I've read a fair amount about shaving and lathering techniques. I have a copy of the book on wet shaving:
Somewhere along the lines; maybe in this book, maybe somewhere else, I got the idea that you have to be pretty careful with how much water you add to shaving soap or cream. So Iv'e always added water in small amounts, and been really careful to not "over water the later". Recently though, I keep remembering people here and on youtube describing good shaving lather as being "shiny". My lather is never shiny... except right after I add water and then only for a few seconds as it gets worked in. My lathers are good, but... Hmmm.....
So I've been adding more and more water to my soap lathers trying to get them shiny. I'm probably using 2 to 3 times the amount of water I was before. Some lathers shine up pretty good, some only get a little shiny.
But they all seem to get slicker and nicer. The "loft factor" goes away some. It's not as thick or rich feeling. It's thinner. But still pretty nice in most cases. Several soaps that I thought were fairly middle of the road are suddenly much better performers! Today's soap, PAA CaD, was formerly very middle of the road. Sure it smells great. Yes, it has incredible skin feel during *and* after the shave. But the slickness and "protection" were kind of average or below. But now with more water, it's a pretty darned good performer overall. The razor glides much more easily over the skin and the propensity for the razor to "stick" on areas that have no lather is reduced. It's really almost like a different soap.
I've tried this with quite a number of soaps now and it seems to universally work better than a drier lather. Some really outstanding soaps, like Soap Commander, are great either way, but probably still better with more water.
So there you have it: Wetter is better!
Brian.
Somewhere along the lines; maybe in this book, maybe somewhere else, I got the idea that you have to be pretty careful with how much water you add to shaving soap or cream. So Iv'e always added water in small amounts, and been really careful to not "over water the later". Recently though, I keep remembering people here and on youtube describing good shaving lather as being "shiny". My lather is never shiny... except right after I add water and then only for a few seconds as it gets worked in. My lathers are good, but... Hmmm.....
So I've been adding more and more water to my soap lathers trying to get them shiny. I'm probably using 2 to 3 times the amount of water I was before. Some lathers shine up pretty good, some only get a little shiny.
But they all seem to get slicker and nicer. The "loft factor" goes away some. It's not as thick or rich feeling. It's thinner. But still pretty nice in most cases. Several soaps that I thought were fairly middle of the road are suddenly much better performers! Today's soap, PAA CaD, was formerly very middle of the road. Sure it smells great. Yes, it has incredible skin feel during *and* after the shave. But the slickness and "protection" were kind of average or below. But now with more water, it's a pretty darned good performer overall. The razor glides much more easily over the skin and the propensity for the razor to "stick" on areas that have no lather is reduced. It's really almost like a different soap.
I've tried this with quite a number of soaps now and it seems to universally work better than a drier lather. Some really outstanding soaps, like Soap Commander, are great either way, but probably still better with more water.
So there you have it: Wetter is better!
Brian.
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