What I do is take a guitar pick to scoop out a little bit of soap, press it down on the bottom of a small bowl and use a wet shaving brush to whip up a nice lather. The amount of water is really important. So start off with less and slowly add more until you have the right consistency, which can be up to your preference. In general you should aim for a yogurt-like consistency, but experimenting is important here. There’s also the possibility to load up the brush directly on the soap instead of scooping it out, and you can also skip the bowl and lather it on your face.

Now to the face prep: It’s always good to soften up your beard hair with warm water before the shave, so shaving after taking a shower is never a bad idea. Using a gentle face cleanser is also advisable, as is gentle exfoliation (might want to skip that depending on your skin).

Now the final step would be gear: There are special shaving bowls and other stuff that you can buy, but a cheap metal bowl does the trick too. Of course you also need a brush. Traditionally, they’re made with badger, boar or horse hair, but nowadays you can get really good synthetic ones that are also a lot cheaper. They come in different knot sizes and handles, and there’s differences in softness and backbone of the fibres. I managed to get a Mühle Silvertip Fibre for pretty cheap, which is very soft, so it’s perfect for my estrogenized face. Other people prefer really stiff ones. Again, it’s up to your preference.

And of course you need a good soap. There’s massproduced classic ones that you can get for pretty cheap, which have great perfomance, like Cella, Arko or Tabac. But if you really want to get the best performance possible, you have to take a look at artisan soaps. I wish I could recommend Southern Witchcrafts to you, which I am using, because their vegan soaps are absolutely amazing and I love them, but they recently closed their business. So instead I’m just going to say that Barrister and Mann is currently regarded as the best-performing soap by a large part of the community, and if you live in Europe, you should take a look at Saponificio Varesino.

This reddit thread might help you a bit: https://old.reddit.com/r/wicked_edge/comments/1ed6okv/honest_2024_shave_soap_tiers/