Thread: Unlocking the secret... modern Williams Mug soap exposed to awesome lather.

I bought a puck of Williams yesterday to try out and see if it is different from the stick I have. This morning I dipped my Semogue 1350 boar brush in cold water and shook out the excess, loaded the brush on the puck and face lathered. The single loading gave me enough for a 3 pass shave and some touch ups.

No different technique from how I use my other much more expensive hard soaps. I can't believe the trouble some are having getting a lather from the Williams puck. It is not the best lather but far from useless. The other hard soaps cost 5 or more times as much and produce more and better lather for sure, at least twice as good but not 5 or more times as good. For what you pay for a Williams puck you do get what you pay for, a basic usable shave soap.

The scent is different between the puck and stick. I suspect the formula may be different too and the stick is a slightly better performer for me.

Bob

I just use my Surabachi . Scrap the dry puck on the sides and bottom. Soak the horse hair and make your lather. Never fails.

Originally Posted by Johnus

I just use my Surabachi . Scrap the dry puck on the sides and bottom. Soak the horse hair and make your lather. Never fails.

You are using a mortar bowl to scape the soap off in and then lather in the mortar bowl? Just want to make sure I have the right idea of what a Suribachi is. I am sure, well almost sure, you are not using the mountain on Iwo Jima. You never know how inventive shaving geeks can be.

Bob

Williams is good stuff and I enjoy using it. I face lather with either a boar or badger brush, and I shake most of the water our before I load the brush, so the first application on my face is pretty dry, but then I place the brush under the running water a few times as I continue to work the soap on my face, and in no time I have a wonderful, thick, slick, and creamy lather. Seems I always get a good shave with Williams. Before I ditched the cartridges, Williams was the only soap I used for about 10 years after inheriting my dad's boar brush. Didn't really know there was anything else.

Originally Posted by Johnus

I just use my Surabachi . Scrap the dry puck on the sides and bottom.

Please don't tell us you make peanut sauce with it, too.

:-þ

Wow! I've been wet shaving since ~1957 and never paid attention to lather quality since I used a DE and you can dry shave with those if necessary. Since starting to try SR shaving again about a month ago (after researching SRP), I'm really getting into this. Anyway, some days were good, some not so good, which I assumed was the razor's fault or the strop's fault until I came to this thread. This morning I used your technique for lather prep and voila! My coconut triple-milled soap came alive; I almost achieved BBS with the first pass! Can't thank you guys enough for these excellent articles. I might have gone to my grave without ever discovering the importance of lather!

I shaved it with a cheese greater, mash it with glycirin and water let sit. Comes out looking like Praso, but tre monific

But is it going to look slick and shiny or micro bubbly? I can't seem to whip all the bubbles out.

After you lather Williams, let it sit for awhile, then whip it again. That's how you get the denser lather.

Tracked this post down rather than start a new one. When I started, the second soap I got was williams. I also had one of those terrible gift set boar brushes. Terrible results.

Not long after, I got MWF, proraso, AOS cream and Tabac and that was the end of the williams. I did try a few more shaves with it and it always made a wet later with large bubbles for me (I guess I was making it *too* wet).

Fast forward to about a month ago, and for some reason I pulled out the "burma shave" cup that I got in a gift set with the terrible boar brush and put the soap in the bottom of the mug and added less water and a wet brush, and what do you know? After about 5 shaves, I had gotten down exactly what it liked, and now it's as good as any other soap that I have for the most part, except that it does have a scent that could be called no more than weak and then instantly vanishing.

The other thing I do now that I didn't do before is that I don't wash out my brushes and haven't for several years now. Instead, I put a small magnet in the bottom of them (3 of them) and hang them from screws in the top of my cabinet so that the moisture stays in the brush and doesn't go toward the bottom of the knot to the handle). As with so many things, some familiarity and experimentation really yields fine rewards.

(if you're thinking that it's gross that I don't wash the soap out of my brushes, I actually leave the soap in because I used to have one brush and when I washed it out but it stayed fairly wet most of every day, it started to stink. Since adding a second and now third brush and leaving the soap in, no stink, and no gunk build up. Each shave pretty much frees the soap from the day before).

There's always something some people trouble with and others don't, I guess. I never had trouble at all with MWF - if anything, it makes so much later that it's all over the place, and I have found tabac a bit hard to lather if it's allowed to sit in mostly disuse. It takes more work than any other soap I have.