What is your opinion on fine shaving creams and hard soaps? Do you like Trumpers, Coates, Taylors, Truefitt & Hill? Post your reviews and opinions here!
The Maître Savonitto lather is explosive, but very thin. Its an ok lather that leaves the impression of an OK shave
La Savonniere du Moulin lather is very very similar to MdC...very easy to make and nice and thick. Skin felt good afterwards.
rant:
both soaps come in a tiny little 'wooden' wrap and has a 2.5" diameter. The La Savonniere du Moulin is at least flat across the top. Some dude on acid(??) at the Maître Savonitto factory probably thought shaping a shaving soap so that the top was barely flat would be super cool. Both are incredibly difficult to load a brush since the top surface is so small.
The whole shaving experience is ruined by struggling to load a brush
On a positive note, both soaps have a very agreeable non invasive scent
mlb549 wrote:I just grated them into larger containers.
This would appear to be the work-around.
I like my soap in a one-cup Pyrex bowl, which allows ample room to work the brush, so I grate up a shave stick or half of a normal cake of soap and mash it into the bowl. This is standard practice for me.
These sound interesting. Except for the impractical shape/size. I have had the same complaint about the soaps that come in little sticks, that give an illusion that the user must grasp the sudsy little stick and rub it on his face. They do much better ground into either a larger push-up stick dispenser, or equally as well ground up and/or smooshed into the ubiquitous glass or plastic bowl for brush loading.
Gary
SOTD 99%: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, soaps & creams, synthetic / badger brushes, Colonial General razor, Kai & Schick blades, straight razors any time, Superior 70 aftershave splash + menthol + 444
Same problem with Haslinger and several other (often very good) soaps. It is rather ridiculous but grating or moulding into a larger container is the only option. It is hard to imagine what the manufacturers are thinking when they make the 2" diameter pucks. Maybe the fit standard soap processing machines and they can just cut off standard thickness slices? Who knows. Since I'm not a big fan of MDC (it's OK but not one of my favorites by a long chalk) I will probably pass on these two new ones.
Clive, look on eBay for Old Spice mugs or something similar. They used to have them in plastic or sometimes ceramic. They're regular shaving mugs that hold the Williams size shave soap. I've got a couple myself and they work fine with a smaller brush. As a side note, years ago I picked up several soup (soup not soap) mugs that have a removable air tight plastic seal. The mugs are ceramic with a built in handle similar to a really big coffee cup. They work fantastic as a shaving mug to build lather and also to store your puck. They're big enough to hold a MWF or any large puck with room to spare and they will keep the puck perfectly 'stored' with the lid on damn near indefinitely. There's plenty of room to use a Chubby 3 or one of the big Polos. It's what I use for my pucks or
when I grate the shave sticks into a more useable platform. Just my two cents.
