In the Wicked Edge subreddit and elsewhere, shaving gear is referred to broadly as hardware and software. This pretty much falls along the lines of items that are designed to be replaced and used up, and items that are designed to last a while.
So I’ve talked about the razor side of my hardware. Let’s jump into the other hardware–brushes.
Coming into this hobby/lifestyle/time and money suck, I had no experience shaving with soap or cream that was lathered and applied with a brush. But everyone talked about how much better it was to use a soap and a brush: “the brush gets the lather at the base of the beard hairs and helps them stand up,” “the soap helps soften the hairs,” etcetera.
My first brush, which was not long for this world, was something I found at my local co-op (bought at the same time as Badger Shave Soap, which I’ve found underwhelming). It had a bamboo handle and goat bristles, which the manufacturer asserted, will soften significantly with age and use and will hold more water. But the bristles splayed out easily and didn’t hold their form well. And they fell out a lot–I’d have to pull loose bristles out of the lather on my face when I used it. So it just never delivered.
I did more research and found that there are three common types of bristles: boar, badger, and synthetic. As with everything in shaving, there’s no common ground on which bristle type is better, so people find benefits with each.
In the picture above, I’m showing off my current three brushes, from left to right, a Razor Emporium badger shaving brush, an Omega 10019 boar shaving brush, and on the right a Proraso boar shaving brush (also made by Omega).
I like all three of them, but the edge for me has to go to the Omega and Proraso. We’ll talk about the virtues and my love of the Proraso brand products in another post, but my biggest complaint with the Razor Emporium is that the badger bristles feel softer, don’t seem to hold as much water for me, and aren’t as stiff as I’d like to generate a great lather, or it requires a lot more effort to make lather.
I’m in love with the two Omega made brushes. I use the Proraso brush just with the Proraso soap for now…just because? It holds water well, is stiff enough to make a great lather with the Proraso soap I use, and it’s very rare that I lose a bristle from it. The Omega 10019 is smaller than both as you can see, and is amazing at making lather with almost all of my soaps (I do need to go back to the Badger soap and try one of these brushes with it). Both of these brushes make lather very quickly and very easily, and as I’ve been learning and refining my technique, I’m finding it almost effortless to make a thick lather that makes a great base for shaving. To my mind, that’s what a brush should do–just produce lather easily and not make it too much of a guessing game or fine art. I’ll start with a very small amount of water expecting to have to add more as I go, and with only minor adjustments, it works out great for me, which should be the point.
Let’s talk technique for a minute, since I brought it up. The commonly accepted technique is to usually dampen the brush with hot or warm water. Load a fairly small amount of soap or cream on the brush and then work it in a bowl or cup to build the lather…Or, work it on the face itself to build up a good strong lather (I don’t seem to be able to do this well, perhaps because my beard gets in the way, but I don’t really know. So I work it well in the soap bowl/cup and then just apply to my face). Working is usually a combination of a back and forth motion with an up and down motion with the brush. Incorporate an occasional circular pattern and you’ve got the idea–agitate the soap to make a lather. Use too much water and the lather will be too thin, and not enough and you won’t generate enough lather.
The problem with the technique discussion is that soap pucks often are sized and provided to fit into a shaving bowl or mug. So it’s easy to just drop the puck in a mug and lather it right there. This practice makes some people angry. I’ve got 3 full-sized soaps that came in their own bowl/tin/cup, and we’ll talk about those at a later time. And one of them actually explicitly tells the user in the directions to lather directly in the cup it came in. The other two don’t, but there really isn’t room in one of them to lather well in the cup.
I’ve got some sample-sized soaps that I found and bought or repurposed some containers to hold, and I generally start the lather in there and then move the brush to a cup I have if I need to finish lathering. And with the smaller sample sizes that I have, I need to use a small spoon to scrape off some soap into my lathering cup to use.
I enjoy using shaving soap and getting a good lather from it. It’s kind of a relaxing preparation task before getting into the heart of the shave. But there are times that it just takes too long to do (my Sunday shaves, which include a beard trim in the shower, along with some involved prep with the Proraso products, takes a good 15 minutes). But with a shave just using my Nivea gel and my hands to make lather cuts several minutes off of that.
Honestly, at the time, I was happy with most of the creams and gels (and even foams, until the soaps blew that up) that I’d tried and didn’t really think I needed a brush. And after trying a bad one, decided I needed to try a good one (or three), and I’ve been very happy with the results. It isn’t as hard as it seems, and it works well.
