I'm really missing Williams Mug Soap. What are some other soaps that have that citronella scent like Williams used to?
Citronella scented shave soap
- Thread starter LuckyGlenn
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Arko
Electric Sheep?
While the soaps mentioned so far all have citronella in their scent profiles. IMHO, neither of them smell alike. Electric Sheep's citronella seems more true to its scent with lemon and eucalyptus as supporting characters. Arko has its own take -- bold, sweet, lemony. It's like Arko threw everything at it to try to cover up the citronella. Williams is more subtle and pleasant. I'd say try both, Arko and Electric sheep.
Personally, Arko irritates my skin. But it's a great functioning soap and it's inexpensive. Electric Sheep is a fantastic soap. But I consider it more as an experience than just another soap. It's also inexpensive.
Personally, Arko irritates my skin. But it's a great functioning soap and it's inexpensive. Electric Sheep is a fantastic soap. But I consider it more as an experience than just another soap. It's also inexpensive.
The strongest soap citronella scent I've ever experienced is in the Mexican laundry soap Zote. Some of us have experimented with it over the past few years (see link below). It's the closest thing to a pure tallow soap these days however it's not a shaving soap so there can be issues with lather stability. I got it to work by blending it though I found the scent to be really strong.
It's cheap if you want to experiment at around $2 per 14 oz. bar. You could grate and mix it with some Dove Men+Care for a slick soap with reasonable lather stability.
Also as @NotBloomingAL , notes none of these soaps, especially Zote, has the exact same scent as Williams. Zote has a really strong scent.
Right now my view is that the best alternative to Williams is Arko that can be purchased for $15 for twelve 75 gram sticks. If you press it into a puck shape and leave it in an open mug the scent will dissipate or you may find, like me, that you enjoy it's "old school" soap scent. Another great option are Razorocks hard What-the-Puck shaving soaps.
P.S. Edit: I saw your early posts from 2021 and it looks like you started your wet shaving journey back then the same way I did beginning with Williams shaving soap and a Van Der Hagan (VDH) shaving set with VDH Deluxe soap and their boar brush. Guessing you could get Williams at local stores then. Like me you first struggled to lather Williams and then mastered with noting it was the "slickest soap" you had. Also saw that your cheap VDH boar brush exploded just like two of mine did.
What other soaps are you using these days and what did you settle on for brushes and razors?
Link to thread with Zote use history:
Products from Mexico
I don't think you’ll find something specific from Mexico. Disposables are cheap so the only wet shaving products in terms of razors or soaps will be at old school barbershops, and those are hard to find nowadays in Mexico since beauty salons have taken over and most of them offer cheap haircuts...
www.badgerandblade.com
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- Thread starter
- #6
Never heard of Zote, but I will definitely check it out. It took me a while to master Williams. But once I did it was amazing. I could also find it everywhere and it was dirt cheap. Nowadays my current favorites are ARKO and la toja with mostly my zenith b21 or omega 80266. Btw, I still have a Vdh boar. It's not top notch, but it still will work.The strongest soap citronella scent I've ever experienced is in the Mexican laundry soap Zote. Some of us have experimented with it over the past few years (see link below). It's the closest thing to a pure tallow soap these days however it's not a shaving soap so there can be issues with lather stability. I got it to work by blending it though I found the scent to be really strong.
It's cheap if you want to experiment at around $2 per 14 oz. bar. You could grate and mix it with some Dove Men+Care for a slick soap with reasonable lather stability.
Also as @NotBloomingAL , notes none of these soaps, especially Zote, has the exact same scent as Williams. Zote has a really strong scent.
Right now my view is that the best alternative to Williams is Arko that can be purchased for $15 for twelve 75 gram sticks. If you press it into a puck shape and leave it in an open mug the scent will dissipate or you may find, like me, that you enjoy it's "old school" soap scent. Another great option are Razorocks hard What-the-Puck shaving soaps.
P.S. Edit: I saw your early posts from 2021 and it looks like you started your wet shaving journey back then the same way I did beginning with Williams shaving soap and a Van Der Hagan (VDH) shaving set with VDH Deluxe soap and their boar brush. Guessing you could get Williams at local stores then. Like me you first struggled to lather Williams and then mastered with noting it was the "slickest soap" you had. Also saw that your cheap VDH boar brush exploded just like two of mine did.
What other soaps are you using these days and what did you settle on for brushes and razors?
Link to thread with Zote use history:
Products from Mexico
I don't think you’ll find something specific from Mexico. Disposables are cheap so the only wet shaving products in terms of razors or soaps will be at old school barbershops, and those are hard to find nowadays in Mexico since beauty salons have taken over and most of them offer cheap haircuts...
It's a laundry bar you can typically find at Walmart near laundry detergents. Arko is a far better shaving soap with a milder and more pleasant scent than Zote.
Just consider Zote a cheap experiment as most of us tried it out of curiosity and moved on. @cranewarrior is likely the most recent Zote user and may have some thoughts. The good news is that after you experiment with it Zote is a great laundry soap for removing stains. I'll also take a slice of the bar with when traveling in case we need to launder an item or two. One way or another you can get your $2 of value out of it.
Zenith has great boar brushes. I use a Razorock Blondie, that is a rebranded Zenith 80N, with a similar but longer 26mm knot. 64mm long versus the 50 or so mm in your B21.
I don't know the Williams, it never was a thing over here in Germany, but I want to recommend Arlington from D.R. Harris.
It has a lovely, noble smell of citrus / lemongrass with a bit of fern, is triple-milled and lists tallow as its first ingredient and is superslick. It's a favourite of mine, a summer evergreen. The smell is light and doesn't last long, but I assume that is the same with Williams Mug Soap.
Available in a nice wooden bowl in Mahogany and Beech and as a refill puck: Shaving Soap Bowls and Refills Archives - D R Harris London - https://www.drharris.co.uk/product-category/shaving/shaving-creams-and-soaps/shaving-soap-bowls-and-refills
Also nice is their 'Windsor' which is also citric, but not dominantly so. Often described as like 'Terre d'Hermès' because of the vetyver and pepper notes.
I have used it for years to clean blood from my karate do-gi. For shaving, it's a lot like Ivory bath soap. The lather collapses quickly unless you mix in something like Arko. Works fine for emergencies or if you just care about having a slick layer instead of voluminous lather.
It's not my first choice, but yeah it works. As does bath soap, canned goo, hair conditioner, etc.
- Thread starter
- #10
I have decided to try the Zote experiment as suggested by @Lane101. I grated a bar of Dove Men's Care and some Zote together. After Fixed February I will try it and report back.
Attachments
Good luck with this experiment. Press down the mix as tightly as possible prior to use. Link to my similar experiment a few years back with Dove Men+Care and Ivory Soap in a 50/50 blend pasted below for those interested. Note that at this time Ivory was still tallow based, it's now a vegan based soap.
Dove Men+Care: Miracle Superlather Ingredient & Very Good for Shaving When Mixed with Ivory in 50/50 Blend
As promised in my post on Big Jim's thread (link below) I've further experimented and tested Dove Men+Care (DMC) in various shaving soap blends. Overall results were as follows: Dove Men+Care is an excellent superlathering ingredient when combined with other shave soaps either per shave or in...
www.badgerandblade.com
- Thread starter
- #12
I tried a few test lathers tonight. For the first one I tried the Zote bar as a shave stick. I rubbed it all over my damp face, the same as I would ARKO or any other stick. The a built the lather on my face using a boar brush. It worked and was very slick. But after a minute or two the lather started vanish, or dissapate. It would probably have work for a shave, but I'm not really into lather that disappears.
Next I tried the Zote mixed with the Dove Men's Care. 20 swirls on the puck then I began to face lather. This soap lathered easily. It was nice, rich and creamy. I left it on my face for several minutes. This time it didn't dissapate. I'm actually pretty impressed by this homebrew. I will be experimenting more with this combo in the near future.
But it still isn't exactly what I was looking for. It's missing that classic citronella scent. Maybe I bought an old Zote bar or something, because it really doesn't smell like anything. Almost like it is unscented. I think I might try the pink Zote bar next.
Next I tried the Zote mixed with the Dove Men's Care. 20 swirls on the puck then I began to face lather. This soap lathered easily. It was nice, rich and creamy. I left it on my face for several minutes. This time it didn't dissapate. I'm actually pretty impressed by this homebrew. I will be experimenting more with this combo in the near future.
But it still isn't exactly what I was looking for. It's missing that classic citronella scent. Maybe I bought an old Zote bar or something, because it really doesn't smell like anything. Almost like it is unscented. I think I might try the pink Zote bar next.
Laundry detergent as a shaving soap?? No thanks, I will get my Citronella scent from somewhere else
- Thread starter
- #14
Don't knock it until you try it. The performance of the Zote+ Dove Men's Care is actually pretty good. Better than some shave soaps that I have tried.
I love me some Arko but I don't think it smells like Williams. Stirling Electric sheep doesn't really smell like Williams either, but has a bit of the vibe going on. That would be my recommendation to try if you can get your hands on a sample. You may like it, but it won't be a substitute scent wise.
The white bar has an intentionally less strong scent than the pink bar. A fresh pink bar, should be somewhat soft from the plastic wrap and easy to slice up with a knife. Fresh bars smell so strongly, they give me a headache.
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- #17
Thanks, I will try the pink one next time.
Zote is old-fashioned soap, made of saponified fats like all real soaps are. It is not a detergent. By the way most of the "soaps" we use today like Irish Spring or Dove are actually detergent bars, not soap.
The only weird thing about using Zote to bathe/shave with is it does have some fabric brighteners in it. With that said, in Latin American countries like Mexico, it's very common for people to wash their bodies, even infants, with Zote.
Gotcha. I was reading about it too, it's very tallow/cocoate heavy so and not much else which is good. The optical brightener would still make me uncomfortable but overall it makes better sense now.
Irish Spring is actually still a real soap. No detergents just saponified fats. I do think that they have cut out the tallow more and more though and replaced it with palm oil.
