I got a stick of this with my Derby blade order...I have to say, it's not bad...compared to 'MY' gold standard; Tabac. Steve
Got to say that I like the Arko better than Tabac, this is the one soap that I fail to get consistant lather with. Sometimes it's perfect, most of the time I can't get the water levels right so I've washed my hands of it even though I love the smell.
Yes, for an extremely inexpensive soap it's really really good! Amazon has them for, when I bought mine it was 16 for $18. I think that's correct. Anyway, it was a little more than a buck per stick.
Speaking of 16 sticks, does it have a shelf life? Do tallow soaps in general? I figure it's fat...it's gotta go bad at some point
Keep it in a dry area and it' ll last for decades. Vintage Old Spice, Burma Shave, Williams, Colgate and there are probably others that I don't know about are bought up by people on the bay, and they pay top dollar for those soaps.
It's not fat. It's soap. The fat is used in the making of the soap, but is not fat at the end of the saponification process.
A long storage life is one of the advantages of soaps. I always feel like I need to use up creams (which is OK if I only have one or two), but soaps I can go in streaks if I feel like it without worrying about anything going bad.
I got the Arko sticks from Amazon also. They keep fine and for a really long time, even here in the Texas heat. I finally emptied a plastic tub of soap/cream and was going to grate a stick of Arko to refill the container. However , first, I just put the stick on it side and pressed it into the container. so it leaves a gap on either side, and the top initially is above the top of container. But I just put my brush of the day into a large cup of hot water, shake it out a little, and it works up a great lather on the stick of Arko. Maybe next time I will take the time to grate the stick and press it into the container, but this is working fine for me.
Thanks to member wknicholas "Nick", I gave Arko a try and am glad I did. It provides a really great three pass shave for me. I heard a lot of descriptions about the scent of this product, but the bottom line is, it smells like soap, a bar of Ivory soap. To all you youngsters out there, if your Mom never washed your butt with a bar of Ivory, well, you just missed out. Now, I personally prefer to load my brush with soap, make a lather in a cup/bowl and then lather my face. After talking with Nick, here is what I did and how I do it. Step 1: Order four sticks from TSD Store. That's three sticks as a spare. Step 2: Grate the stick until it looks good enough to put on your pizza. (I highly recommend you do not do this). Step 3: You can use what you want, I chose an empty beechwood shave soap bowl. Compact the shavings in to the container of your choice. Step 4: Build a good lather on your brush and go to town. It will perform as well as any other soap you put on your face.
Hey Johnny, are you using a whole stick for 1 shave? If not what happens to the left overs? Thanks for the pictures, it does help.
He's not using the whole stick, and the remaining (most) part of the stick is still in the original bowl. The lather is in a different bowl, specifically a much darker bowl.
If you look at picture two above, that is one whole stick grated there. I take the grated product and compress it in to that small wooden bowl. I load my brush out of the wooden bowl, but I build my lather in the much larger ceramic bowl.
I have grated Arko into a bowl, and even used gratings to blend with other lesser soaps to boost them. After 2 years of dabbling, I have concluded that Arko is at its best when directly applied to the face from the stick. It does boost other soaps well, but it seems to require more work to get a bowl lather going in the process. I am usually darn happy when an Arko blended/boosted soap is done so I can replace it with an unboosted one. A drop of glycerin instead is just an effective booster for me and can be applied as needed without meddling with the bowl soap long term. To achieve an Arko boosting now I merely lightly apply the stick to the face, then use the bowl soap from there. Works wonderfully! From here on I leave my Arko on the stick.
Older thread, I see, but still going. Arko is my exhibit A for "you don't have to pay a lot for soaps". At the price that I paid, it costs less per ounce than any other soap I know of, and must be competitive on a cost per shave basis as well. Molded into a shave stick tube that formerly held a different brand, it may be the only one I use for travel for now on. Given a large rotation, the fifteen sticks that I got in a bulk buy on Amazon could literally last the rest of my life. There are soaps that give me a more luxurious feeling during the shave, but it would be hard to claim that the end results are any better. No need to get fancy with it. I do have a frankensoap tub for bits and pieces of brands that I won't get again, but the only thing I'll mix Arko with is more Arko, pushing the last of the old stick down on top of the new one.
