Bowl lathering with soaps

Fido

Fido

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Location
New Forest, England.
Until recently I face lathered with soaps. Then I decided to switch to bowl lathering. Now I load the brush then continue to build the lather in a bowl, adding a little water by dipping the brush tips in water as necessary. I find this enables me to create much better lather more consistently with a variety of soaps.

I still use creams which I also bowl lather but I'm now inclined to use soaps more often.

It takes a long time to figure out the best way of using the things we have.
 
From the limited reading I have done (few of those early 1900s papers that have been published) and from the general consensus in the forums, it seems that loading the brush from a soap puck and then bowl lathering is indeed the most recommended way.

I personally still find bowl lathering not to my style, but I know well that I really know not much and that one, two or ten years down the line this may well certainly change.
 
Fido, do you find that you get a better shave lathering in a bowl, I've not tried it and have only face lathered to date.

Obviously if it does improve the shave, then I'll have to hunt another item to add to my 'cheap' alternative to cartridge shaving.
 
To me, all these things make no difference to the effectiveness of the shave - just enjoyment of the ritual. Bowl lathering seems to improve the amount and quality of the lather I get from the soaps I use. Face lathering is OK but it just takes me longer to get the lather as I like it.
 
I'm really looking forward to trying out bowl lathering in my Dirty Bird scuttle when it arrives. Trust me to order it just in time to *miss* the middle of winter.

Until then, I bowl lather creams in a cheap and cheerful cereal bowl (very smooth: not good for lathering but it gets by) and occasionally bowl-lather a soap as well, but tend to use shave sticks instead of soaps.

I agree that there's something to be said for the ritual of bowl lathering.
 
1.5 Dirty Bird Scuttle and a bowl made for me by a local potter. I use the latter every day.

Scuttle.jpg
 
I started off face lathering, then when I found the forums went to bowl lathering. Now, I'm back to face lathering. A benefit with bowl lathering is that you can keep the lather warm which feels great when applied to the face.
 
I'm still doing both: build the first lot on the face then move to a bowl. Not sure if there's any great advantage to doing this, but I've stuck with it for a year or so now. The improvised scuttle is still very much in play too: as well as keeping the lather warmish it's convenient for dipping the blade to warm it up a bit.
 
Wierd isn't it, I seem to have gone the other way, I'd been bowl lathering for months and then just recently I've switched to face. It'll probably go full circle and I'll be back to bowls eventually.
 
I load a wet/damp brush for around a minute.

I'm a face latherer, I love building a lather on my face.

I started out as a bowl latherer though.
 
I started off bowl-lathering, then switch to face-lathering soaps once I got my Commodore X1, but recently I've started doing a lot of bowl-lathering again with my Kent BK4. No particular reason; it's just that I like a little bit of variety every now and again!
 
Arrowhead said:
I'm still doing both: build the first lot on the face then move to a bowl. Not sure if there's any great advantage to doing this, but I've stuck with it for a year or so now. The improvised scuttle is still very much in play too: as well as keeping the lather warmish it's convenient for dipping the blade to warm it up a bit.
Click to expand...

Do you move to the bowl mostly for warm lather purposes? I've found that once I've built the first lot on my face subsequent passes pretty much just paint on.
 
SIRUSKEY said:
How many turns do people use to load the brush???
Click to expand...

Hi there,

Creating a proper lather's always been the trickiest part of the shave for me. That's because it's the least scientific and constant,,,,,lots of room for error. I guess there's more chance of a variable screwing things up.

When I use a glycerin based soap I'll use a slightly dryer brush than normal, and with a harder one the brush is a little wetter. With either type, 15-20 seconds of brush swirling does the trick for me. You don't want the brush to actually feel 'sticky' on the puck, or at least I don't.

Even though I know very little about brushes, I do notice the floppier one I have takes longer to load up in the soap than the stiffer versions. You gotta take that into consideration for optimum loading. I have one brush only used for creams because of that. It'll still work ok with soap, but it takes a while longer for the finished results.

I've also noticed that some brushes actually create a better lather than others do. It's because of the knot I'd imagine, but I can't exactly tell you what the deal is. I know one brush I sometime use gives me the nicest looking lather even though it's not my favorite one. That's something I have to figure out better,

Heh, you probably expected an easy answer,

Martin
 
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