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The Dreaded Modern Williams Mug Shave Soap Review

It comes up quite regularly on eBay. Rarely goes over $10-15 a puck. Bowls can command $25-50. Search for "Vintage shave soap" and "Vintage Shaving Soap".

The thing to be careful of with the boxed pucks is plenty of people sell modern formulation as vintage. Don't make the mistake of paying $15 for a $1 puck of soap.

Right now there's an unused currier and ives (williams) bowl that I've been resisting for the past month @ <$30 shipped. I've got a couple already and I can't say anything performs better.
aaaaaaaaand it's gone.

Couldn't help it. Messaged the seller asking if he'd take $20, and he said yes.

But goes to show ya... the fact that an unused bowl of literally the best shaving soap ever made sat there for weeks @ $25 and sold for $20 says to me "don't compromise"... unless I guess you absolutely MUST have scent in your soap and can't figure out how to add it yourself.
 
Stop trying to trick me again. Every couple years enough people claim it lathers great that I go buy another puck and try it again, and it's the same junk it's been for the past decade. There's too much better soap out there to use Modern Williams.
Just pretend it's just some regular soap & that you're not afraid of it. Then go get some distilled water & use that to soak your brush. From a dry puck, load a damp brush, then build your lather adding a few drops of water at a time until it explodes into a dense & slick lather. It's not rocket surgery.
 

steveclarkus

Goose Poop Connoisseur
I generally use creams but stuffed a pick of Williams in my rice bowl and lather cream on top of it. Makes excellent lather. I don’t know how much Williams is incorporated into it though there must be some.
 
The ol' superlather.

Another trick was slick willy (using glycerin to improve williams... from a high glycerin product)

also called blue willy when using aqua velva (for its high glycerin content)
 
I call it a Willy Nilly when Im eating nilla wafers as I shave with Williams.....

jokes aside, ive had a puck sitting in my bin and there is enough conversation I pulled it out yesterday..... I find its OK... its like eating a hamburger with mustard when I could also get a hamburger with bacon, blue cheese, and grilled onions on it. There are fancier, more expensive things out there that I like better
 
(Much deleted for brevity)


Thanks for the great review. This has been my experience as well. The slickest soap I've found, and at less than $1 per puck, the cheapest as well.

Toss the puck into a mug, grab a boar and go to town. Oh, and forget the rotation, 3017 the puppy.

I have evaluated some 190 soaps over the past few years. Nearly all shaving soaps are slick but some are slicker than others. I rate the slickness of Williams as 8/10, which is average. Furthermore, some soaps leave your skin slick even after you have removed the residual later with your razor blade. On residual slickness, Williams only rates a 6/10; I have only ranked one soap lower. You better not try buffing without adding more lather. I have about 75 soaps that rank 10/10 on both primary and residual slickness, but they cost far more than $1/puck.
 
I don't even need residual slickness to buff, except in two small spots on my neck. I can easily buff with no soap at all, just water, on my cheeks, chin and most of the neck. So, basically, Williams has plenty of residual slickness for me to buff as much as I want.
 
I have evaluated some 190 soaps over the past few years. Nearly all shaving soaps are slick but some are slicker than others. I rate the slickness of Williams as 8/10, which is average. Furthermore, some soaps leave your skin slick even after you have removed the residual later with your razor blade. On residual slickness, Williams only rates a 6/10; I have only ranked one soap lower. You better not try buffing without adding more lather. I have about 75 soaps that rank 10/10 on both primary and residual slickness, but they cost far more than $1/puck.

Well, I've had neither the time nor the money to try 190 soaps so my experience is going to be more limited than yours.

OTOH, 190 soaps in just a few years implies a large rotation with a long time before any given soap comes up again. I may be wrong. I tend to use any soap for a couple of weeks at a time. With WMS, I drop the puck into a mug 3017 the puppy. It tends to be my soap for FFFMM runs, for example. It's well known that both WMS and MWF are soaps that work better the longer you use them. If you use them only once in a while, they're not going to give you their best.

On my face, WMS has edged B&M, MWF, and Stirling for both initial and residual slickness. It has left AoS, Arko, L'Occitane, and others in the dust. YMMV.

I shave daily. To get to my usual DFS to BBS range, I always need 3 full passes followed by some cleanup buffing. It's never a problem with any of the soaps I've mentioned, or any of the other soaps that get a lot of love on B&B.

Beyond that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
 
Well, I've had neither the time nor the money to try 190 soaps so my experience is going to be more limited than yours.

OTOH, 190 soaps in just a few years implies a large rotation with a long time before any given soap comes up again. I may be wrong. I tend to use any soap for a couple of weeks at a time. With WMS, I drop the puck into a mug 3017 the puppy. It tends to be my soap for FFFMM runs, for example. It's well known that both WMS and MWF are soaps that work better the longer you use them. If you use them only once in a while, they're not going to give you their best.

On my face, WMS has edged B&M, MWF, and Stirling for both initial and residual slickness. It has left AoS, Arko, L'Occitane, and others in the dust. YMMV.

I shave daily. To get to my usual DFS to BBS range, I always need 3 full passes followed by some cleanup buffing. It's never a problem with any of the soaps I've mentioned, or any of the other soaps that get a lot of love on B&B.

Beyond that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Of the soaps you mentioned none of them are among the top soaps in my den. I consider Barrister and Mann Excelsior to be at the bottom of my elite soaps. Glissant and Reserve do not make the cut at all.
 
That's interesting, mozartman. I didn't know that about Williams. Makes sense now that you told me that, the Ivory Soap aspect was probably just carried over after the sale and they never changed the fragrance formula. TBH I think it smells great.
 

Owen Bawn

Garden party cupcake scented
Of the soaps you mentioned none of them are among the top soaps in my den. I consider Barrister and Mann Excelsior to be at the bottom of my elite soaps. Glissant and Reserve do not make the cut at all.
Which soaps of your 190 do you have ranked at numbers 38, 61, 133, 151, and 177, respectively?
 
Which soaps of your 190 do you have ranked at numbers 38, 61, 133, 151, and 177, respectively?

I keep evaluation of all my soaps in a Microsoft Access database. If your question were a serious one, I could answer it, although in most cases there are multiple soaps with a similar score. I rate my soaps son a 60 point scale and then give a bonus point to those soaps whose post-shave conditioning lasts for 16 hours or more.

Currently , I have 15 soaps in my den that rate 61.

I have 25 soaps that rate 60. Barrister and Mann Excelsior is one of these.

I consider these 40 soaps to be "elite".

I also have another 25 soaps that rate 59. In many instances, these are older formulation from artisans that now make elite level soaps.

In comparison, I rate the modern version of Williams Mug Soap at 41 out of 60 which places it near the bottom of my list. Williams fails to score 10/10 on any criteria I use to evaluate soaps. In comparison, I rate Yardley of London moisturizing bath bar with Cocoa Butter at 48. It scores 10/10 on slickness, so I get a much better shave with Yardley than I do with Williams and Yardley is just as inexpensive as Williams.
 
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