Williams shaving soap

I've been DE shaving for years. I started out as all the connoisseurs recommended. That is with an expensive badger brush, Prorasso cream, and The Art of Shaving soap. After the Japanese earthquake I had to leave all of my possessions, including my shave equipment, behind. After that I just needed a shave, so I picked up a VDH boar brush and a puck of Williams. I was a amazed to get a better shave than I ever did with those prissy products costing much much more. The trick is with this soap is to make sure it is very wet, and you are using a BOAR brush. Badger holds too much water and doesn't dig into the soap the way boar does. This stuff lubricates better than anything I've tried and doesn't dry out my skin. There should be a disclaimer on the box that warns against using badger brushes with this. This soap proves to me once again that only a sucker believes that "you get what you pay for."

I have tried lots of different soaps and creams, but I always have a puck of Williams in my medicine cabinet. Maybe it is because the city water here is quite hard, but Williams combined with an Omega boar hair brush makes heaps of lather. It doesn't linger like glycerine soaps, but it gives a close shave

9.5 rounded up to 10 for awesomeness.

Williams was the second shaving product I've tried and its performance has set a high bar for slickness.

I will concede that it can be tricky to figure out how to bring together the required product and water to get a great lather. If you take a little product, add lots of water and work it well you can end up with a lot of pretty but useless lather.

However start with a well pre-soaked puck, take a wet brush and make a runny, soupy proto-lather on the puck then move to a bowl or your face and work in a little more water.

You are rewarded with a slick wonderful lather and a great shave. It will be a little thin and not mounds of meringue. I find the more volume I produce the less slick the lather will be.

I wish I could smell like Williams all day but that may be a personal problem.

What's not perfect? It comes in a cardboard box, it used to be even better supposedly, there are products that moisturize better and I have heard there are some high end soaps that have the slickness AND meringue like lather AND are easy to use AND smell more decadent.

I'll stick with Williams and buy fancy beer instead.

This was the first soap i ever purchased to test lather. i quickly found that VDH and Arko and creams were much thicker, but after awhile i came back to try Williams again, and found the sweet spot. it lathers up like crazy, maybe not as luxurious as others, but its so slick, i don't care. i get really close and comfortable shaves with it because its so slick. now every time i try something else, i come straight back to Williams. i have a marvy green rubber mug i keep my Williams in, fill it with hot water and soak my brush in it for a few minutes, then i drain and swirl my boar brush about 5-10 times on the puck. i go straight to the face from there and work up great lather. when i am done shaving, i squeeze out any extra lather that is left in the brush and put it on the puck and let it dry for next time. works great. love this soap.

This soap is different from pretty much every other one I have used to date. The smell and packaging are both really basic. Soap. Lathering it can be a trick, mostly because the approach is quite different to most other modern soaps/creams. I soak the puck in a mug with my boar brush while I'm in the shower to give it plenty of time to soften up. After that I lather right in the mug with the soap and only lightly lather on my face. Once the first pass is done I squeeze the remaining soap from the brush and run my finger around in the mug to get lather for the second (and final) pass. It performs well, even though the lather looks lighter than I would like from other soaps. Even with this amount of work the lather I get makes this soap worth using, especially at the ridiculously low price it comes at. The only downside is that it dries my face out, but that's easily fixed by some decent aftershave.

It was one of my first soaps when I threw the canned lather awayTakes some time and expertise to get used to. It is a water hog. I fill my mug with hot water and let the brush soak in it for about 5 minutes. I then pour off most of the water and lather on top of the puck. It makes excellent lather to do a 4 pass shave.

I tried this soap when I started shaving with a DE. My mistake was using a badger and a bowl. I was frustrated with it and threw it out. After a few months and reading other reviews I decided to give it a try as a test of my skills. What I found was that it loves to be face lathered with a boar brush. Loads of lather and excellent slickness. The lather can be finicky but if you hit the sweet spot it really works.

As a total noob, I decided to enter the hobby as cheaply as possible. I didn't know if I would appreciate the ritual. So, this soap made it an easy choice. I got it at CVS and it was $1.19! I also got a cheap boar brush.

After a couple of tries using the conventional lathering methods I was already looking for other alternatives. Then I found an article saying how much water Williams needed to create a lot of lather. Bingo! The lather was unbelievable! It was rich and thick!

If I can point to one minor drawback is that it dries my skin. But at that price, I can splurge on a good moisturizing after shave balm. The scent doesn't bother me. I wear cologne so I don't care for other strong smells. Besides, it smells clean.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this product.

I love this soap. I get nice, soapy, extremely slick lather, some of the most slippery lather I've seen. The scent is light lemon verbena and pairs quite well with Aqua Velva Ice Blue. It does not moisturize like Mike's soaps and for me that's a good thing (I have oily sking and live in a very humid climate). There is not much cushion here, but again I find that a good attribute as it forces me to be mindful of blade pressure. All in all I get close, consistent shaves with Williams. It's fun to bash, but is works very well for me. YMMV and happy shaving!

Price: Can't beat the price of this stuff and it's widely availible

Quality: Not the best out there but pretty damn good for the price

Scent: Nice clean, manly scent. Not for everyone and can get monotonous quick if used everyday

Lather: Not the easiest soap to lather in my experience but once you get the hang of it it's a glorious soap.

Efficacy: Works great for me. Thick creamy lather with good lubrication

Moisturizing: Not bad but you may want something else for dry winter months

I've been using Williams shaving soap for a numbers of years and it is a mainistay in my soap rotation. You cannot beat the price at $1.09/puck and it lasts me at least 4 - 6 weeks of daily shaving. It is a lathering machine and I can build enough lather for a three pass shave. It is my every Monday morning 3 day beard soap. It does fall short of the moisturizing side, but I use preshave oil and aftershave balm so this is not an issue for me. At such a cheap price, you have to try it at least once to see if you like it enough to add it to your rotation.

Look when you use a shavette or barber razor you don't want too much lather. This doesn't give you a lot of protection, but it's enough. It has a nice clean scent. For the price, it works.

This is my favorite soap currently made. I have tried a lot of soaps: tabac, mwf, proraso, arko stick, Palmolive stick, klar kabinett, vdh, all c&e soaps, truefitt and hill, you name it and I have probably tried it. This is my favorite soap. The old stuff is even better but no longer around.

The smell is personal, some love it others hate it. I like it.

Lather gets a bad rep because it takes practice on how to know how much water to use. Once you figure that out and lather on the puck in a mug with a stiff brush you are golden. Its never airy for me or thin, it does not dry on my face either.
Now i admit I used to hate this soap, I was ignorant on how to use it. Now I am wiser.

This leaves me softer and smoother than any other soap plus the shave is ALWAYS closer because of the slip you get under the blade.

This soap is truly a gem and only a dollar plus change.

Classic scent. Takes a little more work to lather than more expensive soaps, but once you get a decent lather it provides as close a shave as you're going to get with any other soap. There is not much "moisturizing", but that's because this is a bare bones classic product, nothing added. And you cannot beat the price.

There can be no middle ground with Williams! I shunned it due to the many poor reviews, but on a whim I picked up a puck about a month ago. Sniffed it, found the scent to be mildly citrus but mostly clean and soapy. Plopped it in a mug, let it soak in hot water while I showered, then went to it with a boar brush, lathering in a bowl. I was completely surprised at the ease with which the soap lathered, and the quality of the lather it produced. Very slick and acceptably cushiony, the only "ding" is that it doesn't have any moisturizing properties. Not nearly as luxurious as MWF, or as creamy as Palmolive, it is nonetheless a perfectly suitable, utilitarian shave soap. I have since bought a couple of more pucks and grated them into a soup mug for easier loading. I use Williams as a base for superlathers with TBS Maca Root and KMF creams.

I had a difficult time raising a decent lather with my badger brush, however was able to create tons of lather with a stiffer, cheaper boar bristle that I had. As soon as the lather is on my face it starts to dry out. Post shave my skin feels tight and dry. Not recommended unless you are on a budget.--
Following up after learning more about proper lathering techniques. It's still drying and I definitely need a moisturizer after shaving with this. On the positive side, it's not bad for the price. It's cheaper and better than the VDH line and the ideal soap for budget minded shavers.

I can't use it every day because my skin would be pretty dry after a week or so in our weather. But it can make a pretty darn slick lather, and it seems to make the beard much softer than many other products. A bit of glycerin or something would probably make it a little less drying. But it's always a good Shave when it comes around in my rotation.

Williams gets a lot of bad press, some of it dead on, some of it I think a bit unfair. I break one out once in a great while just to relive the old college days.

It is what it is, a cheap shaving soap. It gets the job done if you work at it. The problem with Williams as I see it is that many better soaps are readily available for delivery to your front door via the internet. Back in the '80's when I was a poor college student, WIlliams was the only game in town. And lucky for me it was cheap. As the 80's and early 90's rolled by, I could afford more expensive soaps, but they were difficult to find in my neck of the woods....and the internet as we know it was not available. So I leaned on Williams once again.

Now it's 2014, and I can have hundreds of different soaps delivered to my doorstep. So Williams collects dust in the back of the drawer and rarely sees the light of day, except when I take a stroll down memory lane.

I shaved with Williams the night of my first date with my future wife....I shaved with Williams the day I asked my wife to take my hand in marriage.

No, it's not the best shave soap, not even close. But it will always have a place in my heart, and my bathroom. Take it for a spin once in a while, it won't break your budget and the scent is clean and classic.

Cheers!

I used this soap for some time; I liked the scent (and the price). Once I tried other soaps like Proraso or Omega, which cost significantly more, there was no way back. The more expensive stuff far exceeds Williams in moisturizing my skin and preventing irritation.