My Guess... 3017

I think I got 23 shaves from a puck of Stirling. I have hard water.

My QSC Fougere is going strong and the lather has been fantastic.

30 for me with a Stirling sample. Twas my first "3017".

Soft water for me too.

Sullybob said:

I think I got 23 shaves from a puck of Stirling. I have hard water.

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Was that from a Full puck or a sample?

I've been using hard water for the past 8 days but 3 of those shaves I was using a silvertip brush. The puck sample was 1.4oz that's like using 4g/shave.

I should ask how you used up a Stirling sample in 7 shaves? I think 22 is a reasonable amount.

In order for me to generate a decent lather that won't fall apart by the 2nd pass, I need to load heavily. Maybe just my water... Idk. Of course ymmv. But they only last me a week of shaving everyday...

I've been using different loading methods too. The Marco method of course most of the time. a wet and a dry method. I load about 45 sec to a minute and still get 22 shaves out of the puck. I don't know if you mash or do anything else to the puck but I just drop it in a pyrex bowl and start loading.

brucered said:

Was that from a Full puck or a sample?

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It was from a full puck. I really struggled to get good lather with Stirling.

Sullybob said:

It was from a full puck. I really struggled to get good lather with Stirling.

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You aren't the only one. I couldn't get any shavable lather from my pucks either and gave up.

brucered said:

You aren't the only one. I couldn't get any shavable lather from my pucks either and gave up.

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I had a few really outstanding lathers, as good as any product on the market. My problem was that I wasn't able to get consistent results from one shave to the next.

Sullybob said:

I had a few really outstanding lathers, as good as any product on the market. My problem was that I wasn't able to get consistent results from one shave to the next.

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I think I got 2-3 great rest lathers using Distilled Water but couldn't duplicate in an actual shave.

Sullybob said:

It was from a full puck. I really struggled to get good lather with Stirling.

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brucered said:

You aren't the only one. I couldn't get any shavable lather from my pucks either and gave up.

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I wonder if there are some pucks that perform better than others? I had the same problem with mine, subpar unstable lather. I have another puck lined up for some time next year, so I'll give the soap at least one more go.

What throws me off is all the comments from other members saying that this soap is the greatest thing to come about since the Polio vaccine. Either we are getting different pucks from those guys who are getting these stellar results, or there is a steady string of subjective fanboyism regarding this brand?

As another idea. For me, a soap is either good or not, price isn't a factor in performance. Price only dictates whether I am willing to pay for a soap's performance, but when judging lather I use the same scale regardless of cost. Maybe because Stirling makes shaving soaps that are so affordable, there are lots of people saying that the soap performs amazingly when they actually mean to say that "it performs well considering the price"?

I really like the scents they offer and it looks like they are working on making good soap, so there is a lot to like about Stirling. It would be convenient for me if I got better performance from the lather.

There's a note up top about some folks getting too happy about certain brands. It happens on the internet. I've seen entire forums that exclusively champion certain products even though in theory they aren't working for the company.

I have used a bunch of Stirling samples. Performance is generally good, sometimes I get a puck that won't lather, sometimes I get a great puck. As said above, consistency from one shave to the next was my issue with them. But, even with a great soap, I'm not always getting great lather. I have hard water and no softener.

It also seems Rod is (or was) constantly tweaking the formula, so that might make a difference.

On the whole, I rate Stirling well in terms of being a slick soap, but sometimes finicky. I seemed to burn through the product quickly as it is soft. I would guess around 3 grams per shave, which would be about 45 shaves from a full puck. I only ever used the samples, and it was usually 10 shaves per sample maybe?

You make a lot of good points inspiringK. I also wonder what some people call good or great lather. I've also thought that some people say a soap is good simply because its inexpensive. Catties Bubbles gets a lot of fan boy love (for the record, I'm a fan) but those soaps are some of the best I've ever used, and I get similar results every shave.
I don't think its a case where we are getting different batches of soap, I just struggle with Stirling soap. His bath soap and laundry soap are all excellent. I've watched videos of guys lathering his soap and they make it look easy, almost effortless.
I tried another artisan soap a few months ago and I was getting similar results to Stirling. Sliceoflife mentioned in a thread that the soap I was using needed a lot of water because of one of the ingredients. I tried lathering the artisan soap again, using a lot of water and I got good lather, not amazing lather just good stable lather. I'm on my phone, I'll post the ingredient later. Stirling also has the same ingredient, I wonder if I wasn't using enough water. Most of my lathers from Stirling looked like I added too much water, the lather looked like hand lotion.

I haven't used Stirling at this point, though I have laying around somewhere a sample puck that came with a brush from Rudy. I will say that virtually all of our artisans have been creative about developing their formulas. It's just soap and there are certain parameters that have to be followed to turn those fats into soap, but a little tallow here, some coconut oil there, with a splash of cocoa butter and maybe some shea butter too will give different soaps depending on who's doing the stirring. With the exception of some of the really well-established soap makers like Wendy, Mama Bear and Honeybee Sue who have tried and true formulas they use where they just riff with scents, our more recent soap makers are likely to still be in the tinkering phase. Mike seems pretty set on his formula, as does LASS, but Stirling, RazoRock, Tiki, Dapper Dragon, etc. still seem to be refining. It's helpful when they note the formula change or give it a version number (something from HTGAM that I can actually get behind), but I've settled into a set of expectations that like handmade brushes, handmade soaps are going to vary a bit from batch to batch, and may require some tinkering now and again to coax the best from them.

I've been able to get good and consistent lather from Stirling but I use distilled water (mine is hard-hard-hard) for all my soaps. When I was using it in rotation, it was more hit or miss. Using it every day improved it. I go through it really really fast so it is not a big value compared to other soaps - the $ per shave is about the same. I have to load a lot to get those consistent results. I think the low cost per puck is driving a lot of the fanboy behavior but that doesn't work for me. I like it but there are many others I like just as well. I wouldn't wave anyone off though.

The customer service was really good when I bought some about a year and half ago. That counts for something.

I like Stirling and recommend anyone to try it. Works well for me.

The re-formulations are discouraging because of inconsistency. You don't necessarily know what you're getting from one order to the next. I also understand why Rod has sold batches that didn't turn out how he wanted, I've even used some of them, but I wonder if it didn't hurt him a little bit. Again, regarding consistency.

I'm sure there's some fanboy-ism, but I tend to think his formulas must be somewhat picky about water quality. Those that I've heard have bad luck with it seem to report hard water or high product usage as well. Nothing wrong with that, that's why YMMV.

In other news, I couldn't stop wondering about my accidental beautiful lather from KL Lavender. Tried Marco's method again today and did much better, not as well as that beautiful one, but good enough I'll keep trying. It seems to like starting really wet and then lathering the big bubbles out of it instead of sneaking up with the water.



Still some improvement to make but this is much better than before.

I found something interesting at the bottom of my Tabac bowl this morning after my shave... the bottom of the bowl



I won't even venture a guess as I've been way off the last two soaps once the breakthrough occurs.

Here's some more lather porn. Tabac whipped up after today's shave with a little water and what was left in the brush. Amazing stuff.

Been using Wilkinson blue bowl for two days now. I know it's not the most popular soap here, but it works for me. Definitely slicker than Classic Shaving. I can go sideways on my neck no problem, no nicks, weepers, cuts. Couldn't do that with CS soap.
The smell is a weird kind of artificial cleaning soap type smell, not altogether unpleasant to me. I think I can detect lemon in there somewhere, not sure.
I did pop the puck out of the blue plastic bowl and put it in my dottie shave bowl. I hate trying to use tins and bowls that soaps come in. They are way too messy for me. I like the room to fling my brush around with reckless abandon.

I guess I've got pretty lucky with this Stirling puck. The only bad shave I got was yesterday and that was from a dry brush technique and I guess it was too dry. I'm going to try it again Saturday.

I wouldn't say Stirling is the best but it's pretty good once you get it dialed in.