After many trys with Williams I figured out that my water is too hard to get a stable lather. So on this weeked I made uberlather for the first time and it works great! Very strange combo - Williams and Phyto Expert, but if you have a cjance to try it - better try!
Never heard of phyto-expert, but have you considered trying adding a few drops of glycerine? I hear some say that works like a champ, though I've never tried it myself.
Well, hard water makes lather dry faster and I need some more work to build the lather. The Phyto Expert is a nice Russian cream, it was my first SC ever and I still use it. Superlathered with Williams it gives a great improvement and I use this combo all week long and enjoy it! I'll play with glycerine also, as well with menthol...
Just made up a VanderWilliams hybrid, waiting for it to cool and see how it does. After reading everyone elses post I'm pretty excited. Thanks for the tip on mixing.
Dropped in to CVS today (after missing a stop sign and nearly ramming an older gent) and got me some of the new revision William's. I take my word back. The tallowate is in the ingredients. I'm still wholly convinced there was a period not even a year ago that it lacked tallowate. Oh well. I'll count my blessings for this new stuff. Rock on, William's!
I snagged a puck of the vintage Williams recently for 50 cents!! Can you believe that? It is absoposolutely fanstinkingtastic. It practically lathers itself. And the shave is excellent. A little drying, but still a top performer. It amazes me how they ruined the new stuff when it used to be soooo good.
Hey, for you guys that made your vander-williams blends, just to satisfy a curiosity, could you guys post images of your finished product? Some of you guys melted, some grated, I just want to see what the consistency is & kinda form a mental picture in my head as to how it performs.....melting & grating, vs just grating. I can't imagine there being much of a difference, but I'd be interested to see the finished product in the mug. I'd be able to see by looking at the surface. Mine is kinda bumpy & rough, even though it gets used daily, you can tell it was grated, (little soap chunkies here & there). Pics of them would be awesome though.
Well for those of us old enough to remember, they did the same thing with Coke back in the 80's with the whole "New Coke" thing. Companies seem to think we always have to have "new and improved". How about just adding a new product to the line and keeping the faithful customer base happy?
Yeah, Bill Cosby was the pitch man. One of the biggest flops in the history of soft drinks, vile stuff.
I grated, then tried melting. I learned melting it for more than 15 seconds at a time wasn't such a hot idea, it boiled over onto the glass turntable plate in the microwave. If you do nuke it, keep a close eye on it. But, the lather does just POP! The smell is all Williams, and I think this just became a favorite.
Which VDH do you guys use? There are a couple diffrent ones. Which ones are the best? I just want to know because not availible locally... to my knowledge. So if i buy online cant afford to buy the wrong ones. I think all will work but not sure if one is better to use. THANKS That lather looks great. My williams lather is ok but could be a tad better.
I just wanted to say that you should never nuke a soap for longer than 8 - 12 seconds at a time. It does not seem like a long time and the first shot does not seem like it does any thing but the soap holds the heat very well. I always give it one shot at 12 seconds. (I have learned that my microwave is good for 12 seconds - I started learning this with using 8 second bursts) Then I take the bowl out and take a look at it. Then I pop it back in for a second shot, at this point I can start to see the edges of the soap starting to melt and so I give it a swirl and then pop it back in for the third shot. Take it out and normally there is a small bit of soap left in the middle that has not melted. I just use a chop stick and push it down into the warm soap and I call it good. You do not need to melt the entire puck of soap especially if all you are doing is transferring the soap from one place to the other. This is a case when less is more. For my VanderWilliams I just poured the VDH into the already grated Williams and stirred it around until I got a good blend. As I said before the soap retains the heat well and by the time i finished stirring the remaining bit of VDH had melted the Williams curls softened up and I had a good blend. Be careful when you melt soaps it is very easy to over heat them and soap is not an easy thing to clean up. SWMBO will not be happy with soap on the microwave turntable. Here is what mine looks like. The surface of the soap is a little rough but it is from the air bubbles that came out of the Williams curls as I added the VDH. This will smooth out over use with a brush.
Aha!!!! Now I know the name of the next victim in superlather race! I bet I'll try Gada this weekend! It promises to be +30C so some menthol kick will be right in place!
I have a question about the colour of Williams. On the Williams website, it is pictured as a white puck, or perhaps very slightly cream/ivory colour. Now, having never tried it, I was curious as to what a puck smelled like, so I picked up a box from the shelf in the local grocery store, opened it, and was surprised to see a puck that was a very dark yellow, actually, almost orange in colour. Is this possibly some uber-vintage Williams that has been sitting on the shelf there for a few decades, unloved and unpurchased?
I have tried Van der Willaims and I love it. I grated the two, mixed them together and pressed them into a bowl. works very well. I describe the mix as a synergy, because the resulting soap is even better than either by themselves. It does yellow with age. You might have found a vintage puck, look at the ingredient listing. Is tallow first? If so it is vintage. I can't imagine any non-tallow first version would have changed color already. Buy it up!
