Good evening, fellows and ladies of the Blade!
I won a puck of Stirling Frozen Tundra in a PIF a few months ago and have been waiting patiently for the right day (ie, hot and humid) to use it. Today was that day. I did my normal face prep while the puck was blooming, had the brush soaking, and was eager to get started. Let me state at the outset that I'm a relative newcomer to soaps. Up until this point, I used a PIF'd puck up VDH as my introduction to soaps, and I had three or four successful latherings from that puck. I have no other experience with shave soaps.
I dumped the bloom water in the bowl, wrung out the brush, and set to loading. And loading. Then I went to build lather in the bowl. I was getting not a whole lot of anything in the bowl, but the brush was starting to build a little. I squeezed it out and got this soupy semi-lather out. So, I went back to the puck and loaded more. And loaded. And loaded. Then went back to the bowl, added more water, and was getting very little in the way of results.
So I repeated, except I added a little more water to the puck. By now, I was getting overflow on the puck out of the tin I was using to store it (a re-purposed empty Simpsons Shaving Cream tin). Then I took this to the bowl. Again, very little in the way of lather.
Ok, says I, time to change brushes. I replaced the Vie Long horsehair I was using with my Rudy Vey Group Buy badger, wet it, wrung out most of the water (damp, not dripping), then went at the puck again for about 20 seconds.
Again, very little lather in the bowl. Tried adding water, whipping it around like a crazyman, etc.
So, in a pique of frustration, I decided to go straight to face with the brush. I had better results here, but the lather was thinner than I would like. It definitely wasn't the quality I typically expect from my lather. However, it was certainly superior to the non-lather I was getting in the bowl.
The shave itself was adequate, with more irritation than I've had in a long time -- for obvious reasons. The soap itself was nice and refreshing. That cold blast of menthol was rather nice. I just wish I could get better lather out of this puck.
To that end, I'm sending up the Bat Signal. I'm willing to fail and in the process learn, and I'm eager to have this much-loved soap line work for me. I'm nowhere close to throwing in the towel on it (or soaps in general).
Any help/thoughts/etc would be appreciated. I didn't realize how spoiled I'd become with creams!
User error with Stirling Soap
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