shave. As noted in the OP of this thread, I found that the optimum lather for my puck of MWF, in my opinion, was neither thick, rich, nor slick. That lather is associated with the photo for 100 mg/L water, since my moderately hard water is about that, but the slightly better lather with distilled (0 mg/L) water is also not thick, rich, or slick, in my opinion.

How do the lathers look to you? Does my MWF lather with 0 mg/L or 100 mg/L water look thick, rich, and/or slick? It always came out like a sparkly foam with not much slickness to me, but that is just my opinion. It's looking like differences of opinion might explain much of the controversy with MWF, but the jury is still out.

 

[AlphaFrank75]

How do the lathers look to you?

It kind of looks like whipped egg whites. How did it feel?

 

[rockviper]

That does look very different the the L&L Grooming pics you have. It's almost like the MWF ones are foamy, even with the distilled water. Are you vigorously whipping to lather or using slower circles with your brush? Whipping introduces more air.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

It kind of looks like whipped egg whites. How did it feel?

It felt foamy and collapsed somewhat during application before each pass.

That does look very different the the L&L Grooming pics you have. It's almost like the MWF ones are foamy, even with the distilled water.

Yes, the lathers that I make with L&L Grooming are very different from those made with MWF. I'm glad that that came through in the photos. The lather with L&L Grooming has small enough air bubbles that make the lather have some yogurt-like behavior, while the lather with my puck of MWF is not yogurt-like.

Are you vigorously whipping to lather or using slower circles with your brush? Whipping introduces more air.

I wouldn't say that I'm vigorously whipping lather, but I'm definitely not using slow circles. In my opinion, based on videos of others building lather, I'd say that I'm building lather with normal agitation. I'm estimating about two revolutions per second of circular motion with back-and-forth motion and cleaning out the brush (scraping it against the bowl edge a few times to get the lather out) mixed in. I keep going until the lather doesn't appear to be changing, when equilibrium is reached. Based on my experience, that would take longer with slower agitation, but the result would be the same. I've never seen any evidence that the same amount of soap with the same amount of water can produce either airy or dense lather depending on the agitation speed THAT IS USED TO MAKE THE LATHERS REACH EQUILIBRIUM. It seems to me that slower agitation can give the IMPRESSION of making denser lather because stopping agitation after the same amount of time compared to using faster agitation will generally yield denser lather. It takes more time for the slower agitation to build up the lather. If lather building is stopped prematurely, then the end result will be denser lather. Nevertheless, with or without more air, the lather was made with an amount of soap and an amount of water.

 

[rockviper]

2 revolutions per sec sounds close to what I normally do (just timed "fake lathering" at the computer, 15 swirls over 10 secs). It just might be that MWF truly is the blaggard to your lathering process.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

2 revolutions per sec sounds close to what I normally do (just timed "fake lathering" at the computer, 15 swirls over 10 secs). It just might be that MWF truly is the blaggard to your lathering process.

Maybe so. We'll see how it goes with @AlphaFrank75's MWF.

 

[Big Jim]

I read through this thread with puzzlement. Mitchell's Wool Fat is one of the easiest soaps to lather for me. It is almost as easy as Tabac, which seems to lather just from looking at it. It is far easier than Stirling or Mystic Waters which took a lot of effort to master but now they lather pretty well. Once I mastered these two I can lather them in my sleep they became that easy.

I'm told that my city water is relatively soft. The main source is the Feather River, and it is softer than water from the Owens River or the Colorado River, the two other main sources for the greater Los Angeles area. I measured the Total Dissolved Solids this morning at 328 ppm while the water from my RO unit is reading 33 ppm. I don't know how those readings equate with yours. I don't see a significant difference when I use RO water on any shaving soap so I don't bother.

I travel a lot for work. I have not taken MWF with me, but I can tell that I don't get lather as easy or as nice depending on where I am.

I'm going to guess that either it is the water or that you are trying too hard, or both. Put it away for a while and come back to it.

 

[1Vader]

MWF works best for me if I don't overwork it. I also find that it doesn't like too much water, and most of all I never used lather hogging brushes with it. I cold water shave and use a synthetic brush for the most part.

By the way, throw away the proto-lather. MWF has this shell of a protolather that can be deceptive. Throw it and keep it loading, wait for the creamy lather to show, that's what you want.