Thread: Question about mug soap

Just pour out the excess water as it tends to soften the soap and short changes you on the longevity of the puck soap. I had a cheap soap puck that I bought from CVS and had the same experience as you did with yours. My Col. Conk soap pucks are lasting a long time and performing well.


My plumber once impressed me with how he cleared a floor drain. I asked "how did you figure out to use that tool for this?" He responded, "I started with the cheapest ineffective tool and kept bumping up until I ended up with this more expensive and effective tool"

Pabster

I just learned a lot about this hands on with 5 teachers: 3 different methods of lathering!

1. Two mugs- (the easiest method)- soap in one mug/bowl, lather in the other. What you do is load your brush with plenty of water, let it drip til its stopped dripping then give it a light shake so a little water comes out. Then load up your brush on the puck for a bit... lots of soap. Now here's where I went wrong... I kept lathering on the soap, so my lather was too thick. So move to the other bowl and whip it till you can't see any bubbles and it has a very creamy texture. If you squish it between your fingers it should feels creamy but very wet. If not ad a few drops of water.

2. One bowl and a face- (my prefered method)- Same steps for loading the brush with soap, but work it to a lather directly on your face. I like it because it feels good, saves time and doesn't use another bowl. The way you ad water this time is by dripping a little on your brush or splashing a little on your face.

3. No bowl and a face- (for the lazy of us who don't care about saving soap, you'll see what I mean in a bit)- wash your face, leave it wet. Load your brush with the same amount of water. Rub the bar of soap all over your face till there is a thin coating. Work it into lather.

I guess the variant is one puck one bowl- Load the brush on the soap then move to the face or bowl, but this seems messy... never tried it, but from loading the brush on soap IN a bowl its starts making sloppy lather so... definitely definitely recommend keeping the soap in the bowl... cuts down on mess and you can save your lather.

Now, because I currently use slightly expensive soap, I squeeze any extra suds into my soap bowl afterwards. This saves quite a bit of soap (when I lather I have enough for like 6 passes, and I only do 2, sometimes 1, very rarely 3- so if I'm using 2 and wasting 4...), and it dries into a fluffyish texture so next time you go to load your brush its actually very easy and fast.

I used VDH and still saved the suds for the aforementioned reason, and it extended puck life about 50% I'd say. I currently use Rivivage and like it, and the puck is hardly dented.
I hope to try TGQ soaps soon, and may have to try this Colonel Conk stuff its so cheap. I got some cream samples from CarrieM and she and JoeD were generous enough to gift me some Proraso cream but I'm still a mug soap guy I think. We'll see.

If you need a budget soap, VDH is fine. I can make mounds and mounds of lather in like 30 seconds. I will also highly recommend Rivivage (from Classic Shaving). Proraso is a good cream, but CarrieM's smell better and are better I think. Still feel I'm a soap guy, but I've only used creams twice so far.

Basically, you can keep the puck in the mug. Other than removing excess water, you do not need to do anything else. Now, do not expect Col. Conk to lather like Truefitt & Hill, it is just not going to happen. However, Col. Conk is a serviceable soap, it was my first soap. I gave it away awhile ago. I remember using a few drops of glycerin to "improve" the lather. not sure how much the lather really improved given that it is a glycerin based soap. You may want to try this to see if it works for you, with many soaps it does. A side note, with good milled soaps, 3 seconds of loading would be more than sufficient to obtain enough lather to shave a platoon (as somebody once told me). You will experience that with Col. Conk, you need to load a lot more soap, but also, it takes less time to "build" the lather... You will go though our puck fast. You pay less for the puck but use it faster... You know what they say: "you get what you pay for"; it is true!!!

Al raz.

Good advice already. I also keep the puck in my mug. I used to generate lather right on top of the puck, but I switched to face lathering.

I've only used Col. Conk's soap so I can't directly compare, but I get rich thick lather no problem. Took me a while to figure out the right soap/water ratio, though. Really really hot water helps. 1 puck will last me about 1.5 months.

-Chief

Good advice already here, but I'll just add that
there's no point in `cleaning up' lather from on-
top of the puck. You'd be wasting time at best,
and getting rid of useful soap at worse.

- Scott

Originally Posted by sebell

Good advice already here, but I'll just add that
there's no point in `cleaning up' lather from on-
top of the puck. You'd be wasting time at best,
and getting rid of useful soap at worse.

Amen. As I said... I make easily enough lather for at least 4 if not 5 or 6 passes, and if I only do 2 or 3, I'm basically using the soap 2x faster than I should, which is then in effect doubling the price/halving the value. Now that seems okay on a $2 puck of VDH, but when you get to a $10 puck of TGQ or into $20 milled soaps...

Originally Posted by sebell

Good advice already here, but I'll just add that
there's no point in `cleaning up' lather from on-
top of the puck. You'd be wasting time at best,
and getting rid of useful soap at worse.

- Scott

Exactly. I just work the soap into my brush on the puck, lather in a separate bowl and put the container with the puck away right then. with some soaps I've used there might be a couple of shaves worth of soap stuck to the container even when the puck appears completely gone.

OK, I'll toss in the way I do it, just for grins.
I lather in a bowl (actually a violet planter or "redneck scuttle"). I use one of those little cheese spreader "knives" (sort of like a little butter knife about 4 inches long, wooden handle and a metal spatula-shape blade with a few coarse serrations around the end curve). You can also use the fingernail cleaner blade that is on your nail clippers, or anything similar. You rake this tool lightly over the face of the dry puck, and produce very thin shavings of soap, about 1-2 mm wide and 10 mm long, but only about 0.1 mm thick. Put these in the bottom of your lather bowl, and start with your soaked but shaken brush. Add hot water to the base of the brush with a small spoon a little at a time until your lather is right.
This not only saves soap, but the puck stays dry and clean. You will learn by experience about how much soap you need. If too wet, add a little soap shaving; if too dry, add a little water. Out of lather, just add some more soap and a little water and make more.

This is very methodical and basically the same. Glad to see I'm not the only one concerned about saving soap!

Originally Posted by Wildtim

Exactly. I just work the soap into my brush on the puck, lather in a separate bowl and put the container with the puck away right then. with some soaps I've used there might be a couple of shaves worth of soap stuck to the container even when the puck appears completely gone.

I see, this is very helpful. So what im guessing eventually happens is as the puck is worn down...leaving the lather leftover on it will all settle to the bottom to kindof make a form fitting chunk of soap that sits in the bowl.

I like all the input given so far guys much appreciated. Today i used Col conks and just left the lather on the puck. Then i actually squeezed the remaining lather from my brush on it too. Kindof swirled it all around so it layed flat and put it back.

I kindof feel like theres gonna be like a soap scum issue doing this...but we will see. I dont want to waste any