I've only used Proraso Green soap, which comes in a nifty little container with a snap on lid...great for use, storage, and portability. I've seen Williams soap at the store in a box. What are you supposed to store it in, if anything, and where do you put it when you are loading your brush? Is this how most soaps come, or do they, like Proraso, come in a container that facilitates ease of use? What's the deal with sticks? How do you build and apply lather? Is it better to get creams in a tube or tub?
Soaps, Sticks, and Creams OH MY!
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Some men like it,its cheap and to my mind a waste of a good shave to use.
A mug,cup or monkey dish,look at the Shave of the day photo's for ideas.
Some do- some don't,you can always use your own container.
You wet your face and rub them on your beard, then use your brush to build lather- some guys love them, do a search and you can see a bazillon posts about them.
Whatever you like, mostly the same product so ....!
I too use that Proraso soap, great stuff, I really like it. Also I use that Williams soap as a regular part of my rotation. I have a small Ziploc container that I store it in, and when I use it for shaving, I drop it in a coffee mug that I keep in my shower and load my brush from that.
Most soaps come with a choice of just getting a refill puck, or getting the soap with a nice wood bowl. I have found that the wood bowls are a waste of money as most refill pucks fit perfectly in my little ziplock containers.
As far as the shave sticks, they are really very nice. You wet your face, then wet the tip of the stick and then rub all over the area to shave. Once you have a good layer of stick on your face you go to work with your brush and build the lather directly on your face. I like the sticks quite a bit as they are easy to use, I think faster, and are great for travel.
You put it in a mug... alot of people do that for shaving soap. You can also keep it in a ziploc container. Eventually it will melt if the container is too wide but it is still useable. A Williams puck is only a couple months worth of soap at most so it would probably last OK in a mug though it would lose some of the fragrance.
My advice stick with the Proraso green if you've found a source for it. It's got a good reputation. You might even like creams better. Williams is a decent soap but not a very luxurious shave- somewhat drying/caustic to the skin, no fancy lubrication. It is cheap and widely available though.
The price per ounce for a shaving cream in a tube is usually twice what it is for the same cream in a tub. The tube might be good for travel, but a shaving stick is better (IMHO), and so I would say get shaving creams in a tub when you can. Some quite good shaving creams come only in a tube, though: Proraso, for example, and Tabac.
depends on the size of your soap. Yes, it's me, Captain Obvious. For many puck soaps, you can use Ziplock plastic storage containers or Anchor Glass containers -- which are what I use. They're easily available at Target, WalMart, etc., and are in the kitchen storage goods section with the pyrex & corningware and stuff. They come in a pack of 4 with snap-on lids.
-Captain Obvious
Williams is not terribly well-thought of by many here. OTOH, some really like it. One thing that will make a lot of mediocre soaps better is: Wet the surface of the soap with a little hot water, wait a minute or two (shower) for it to soften the surface. Then put a few drops of pure glycerin (available at a drug store cheaply) on top of the soap, and use a just damp brush to load up with soap. Lather on your face or in a bowl. Makes the lather a lot better and "slicker", less drying to your face, too.
The tubs are a much better deal than the tubes. For travel, I just take a soap in a plastic tub (Mama Bear) so I have no need of tubes.
I'm a big fan of the Anchor Hocking glass containers. Get the 1-cup sized ones. If you get glycerine-based soap you can melt them to fit perfectly; the triple-milled soaps can't be melted, but they will fit pretty well anyhow. The wooden bowls (traditional for English triple-milled soaps) are usually quite attractive for your countertop, and the general idea is you work up a proto-lather slurry off the soap and into a bowl for real lathering, as there is really no room in the 'bowl' for lathering.
Although perhaps not quite as handy, you can use most soap pucks as if they were a shave stick. Just grab it in your palm, dip it in the basin of warm water, and rub the flat side all over your wet beard. Use brush to lather on face as usual. Having it in the form of a push-up stick is handy to use for travel, but it's pretty much the same soap as in the puck form.
I like the little 1-ounce sample pucks from TGQ (Colleen). You can just travel with 2 or 4 different scents, each in a little plastic bag, no need to carry a mug or bowl. Low weight, low volume, nothing to break. And, it's really good stuff!
And how does one get in touch with Colleen? I tried http://www.thegentlemensquarter.com, which I assume is her website, but it's under a lot of construction, and none of the contact "links" actually work.
-benjy
Hummm, ya' gotta know the secret....
Email her at [email protected]. Ask her to email you the PDF file (or a link to it) which is her catalog. You'll order the same way, by email, or I think over the phone, if you need to. Mention in your email that you're particularly interested in the sample-size pucks. She might have some pre-packaged sample kits at a discount from the regular per-sample price.
Just tell her I sent you and she'll treat you right!
(Actually, she'll treat you right just because she's a nice person....)
