Mitchell Wool Fat shaving soap - my opinion

I LOVE Mitchell's Wool Fat in my den along with 60 other soaps during my rotation, I don't have any issue at all using MWF as I have hard Aussie water in Sydney using Badger, Boar and Synthetic brushes. I never soak the whole puck in water all I do is just dribble some water only on top of the dry puck of MWF, only let the top layer of MWF soap loosen up just let the top layer soak with dribble of water for about 10mins while you're soaking your badger or boar brush in your mug or bowl.

While the top layer of MWF has been soaked up with dribble of water, and you can see the top layer of soap has loosen up. I grab my brush and I only shake the excess water I don't squeeze the knot, just leave your knot damp wet and then load the brush like you hate it for more than 60 seconds. Wet your face and start face lathering and add just a tip of water to your brush, and pay attention while your face lathering and add a tiny amount of water to your brush as you go long while your face lathering the lather will explode. MWF doesn't like having too much water otherwise the lather with start to thin out and get too airy too soon, if you don't pay attention while your face lathering once the lather started to thicken you'll have enough lather on your brush for at least 4 passes throughout your shaves.

Truth to be told, I had myself some problems lathering MWF with a sample I got some time ago. But I had far more serious problems lathering my Mystics, which I didn't replace for that reason. I found MWF to be a pussycat compared to the Mystics, whose lather vanished in my face unless I perfectly dialed in the amount of water in my lather. Post shave?. Yeah, now there is stuff that will surpass it but... how is that post shave for a formula over a 100 years old?.

I have to respectfully disagree with KAV on the .45 vs 9 Luger thing, though I will concede that a .45 is way funnier to shoot.

Hypersensitive skin so tried MWF. Used distilled water, bloomed and exploded using a Kent brush. Lather was luxurient and cushy BUT it lit my face up as though a torch. Face was red as a beat for days. Gave to a friend.

Hypersensitive skin so tried MWF. Used distilled water, bloomed and exploded using a Kent brush. Lather was luxurient and cushy BUT it lit my face up as though a torch. Face was red as a beat for days. Gave to a friend.

Lanolin allergy?

May be lanolin allergy. Didn’t want to experiment further. Just extricate. It was ugly

I'd guess lanolin. If that's it, you'll find others I'm sure, many soaps have lanolin in them.

Cheers, Steve

I never cared much for this soap. The post feel is indeed good, due to the lanolin in it.... but it also smells like lanolin which is not a good thing.
I was getting decent lather with it when I lived in Prague, but when I moved to Israel the water was different and I started getting poor lather with it again.
I don't like to fiddle with finicky soaps too much, because there are plenty of good soaps that are easy to work with. If a product doesn't work to the bin it goes and such was the case with MWF and LPL.

It's totally a hard water issue. I had terrible issues getting MWF to lather. I have what is classified as very hard water, measuring consistently between 23 and 28 grains per gallon (10.57 gpg is considered the minimum for very hard). In ppm terms this rates around 425ppm.

Since installing a water softener I have zero issues with MWF, oddly enough though other soaps which performed well for me in hard water fair less well with my now 0gpg water.

I actually get a pretty good lather out of it if I use water from my reverse osmosis system. The Ph of that water is absolutely neutral and it's quite soft, so I suspect that's why I'm not having much trouble. I also bowel bowl lather it, so that may help. Regardless, it's not my favorite, but it works reasonably well for me when I decide to use it.

I've said this elsewhere, but not in this thread, that I grate it down and mix it with grated Haslinger Schafmilch. 50% of each and press them into a tub. All the great properties of each soap are present plus the combination of the two somehow creates a totally different scent. Sort of barbershop like. It is one of my top 5 soaps as combined. Separate, neither makes the top five.