Soap from accompanying tin to Shave Bowl?

[gerjohnson]

Hi All,

I recently bought SV Cubebe in that snazzy tin, am currently lathering up straight from that. But I do have a Mühle bowl and am also pining for a Captain's Choice one (love that heavy copper!!), So my question is, is it a good/bad idea to be essentially digging out a small chunk of the Cubebe and using in the bowl? Are shaving creams more suited to bowl shaving? PannaCrema talks about taking "3oz" from the tin and putting it into a shaving bowl, but I've never seen any other retailer recommend this.

Thanks in advance,

Ger

 

[BigJ]

I prefer to face-lather, so take this with a grain of salt. In other words, I load my damp brush from the puck, then build lather directly on my face.

You could try loading your brush from the tin, then go to your lather bowl of choice.

Another option is to add a small amount of your soap to your lather bowl, but my thought is that this approach is more suited to a cream, since it would be easier to adjust your proportions with a cream.

 

[gerjohnson]

All good points, thanks BigJ! I wonder am I doing a weird hybrid of partially building lather in the tin and then finishing it on my face! Must experiment a bit.

 

[Cumberland Sausage]

I invariably face lather now, but for quite a few years I loaded my brush on the puck (quite often SV) and then built the lather in a bowl made at a local pottery. That worked well, it's just that I like the sensation of building the lather on my face.

 

[gerjohnson]

Good stuff, I can see the appeal in that! Probably means longer time prepping the skin and stubble too which can only be a good thing...

 

[Atlantic59]

I face lather also. Usually, I prefer to take the puck out the tin or glass jar and put it into a separate dish just for loading the soap, not to lather it. Some tins don't have a lot of room to swing the brush and a heavy glass jar slippery with soap strikes me as a bad idea with a tiled bathroom floor. A simple bowl that you can hold in one hand is ideal.

 

[Roy]

I think taking a small piece of hard soap and try to lather would be difficult. SV suggest blooming the soap.
Here's what works fantastic for me with any hard soap, badger brush.
Soak the brush for a few minutes and cover the soap with a thin layer of water. Squeeze the brush quite hard then soak the bloom water up the brush. Then continue to load the brush with soap. I face lather, but this would work for a bowl too. It makes lovely creamy lather every time with any hard soap I try.

 

[Ladit]

Just load your brush in the tin and then skim it from the brush at the rim of your bowl. As a rule of thump do the forementioned three times and then add a little water and try to foam the lather with your brush for a minute.

 

[Tomo]

Either way works well. Currently I press my soap samples into the bottom of a lather bowl and lather them up from there. It works really well. That advantage is that you are not messing around with lots of different containers if you choose to bowl lather. I also find once you have a decent amount of lather in the bowl you automatically stop picking up more from the soap. That lather acts like a buffer to stop you picking up too much. One sample lasts for many days like this. It’s very quick and tidy.

The only disadvantage is if you are the type of person that likes to switch soaps daily. In this case it is more convenient to load from the puck and then move to your face or bowl. You just end up with a lot of containers lying around but it works perfectly well.