Has anyone had problems with DR Harris "Arlington" soap? I bought a bowl of Arlington Soap in a wooden bowl from Greenpond.com, and no matter how hard I try, it just doesn't whip up into a creamy lather. I've tried all kinds of different water levels, and no matter what happens, any cream I get from it is airy, bubbly, and just low quality. Plus, the scent is too subtle and barely registers. I thought it was my technique at first, but after trying it with different brushes, water;soap ratios, and various methods of lathering, and it just doesn't whip up!
I just recently got me some......soap, that is and I didnt find the Arlington to be any easier or harder to lather up. I will say this: Triple Milled soaps are a different beast all together than the glycerin-based cold pours. TM's are much more needy and picky with the water / soap ratio. Try loading your brush with more soap than you think you need and use more water than you think you should. Good luck to you.
Harris soaps are very hard and not floppy brush friendly at all, at least from my limited experience with them. The brush I could best get a good lather out of Arlington is my Duke 2, which is a short and dense "scrubby" brush. As Rick said, tripple milled soaps are different and take some more work. I think Harris are even a step further as my Trumper soaps lather with less effort.
Yeah. What he said.... I use my Simpsons Super Chubby1 or Rooney Super Small3 (both scritchy little brushes) to build the load off the puck. Floppy / Flexible brushes will definately give you more grief.
I can use a fairly soft brush on the Arlington and still get good lather. Wet brush, shake, and briskly rub the tips of the bristles over the soap. A lather will start to form. Ignore it. Continue rubbing briskly for 30 seconds more at least, rotating the brush a little to pick up soap across the full top of the brush. Vigorously brush that all over your wet beard. It will be mostly soap, and you'll get some lather, not much. After you've brushed it well into the whole beard, add a driblet of hot water to the center of the brush, and brush vigorously again. You should have a good lather at this point. With my brush, that's usually enough water, but you can try a driblet more in the spirit of experiment. See how that works. Is your water especially hard? Probably not---sounds as though you've had success with your other soaps.
I just finished trying it again with the suggested methods. While it was definitely a little better, it still wasn't as creamy as I had expected. I really, really love the scent, but damn is it ever subtle...almost too subtle. I find the lather to be just a little bit light and airy, so I'm hoping it will get better as I keep trying and experimenting. The shave quality was good, but I need to figure out how to get a creamier thick lather.
Well, I tried the DR Arlington again, and nope, no luck! This is defnitely a bunk puck! Maybe the heat en route messed it up, but something funky happened to it. I tried the Arlington this morning, and it was thin, bubbly, airy, and dried out within seconds on my face. I washed it off, tried my Tabac, and BANG!!! MEGA-LATHER!!!! What gives?
Unless they somehow blew the batch, triple milled soaps are tough and survive a wide range of environmental conditions. Creams and glycerin soaps are a different thing altogether.
Could be an old puck??? Try soaking it in hot water for a while. Maybe the soap somehow developed an "anti-lathering" -Film- ::
I'm beginning to think that I just don't like the way it lathers. I mean, it latheres fairly well, but it's the quality of the lather that bothers me. It's light, fluffy, airey, and lacks any creamy consistency. When I apply it, it doesn't coat the entire face, and after about five seconds, it looks transparent and I can see right through the film to my face. I've tried it every which way possible, and I just can't do it. So, Mr. Arlington is going to be filed away in the circular filing cabinet.
Don't do that -- that's valuable stuff to other people. You can get some good trades with that puck...
I, and a member of another wetshaving forum, also had trouble with D.R. Harris Arlington soap. I have the other DRH soaps, Tabac, Trumpers Violet, MWF, T & H, Williams, and some non-tallow cold pours. I have no problem getting ideal lathers from any of these. I cannot get the Arlington to work; same as Quercus. It turned out that my puck and the puck from the member of the other forum were both obtained from Greenpond.com! I/we believe our pucks were either switched out and replaced with cheap junk or are a knock-off fake. Whether this occured at the distributer or Greenpond, I can't say but the coincidence is too strong. Now Quercus has the same experience from the same vendor! I plan to get another puck of DRH Arlington soon from somewhere else (need to justify working up a good order to spread out the shipping) to see if my hunch is correct.
OUCH::ban I have two pucks of Arlington. They are both different in that one is white and the other is yellow. The white puck, if you just look at it will whip up a lather on its own. It has to be the easiest soap I've made a lather with and its scent is lighter. The yellow puck has a stronger scent and is overall a harder soap. So I took my little Hoffritz LC1 and loaded the brush (about a dozen times across the puck.) Then I worked the brush in my hand and add some water, worked and added some more water, still worked and added some more water . . . considering the size of the brush, I must have added two tablespoons of water to the mix. In the end, the lather was thick and rich with it overflowing my hand and getting all over the sink. I find it interesting that the pucks are so different and yet the end result is similar with a rich, slick, pleasant smelling lather that plays its part in a BBS shave. I'd be willing to loan or sell (or trade) the yellow puck to someone who is having difficulty so that you can compare the two.
Curious as to where you got the one that doesn't work as well. I'll be in NY in a couple of weeks and I'm hoping to get to one of those fancy drug stores and pick up a puck of Arlington there. One from the Internet, one from a real store. I'll let you know if they are different. Dave
