The Dead Sea, a soap from Italian Barber, makes a very nice lather, has a fine fragrance, and requires very little water indeed. If I use as much water as I would with most of my other soaps, the resulting lather is way too wet—it moves quickly in the direction of “soupy.”
But I know that, and I gave the Fine Classic brush three good shakes before starting to load, and the lather was perfect. Three passes of the 102 and my face was totally smooth.
You may recall my various warnings about how some find that the 102 is prone to clogging, which was a puzzle to me since for me it never even threatens to clog. I cam up with various hypotheses for the clogging: hard water, lather too thick/dry, use of shave oil, and, ultimately, that some men with extremely dense and thick beards who shave only once every several days might encounter clogging.
I was corresponding via private message with one of the thick-bearded guys who found that clogging was a problem, and I just recently got this message from him:
Eureka!! I changed the thickness of the lather and the SC102 had NO clog issues on a good 3+ days of stubble.
When I whip lather I always make it very thick and creamy (opacity level = 1). So if we were to use a opacity scale, with 1 being no transparency while 10 being transparent. I made my lather with an opacity of about 7-8 and this solved the problem.
Extremely happy now!
So in this case beard density was not the issue (and perhaps it never is). The problem was that the lather needed more water.
A good splash of Bulgari for myself, and the holiday begins.
Filed under: Shaving
