My theory why soaps are meant to go with wet brushes at the start!

[DTrem5]

I used to do the squeezed brush/ add water routine and went back to using a wet brush with my soft and hard soaps.

With this in mind I started thinking...

Back in the early days when soaps like MWF started, I bet there was no barber shop taking a dry brush, loading it with soap, then adding water to face lather the customer a few drops at a time! I bet that still doesn't happen.

Also, when you take a bar of soap to your body you use it with running water. Ie wet.

Anyways, that's my shaving thought of the day!

 

[rand77]

I take a relatively wet brush to soaps, it takes some experience to figure how much water to leave in brush for each particular soap. That's the best way to generate a large volume of lather. It makes heavy loading a whole lot easier as well.

I never load a relatively dry brush and add a few drops of water as needed.

 

[mblakele]

I think you are probably right about the historical facts. But does it matter? Before the safety razor the bulk of men went to a barber, or grew a beard. A barber is more likely to bowl-lather, and thus to use a sopping brush. A self-shaver is more likely to face-lather, and thus to prefer a damp brush. If a self-shaver prefers to bowl-lather with a sopping brush, that is fine too.

Before ca. 1750, London barbershops did not lather with brushes at all. Before that time customers were lathered by hand, and the barber would have an assistant dedicated to that task. Even as late as 1900, Jerome K. Jerome writes about hand-lathering by barbers in Germany, explaining that the regression was caused by fear of disease from shared brushes.

Shave sticks were unknown before ca. 1850, and I tend to think that may have something to do with the "dry brush" idea. Of course the brush is not really dry: it is damp. For me, a brush squeezed damp works much better with a shave stick than a sopping wet brush does. And I use shave sticks almost exclusively - including MWF.

Anyway, how much should we care about how things were done originally? That path leads to reindeer fat and flaked obsidian, with no brush at all.

We do what works for us, each of us. YMMV.

 

[bassopotamus]

Across a number of soaps, at least with my brushes and hard water, I get horrible lather if I load with a brush that is too wet. It is fizzy, thin, and gets everywhere. I do much better with a shaken out brush, and a few dips of the tips in the water as I face lather.

 

[bryan1980]

All soaps are different in my experience. Tabac seems to work better with a wetter brush for me than Arko does.

 

[Jarick]

For mug lathering, I would say that is accurate. Although weren't most brushes back then boar hair? They would hold less water than badgers.