I've beat that thang like a dead horse. The brush I'm using is *supposed* to be badger, but for 16 bucks (including the stand & bowl), I have my doubts.
Austin water. No tellin' what's in it. Supposed to come from the Colorado River (or as those uppity townsfolk call it, "Towne Lake", but then changed it to "Ladybird Lake"..a couple of dams turn the river into "lakes", I reckon). They only let dogs swim in it, so that says something about the quality. I'm hoping they pump it out upstream from town.
I absolutely could not stand the smell of Arko. It is so bad it made me sneeze. So I took stick, melted it and added a bit of castor oil, olive oil, glycerin, stearic acid, and when they were well mixed, some eucalyptus oil and peppermint oil (too much). It never really became liquid, but was soft enough to stuff into a deodorant dispenser. The result is a shave soap stick that smells okay, is not drying, produces a great lather and is slck. Obviously, I had purchased a bunch of ingredients to make my own soap and will try my first batch Monday when my hand blender comes.
Did they remake this Wilkinson Sword blue bowl soap? Because the reviews used to be terrible for this product. The shaving stick was reviewed as a great product, but the bowl seemed to cause almost everyone lathering problems.
I like the col conk ones as budget soaps. Can be had for cheap with good scents and lather. Haven't had much luck with VDH.
Stirling is a great budget soap IMO. Get a ton of samples to see which scent you like and the samples are also very generous Also Arko is good and if you can lather it I don't think you can beat Williams budget wise.
I find italian barber or razorock to be the best budget soaps out there. Some are 4.99. The higher priced ones are still under 10 bucks
So many scent choices and all for under 10 bucks. Such a great deal. Some of them are top performers also.
It's been a while since I've used mike's, but I really liked the performance-very protective and a very good post-shave. The only thing keeping me from getting it is the prohibitive shipping costs to Canada ($15 USD for ONE PUCK of soap). It's not the cheapest soap, but it's good.
I like looking at the 3017 thread over at Badger and Blade, where they use one soap until it's done. Some of those guys count the # of shaves from a puck and then determine cents/shave. Razorock soaps are definitely a great price point, but I'm not sure if they're substantially lower in cents/shave then some triple milled soaps like Tabac. That being said, Tabac isn't for everyone and Razorock soaps are most likely cheaper/shave than semi-soft soaps like B&M and others. I've started using an Excel file that calculates grams/shave and cents/shave for my soaps, over the months/years I'll be able to determine how much certain soaps cost.
