Leisureguy’s post yesterday on Mitchell’s Wool Fat shaving soap rekindled memories of this fine soap and a desire to use it once again after a hiatus of 2-3 months. Michael noted that an ill-advised recommendation to soak the puck before using it had resulted in a nasty cracked look, something shared by my own soap – I didn’t realize that the soaking caused that effect however. But here’s the rub….the normally outstanding Mitchell’s was horrible….with very poor lubrication that caused the blade to skip dangerously across my face and with a resultant quite poor overall outcome. So here’s my question…can shaving soap go bad? Is it possible that the same soaking that caused the cracking also robbed the soap of some of its emolients? I’ve never read anything to this effect, but the performance was so dramatically different from the last time that it begs the question.
Very interesting. My Mitchell’s seems to still be doing it’s job, but now I’m trying to remember the quality of the lather… I’m going to try it again next week with special attention to the lather—and using the incomparable Rooney Style 2 Finest—and will post the result.
By: LeisureGuy on November 1, 2008
at 11:49 am