Thread: How'd I do?

Also just recently purchased a new Dovo from Vintage Blades and was very pleased with the condition when it arrived--certainly shave ready.

As for soaps although I'm new to straights I'm certainly not new to soaps or shaving. I'm less keen to jump on any bandwagon for or against any particular product. You ask 100 people and they'll give you 100 different answers. Ultimately you should experiment and use what you like best.

Lather requires soap, water and technique. Every soap behaves differently and requires a different touch.

In the same way people complain about a razor when it's often their technique, when people write-off a soap as bad more often than not they're either using poor water or they've not yet mastered the technique to get that particular make of soap to produce its best later.

Williams is probably the classic example of this. Some people would have you think it's the worst product ever while others have made it their fall back mainstay for years. Williams doesn't have any fancy moisturizers made from dinosaur fat or exotic essential oils that requires native tribesmen to climb to the top of a mountain to collect berries from a near extinct tree... it's just a simple plain no-nonsense soap. With good water and good technique it works just fine.

As for Col. Conk I think it's fine. As with any shaving supply you can certainly spend much more on something fancier and more exotic, but you don't need to. Fragrance is purely a matter of personal preference, but as for the soap good water and good technique can produce a nice lather with Col. Conk. As with many soaps I do find that Col. Conk can dry the skin a bit, but that's nothing that a few drops of glycerin added to the later can't solve and why I always have a bottle with my shaving supplies.

Try some different products over the coming months, see what you like best and then use a rotation of those products to always keep things interesting.