Thread: shave soaps revealed

Originally Posted by Sxot

You can bathe with a shave soap, but you'd have to be desperate to shave with a bath soap!

Originally Posted by benhunt

I did exactly this for a couple of years before I knew any better.

While using a DE for over 10 years and then an Atra cartridge for many more years I used Ivory soap and it worked reasonably well ... no nicks, cuts, or irritation usually. Now I'm lathering with mug soap and enjoying it more and the shaves are closer.

Quite a while ago I used to shave with a Schick injector. I used the canned Barbasol or Noxema. When I couldn't buy injector blades at the grocery store anymore I went cheap and bought disposable razors. Disliking shaving more and more I went from a daily shave to twice a week shaves. To spite the whole affair, I quit buying canned shave cream and used the anti-bacterial hand soap instead. Have you ever tried to rinse that stuff off: it is very slick and slimy feeling. But it doesn't lather well at all... I spent 2-3 years like that.

One day I broke down and ordered a kit from Harry's. An ad from West Coast Shaving came up in the browser, I clicked it, and ended up with a wonderful Simpsons Classic brush, a Merkur 34C, and a tube of Proraso Red. My daughters got the Harry's razor and blades and I started enjoying shaving again!

So yes, you can shave with any soap, and get a serviceable result. You can also hammer nails with a crescent wrench...