Are you Stingy or a Loader?

When I was first learning to lather a year or so back, I needed the corrective advice to load much more than I thought. I think that's normal when you're learning. I'd say I probably still load pretty generously, but the downside to loading a lot is the lather takes longer to build (a lot more adding-water steps) and it's easy to end up with too much. So now I'm more aware of not overdoing it.

Not to mention some soaps a trickier when over-loaded (MdC comes immediately to mind).

I try to be stingy but the performance is usually underwhelming. I'm a loader so that I can see the soap in it's full potential.

When I'm dailing in a soap I usually overload a bit so that I know I have enough. Once I figure it out the soap I find a good sweet spot for me. I do a 2-2.5 pass shave and usually have enough left for about one more pass. Out of curiosity I timed my loading tonight, and I was at about 30 seconds for Tabac, which was more than enough. I'd say a 30 second load is probably mid-heavy loading, but not crazy loading amounts.

when I'm using my soaps (croaps, really), I'll bloom them for a few minutes, dump out the bloom water onto my brush and then swirl the tips of the brush on top of the soap for maybe 15-20 seconds before going to my face.

I'm sorry if I may sound arrogant here, but I have been on the forums since 2011 now, not the longest by any stretch, but it's soon 5 years of reading and writing on the forums.........

If there is one thing you can be sure of, it's how easy it is to spot a beginner/newbie/rookie wet shaver.

They will 9/10 times load too little soap into the brush, and expect lather to explode in avalanches out of the bowl or on their face, depending if they bowl or face lather.

You also see some of the YouTube guys like Buster and others load, while they count seconds.
He may be lucky because of soft water or just that magical touch, but more often than not I see some YouTube guys get below average lather from soaps, I know will explode into rich lather for me, if you load enough soap on the brush.

Nick Shaves could not handle Le Pére Lucien and MWF. He did not load enough.
Buster made some head to head reviews, where he counted for seconds, while loading - he did load enough.

You don't count seconds or minutes, when you load. It's a rookie mistake I also made back in 2011.
You look at the brush and the soap/cream load you have on it. If the brush is 40-50% full of soap, it's enough.

And in my experience, you can't load enough soap on to that brush. You just can't.

As my favourite YouTube shaver, Anthony Esposito, says: LOAD IT LIKE YOU HATE IT !

You ever wonder why that guy can get any cream/soap/croap to perform great ?

Because he loads the brush, so it's full of product, each and every time.

Load the living life out of that soap/croap/cream - ever since I started doing this, I have NEVER experienced any problems with any soap.
I even managed to get a decent lather from a Williams puck, believe it or not. Not great lather, but decent.

And we have rock hard water. Basically our bathroom gets that white pale look to it after just 1 day, if we don't clean it.

LOAD THE LIVING LIFE OUT OF THE SOAP/CREAM/CROAP !!!

LOAD THE LIVING LIFE OUT OF THE SOAP/CREAM/CROAP !!!

What Claus said...

I do agree that many issues lathering, particularly with the "problem" soaps, can be avoided with more product.

The second most frequent culprit is too much water, too quickly. I always recommend to new shavers, using a new soap to actually build the lather to an optimum point then take it further until it breaks. Then you know...

I load, liberally, or rather apply my shave-sticks to my face, liberally, as I have much too many pucks of my favourite soap, so I have to go through them..........so, of course, I can order more.

I simply have to agree.

CHSeifert As an Anthony Esposito fan did you you ever watch the video battles between him and Ray Pope where they saw how much lather they could get out of the least amount of swirls of the puck? Really funny! I believe Pope got enough for 3 passes with 1/2 a swirl of Catie's Bubbles. Talk about stingy! One tub would last forever at that rate!

Im a loader. I load everything as though I cant wait for it to be gone. Load it like you hate it is a good way to put it.

I use a lot of cheap soaps, like Williams, and get decent performance from it because I load the crap out of it.

And even with a den freshly full of more than a dozen soaps Ive never used before...they all perform well, because I load thw snot out of all of them. Where I find differences is in post shave, primarily, with the occasional poor slickness.

But for the most part...use more product...it will cure what ails you!

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