Ok, finished my first shave with it (at noon... gotta love Saturdays )

Takes a while to get warm. A test run last night revealed that it takes at least 20-25 minutes. My answer to this was to plug it in and turn it on high before I got into the shower. This worked out perfectly.

Since all I have at the moment is some classicshaving.com cake soap, here is the method I used. Please let me note here - I am by all means still an amateur to wet shaving, so there my be lots of room for improvement in technique.

I soaked my brush during the shower, so that it was warm and holding lots of water by the time I was ready to start. Once ready to begin, I pulled the brush out, gave it a shake to drop most of loose water, and drained the ceramic bowl of the crock pot.

I took a small amount of the cake soap ("snurdle" I believe is the term I've seen used on here), and put it into the bottom of the pre-heated ceramic bowl, and used my wet brush to make lather. The lather seemed to be better than I usually get from a cold cake, and the warmth of it on my skin was fantastic. The lather did seem to dry out in the crock quickly between passes, requiring me to rebuild every time I wanted to reapply. I think I am going to try "uberlather" with some glycerin, and see if it improves.

Overall, I am very happy with the new acquisition, and VERY well worth the price.

The manufacturer of the Crock Pot is Chefmate, the part number is SC-15, and I paid $10.99 plus tax. I was unable to find this crock pot anywhere online, save for a few mentions on craigslist and E-Bay.

Hope this helps!