I got a jar of Strop Shoppe Bay Rum last week, and I did my first test lather last night using my 22/50 WD silvertip brush. The instructions on the jar said to load for 20 seconds, but with this brush I normally load for about 60 seconds depending on the soap, so I split the difference and loaded for 45 seconds then face lathered. This turned out to be a mistake - I had way too much lather! The first pass seemed like it was impossible to hydrate enough, and the brush was overflowing through the fourth pass, when it seemed like I might have exhausted it, but dipping the tips in water and working the lather on my face produced enough for another two passes. I was curious about just how long this could keep going, so I did it again on pass 6 and again on pass 8, both times generating tons of yogurt-textured lather. In the middle of pass 9, my wife came over and asked what was taking me so long in the bathroom so I knocked it off. The brush was somewhat less voluminous after 9 passes, but I still rinsed a lot of remaining lather out of the brush.
Now, part of this might just be Strop Shoppe being a very good shaving soap - the fats in order of prominence are stearic/palm/tallow/castor/coconut (they also have shea butter but I assume they add that after saponification) and they use more KOH than NaOH lye, which is certainly a recipe that looks like it ought to work very well. But I've used plenty of soaps before that are great latherers (Tabac, Cella, Speick, DRH) with formulas that really aren't that different. It strikes me that, besides the obvious difference in load times between a hard soap and a croap, I may have been overloading my brush with most soaps this whole time, and just not noticed it because I never really go for more than three passes when I'm actually shaving.
Now, that being said, this doesn't mean I'm going to Use Much Less Product across the board any time soon, but it was a surprise just how much soap I'm probably washing down the drain. I might do a blade-less test lather with Tabac some time to see if it generates this much lather, and I'll certainly do a test lather with my Cade synthetic brush with the Strop Shoppe using a similar load time to see whether that gets similarly over-loaded.
Now, part of this might just be Strop Shoppe being a very good shaving soap - the fats in order of prominence are stearic/palm/tallow/castor/coconut (they also have shea butter but I assume they add that after saponification) and they use more KOH than NaOH lye, which is certainly a recipe that looks like it ought to work very well. But I've used plenty of soaps before that are great latherers (Tabac, Cella, Speick, DRH) with formulas that really aren't that different. It strikes me that, besides the obvious difference in load times between a hard soap and a croap, I may have been overloading my brush with most soaps this whole time, and just not noticed it because I never really go for more than three passes when I'm actually shaving.
Now, that being said, this doesn't mean I'm going to Use Much Less Product across the board any time soon, but it was a surprise just how much soap I'm probably washing down the drain. I might do a blade-less test lather with Tabac some time to see if it generates this much lather, and I'll certainly do a test lather with my Cade synthetic brush with the Strop Shoppe using a similar load time to see whether that gets similarly over-loaded.
