A Boar Brush Face Lathers Nicely with Grandad's Soap

For most of my shaves in the last month or two, I have used an Omega brand Syntex shaving brush, and made lather in a five-inch-diameter lathering bowl.

Comparison photo of the Omega Syntex, left, the Tweezerman
badger, center, and the Van Der Hagen (VDH) boar, right.

The Syntex brush, with its synthetic bristles, holds a large amount of water despite the bristles that absorb none. This large water capacity is a good thing because my Grandad's shave soap likes a lot of water.

A couple of days ago I deviated from the usual process and used my Grandad's shave soap with my Van Der Hagen (VDH) boar brush to face lather.

I had previously tried face lathering with the Syntex brush, but the results were much better in the relatively-large lathering bowl; face lathering with the Syntex brush yielded an adequate lather, but nothing close to the best. However, when I tried the boar-bristled VDH brush, face lathering with Grandad's soap was a delight.

This is the 50-cent, five-inch-diameter cereal bowl from Target
that I use as a lathering bowl. The center was roughed up with
sandpaper to help a soap puck adhere if desired. I currently keep
the soap puck in a re-used Greek-yogurt cup and just use the bowl
to build lather when not to face lathering.

I did my usual minimalist preparation, which includes cool tap water rubbed into my whiskers, and I also soaked the VDH brush in cool water for minute as well.

I then loaded the fairly-wet brush generously with shave soap began to swirl against my face. I added a bit of water to the brush tips a couple of times as the lather built nicely becoming not only slick, but also very rich and more stiff than when I use the synthetic brush in the lathering bowl.

I then shaved with a three-pass shave, which was very close. One of my best, in fact.

Happy shaving!