I haven’t used my Plisson HMW 12 brush with the horn handle for a while, and it was nice to give it a little workout with Meißner Tremonia’s Woody Almond shaving paste. As is my practice, just before I applied the lather I washed my stubble with MR GLO (Musgo Real Glyce Lime Oil soap), a glycerin-based soap with a non-sweet lime fragrance.
I read on Wicked Edge a recent comment from someone who advised simply splashing some water on the stubble before lathering—”no need for fancy soaps.” I have no idea what “fancy” means in this context—probably nothing more than nonspecific disapproval (“fancy” means “bad’ in some unspecified way). Certainly there’s nothing fancy about MR GLO: a plain round bar of plain glycerin soap with a lime fragrance.
But it got me to thinking about what I liked about using the soap. Generally I judge shaving stuff—razors, blades, brushes, soaps, and MR GLO, for example—by my experience in using them: how they feel, smell, and perform. If a brand of blade works well for me, I don’t spend a lot of time noodling about why—whether it’s the grind and dimensions of the bevel, the coating, or whatever. I am satisfied with knowing that the brand works well for me.
So I hadn’t really given much thought to why MR GLO improve the shave for me. I naturally tested shaving with and without it, and shaving with it seemed better, so I ended my analysis there. But when I thought about it, I immediately realized one perfectly obvious reason my MR GLO (or any other soap) would work better than simply splashing water on the stubble: soap reduces the surface tension of water, and in fact that’s its primary mission. By reducing significantly water’s surface tension, water more easily wets things—like your stubble.
So washing the stubble with Mr GLO should do a better job of getting the stubble on its way to being soaked than simply splashing the stubble with water: because the soap reduces its surface tension, water more easily wets the stubble. In addition, a high glycerin content supports slickness—indeed, Chris Moss of ShaveMyFace found that Geo. F. Trumper’s Coral Skin Food seemed to work well as a pre-shave, and on seeing that it was glycerin-based, he tried using glycerin by itself as a pre-shave, and liked the results. (I tried that, and I found I preferred the combination of the wetting action of MR GLO along with its glycerin content seemed to me to do a better job overall.)
It’s not difficult to find high-glycerin soaps at low cost (Clearly Natural, Pears, Whole Foods 365, and others), but I do like the fragrance and performance of MR GLO, so I stick with it, though I’ve tried others.
The lather today was once more excellent, and I can give Meißner Tremonia shaving paste a solid recommendation. Three passes with the Rockwell R3 plate left a BBS result, and a good splash of Chatillon Lux Gratiot League Square finished the job in fine style.
Filed under: Shaving
