Experiment 17: Are soaps cheaper than creams?

These posts in Do soaps possess any real advantages over creams?

• "soaps are, most of the time, cheaper"
• "Soaps are generally cheaper per shave than creams"
• "cost per shave ratio that most soaps have over most creams"

piqued my curiosity. So I went through How Many Shaves to the bottom of a Shave Stick? to get some (not so) hard data. The (admittedly small number of) results suggest that people use 0.67g of triple milled soap and 1.5g of melt & pour per shave.

To check for myself, I took 0.667g of AoS unscented and put my brush to it in a large bowl. It gave me 5 very full passes plus a little left over for touch up. This fits my instinct that I use between 0.5g and 0.75g per 3-pass shave.

Next, I wanted to compare this to how much cream is used per shave. I don't care much for creams, so maybe my lathering is off, which would make the numbers wrong. I dosed out a healthy, yet reasonable snurdle of Penhaligon's Blenheim Bouquet shaving cream, and weighed it to 2g. To do a direct comparison, I scooped some off until there was 0.67g of cream, which was about the size of a pea. Doing my usual face lathering gave me 2 good passes, and a third that was just barely sufficient. Let's call that the touch up pass. To match the 5 passes from AoS would take 2.5 times the amount of cream, or about 1.75g, but maybe it's closer to 1.5g.

Summary:

Or put another way:

The last step is to comparison shop.

A quick snapshot...

... seems to affirm that soaps are cheaper to use.

Still, I wondered if this holds when you compare comparable qualities across different companies. After all, few companies make both good soaps and good creams, and there's no sense doing a comparison between products of different quality.

So I compared my favorite two creams and my favorite two triple milled soaps. (Sorry, but I just don't care for melt & pours)
Okay. I'm sold.

Anyone want to tackle Experiment 18?

At the rate of my current usage, I am expecting my $40 kilo brick of Cella (divided into 8 pieces in zip lock bags in my freezer) to last at least two years. That's less than 6 cents a shave.

This is absolutely fantastic and you, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

Thanks for the information, I've just started going back to soaps so this gives me evidence to show SWMBO why I need to buy more stuff

I used a puck of AOS lavender to shave every day. It lasted 9 months. That works out to about 10 cents per shave at $26.00 per puck, not including shipping (if any). Any creams I used never seemed to last that long. Thanks for doing the math. Truly, YMMV.

i'd be interested to see how this would stack up against a can of Barbasol cream, and against Gillette's new Fusion gel that's "clinically proven to hydrate your face":9898:.

thanks for running the numbers for us! it's fascinating to see how much cheaper it is in the long run!

No matter how many swirls I use to load my brush, I look at my pucks of TABAC and MWF and CADE and my tub of Cella, and I wonder why they still look so full. I think I can get two years out of these four soaps!!
But I also have four creams and am ready to order some other stuff--Oh NOOOOOOOOO!!!! I'm in deeeeep! Let's see- my son is 9, so in a few years I'll have enough for his entire life.

Thanks for running the math, I always feel better when there's evidence to back up my anecdotal experience.

Neat comparison. Thanks!

Great post. Thank you for the information.

Thank you Steve, I appreciate your work. I know why I'm a soap guy

Very interesting read!... Thanks for the info

Cool post. However, I thought Speick soap was triple-milled.

DFrancis said:

Thanks for the information, I've just started going back to soaps so this gives me evidence to show SWMBO why I need to buy more stuff

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Glad I could help.

And thanks for all the kind responses from everyone. You're welcome.

jkh said:

Cool post. However, I thought Speick soap was triple-milled.

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My notes say otherwise. It also soaks up a lot of water, so it doesn't seem like it's triple milled. I didn't know how much Speick you actually need, so I gave a range, but my feeling is the amount is closer to triple milled than not, so closer to 8 cents than 18.

BlackBard said:

I used a puck of AOS lavender to shave every day. It lasted 9 months. That works out to about 10 cents per shave at $26.00 per puck, not including shipping (if any). Any creams I used never seemed to last that long. Thanks for doing the math. Truly, YMMV.

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This!!!!!

And this is the reason I went through the How Many Shaves thread. Those sticks are passed around to different people, so their numbers should represent some kind of average. It's nice to know how one's experience compares to others. Seems I use a little less since I only do 3.5 passes, but can get 5.5 from using that much soap. Then again, every product's a little different, so this is far from conclusive.

Would really like to see more (not so) hard data about how much of each product is used. My frankenstein laboratory's still open.