So I am testing out some Palmira soap from Serbia (a tallow based cube of soap with a lovely almond scent), and the first run out was on Wednesday with a synthetic brush. I got a lovely, creamy and thick lather with plenty of slickness that led to a good shave, and a nice scent to boot. Couldn't have been happier with it. Then today, I figured I'd try out the boar hair brush on it, and no matter what I did, the lather completely failed. Thin, full of air bubbles, and dissipated on the face before the razor could even get there. I tried loading with a drier brush and wetting it on the face, loading the brush more wet, loading long, loading short, yet everything I tried was a complete failure. I decided I'd check out the synthetic again on it (since I wouldn't have to spend any extra time soaking the brush), and voila, literally within 20 seconds I have a wonderfully creamy lather again and was able to get a great shave again. Confused, since I've used the boar hair brush loads and never have failed on a soap so completely (except when testing some hand soaps for fun, which also fail when using a synthetic too), I figured I would just rub it on some Arko to see if perhaps I got some crud in the brush. Nope, the Arko exploded into the typical great lather (which is unsurprising, since I'm pretty sure you could lather Arko with a brick, but I digress).



So next I will test this Palmira with a badger and see how that fares, but it's interesting to me that the same soap can have completely different outcomes depending on the brush I use (and two brushes that I use all the time, it's not some new brush I've never used before). Now the question is, do you have any soaps that will lather with one type of brush but completely fail with another? Let me know, I'd love to hear your experiences!