Creating the Perfect Shaving Lather

Posted on 10. Jan, 2010 by Gugel in General

Shaving Lather

Your face isn’t perfectly smooth. There are probably some valleys, bumps, scars, pimples and ingrown hairs. A good lather can help the blade glide over your imperfections and help prevent razor burn and irritation. Here are 5 steps to creating a great lather.

Fill up your scuttle or shaving bowl with hot water, put your shaving brush in there and wait for 30 seconds. A hot shaving bowl makes it easier to build up a lather and some of the heat will transfer over from the bowl to the shaving cream. Remember, you don’t really need to buy a fancy, expensive scuttle. All you need is a deep bowl (with tall sides) made of thick ceramic (to hold in the heat).
Dump the water out of the shaving bowl and shake off the excess water on your shaving brush. It’s better to remove as much water as you can because you can always add water later in the process but you can’t remove it.
Apply about a pea-sized amount of shaving cream to the bottom of your shaving bowl. This should produce enough lather for two passes.
Mix the shaving cream with the shaving brush for about 30 seconds. You’ll need to keep changing the direction — alternate by mixing clockwise and counter-clockwise.
When you’re applying the lather, you want each whisker to be completely covered on all sides by shaving cream. To do that, you’ll need to make two passes on your face with the shaving brush — once clockwise and once counter-clockwise.

Creating a great lather can mean the difference between an amazing shave and a horrible one. Using shaving cream and a brush might not be as quick as getting goo out of a can, but it’s definitely much more enjoyable and effective.

For additional information about creating a great lather, refer to http://ozsoapbox.com/personal/shaving/how-to-mix-a-perfect-wet-shaving-lather/.