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Kent. Anyone use it?

S

shavenardo

Member
I found an unused bowl in my shaving supplies. I bought it over 5 years ago, it must have been to replace my mitchells wool fat.
I've been missing my MWF and now I realise it was probably sitting in some old mug and I must have tossed it to save space during one of the 3 house moves I've done in the past 5 years - and I must have bought kent to replace it as common knowledge at the time was kent = mwf but in a bowl.

Unfortunately I'm having a hard time with it. I want to like it but I have had nothing but weepers while trying it out. So I'm just wondering if it's the soap, or age (it's or mine).
So far I used the slim and astra blade I had a smooth shave with recently (22nd or something? - it's in SOTD). I used the semogue 1305 and got bad weepers on the right neck. So I thought maybe old dry soap needs a tougher boar to start scrubbing and rehydrating it, so tried that 2 days later and as soon as I put blade to neck I abandoned the shave with a nope, this is not right.
Today I tried a feather portable and new feather blade 2 days later (giving some time to heel weepers), and same thing. Lots of lather and using the trusty vie long horse brush, but weepers again.

Going to give a few days recovery and use a different soap, if no problems then I'll be sad as this is the only "new" soap I'm going to be able to try out for a while.
 
I have heard that Kent=MWF but had my doubts
 
Kent is indeed repackaged MWF. Yes, I have had two of them personally, shifted one to someone else in Sydney.

I find that it needs to take up some moisture, and even more so when it has not been used for a ling time (dried out and possibly cracked a bit). Make sure you add a bit of water on top and let it soak into the puck. Over time it will soften a little and you definitely get better shaves with it.
 
Yup, Kent=MWF
It's the only white label Mitchell's does (they used to do blue beards revenge also).

A dried out puck just needs to be loaded with a wetter brush and that's about it. After a couple of uses, the puck will be rehydrated enough for easy loading.
 
OK, the puck isn't dry or cracked, but reading more about possible problems I've seen a lot of people suggest soaking the puck if there's any problems, as the soap needs lot's of moisture in it and a drier brush than normal.
All my other soaps were used and now dry and cracked and I had no problems bringing them back to make good lather. This kent soap was still in it's wrapper, bowl, lid and box so shouldn't have been too dried out by comparison and doesn't look dried out either.

E: I wet the brush and put some water on the puck and lathered like crazy on the puck to pick up extra soap, and repeated 4 times my 3rd shave with it, so I have tried adding some extra water over and above what I normally do with other soaps. And I repeated this 3 times on 3 different days to try make this soap work.

Strange, because I never had any problems with the real deal MWF, but maybe having a wet puck is key, which is why it's in a ceramic bowl normally. My MWF lived in a large soup mug and was wet a lot (used to shave with it lots).

Anyway, I'll try rehydrate this whole kent soap puck in a bowl of water and then re-try it with a well known and loved 1912 se tomorrow or the day after.
 
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I gave up on this soap. I've tried lathering it up as best I can and either I lost my touch or this isn't MWF. The telling thing afterwards is my skin is as dry as if I used bar soap. Not getting the lanolin thing at all. I might have to sell some things to get money for a decent summer soap.
 
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