MY ACCOUNT
In this article I set out to answer the question of how economical WSP's Rustic Shave Soap really is. Turns out that it really is fairly inexpensive per shave, even if you load the **** out of your brush.
Methodology
The challenge in trying to figure out how many shaves you get per soap is that you have to load the brush on the soap. This process both adds water, and subtracts soap. And if you lid the soap after the shave, you trap the water inside. Also, no two brush loads are the same, as you'll see. You might use twice as much soap in one shave as another.
- Use a medium size brush. WSP Monarch in High Mountain White was selected.
- Overload the brush. Use up enough product to get at least 3 passes. Try to get enough for four passes just to be conservative.
- Start measuring after a test lather. This way, the added water can be accounted for.
- Weigh the tin of soap after each use. Photograph the result & the loaded brush.
- Water used: Arizona's extra hard tap water.
- Rinse, lather, repeat.
The Results
As you can see from the photos, we started with 102.6 grams of soap (tin included). Seven loads later, we are left with 93.9 grams of soap. Which averages out to 1.24 grams of soap were used per simulated shave.
Minimum Expected Shaves per tin of Rustic Shave Soap
So, given that each tin of soap contains at least 125 grams, we can expect at least 101 shaves which should last at least 3.33 months. And that's only if you load the shit out of that brush. If you use your soap conservatively, you can certainly stretch that number out to 6 months.
Maximum Expected Shaves per tin of Rustic Shave Soap
But what if you didn't need enough lather for 4-5 passes? How many shaves can you expect if you loaded the brush less?
Given the amount of soap in the brush, we can use up to 50% less soap per load, but that might only get you 1 and possibly two full rich & thick lathers. Which would give you possibly 200 shaves or close to seven months. But that's only if you're super stingy with your soap, and that kind of defeats the point. Enjoy your shaves! Rustic Soap is not expensive. Use it!
A normal load for a three pass shave would probably consist of 2/3 the amount of soap I loaded in these tests. Using that number, we can infer about 150 shaves or five months.