One day I asked myself 'why do I soak a whole puck when I only need a few grams' and 'is it necessary to press my expensive 30mm Silver-tip for what seems is 50 or more swirls into a puck? Recently I have been using a carrot peeler or cheese crater to remove a few grams from my favourite tripe milled hard soaps and putting it my scuttle with just a bit of water and filling the scuttle with boiling hot water. After a shower the soap is very easily loaded onto my brush with just a few swirls (not 50+ with the tub held upside down). I then build the lather in my mixing bowl and transfer the lather and brush to the hot scuttle for a few minutes of heating. This loading method has got to better for the expensive brush and it makes things a lot easier to clean up. I find most 3xmilled soap containers to be much to small for loading, especially if you load a big knot and the soap tends to get all over the place, its a mess sometimes. Has anyone else given up on the old method of loading hard soaps? What is your method?