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Honeybee Soaps is nothing if not consistent with the lather of their
soaps. It’s rather good, with a reasonably large “sweet spot” for water
content, tending towards the “thirsty” side of things, providing a good
balance of a nice thick cream with plenty of glide. It left the face
feeling nice enough, not super moisturizing mind you, but better than
nothing.
A reminder for those who haven’t seen yet, I’ve amended the scoring for lather quality, since there was too much variation within the 9/10s. Some former 9/10s and everything that was 8/10 or lower were bumped down a point.
The sandalwood is pretty good. Not the best sandalwood scent I’ve come
across, but it does the trick. It’s almost strong enough; when first
lathered up and slapped onto your face, I’d say it’s just slightly
underpowered. Unfortunately, it does fade a bit from there, although not
too much.
- 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
- 8/10 Scent Strength
- 8/10 Lather Quality
I’ll give this a 7/10. It’s rather nice, but there are better sandalwoods out there, and better Honeybee soap scents.
- Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce (or $17.95 for a 10 pack), full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.
Gear used:
- Brush: The Colonel
- Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
- Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
- Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4
Ingredients:Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.
Love your reviews – thanks and keep them coming! Wondering if you can share any good how-to resources of how you use your particular scuttle to create nice lathers. A youtube video would be superb too!
Well, the first step would be heating up the scuttle. I usually use just tap water on hot; I’ve tried using a mix of boiling water and tap water before, but it’s too easy to get it too hot, at which point almost any lather will start to break down almost immediately (although to be honest the real reason is that I’m usually too lazy to bother boiling the water in the morning!). What I sometimes do is fill the scuttle inside and out with hot water, let it sit to warm up a bit while I brush my teeth, and then dump it all and refill the inside once a bit more of the heat’s been transferred to the clay.
Next, we get the soap or cream from wherever it is to the scuttle; soap I do by wetting the brush (shaking off any excess water), and then vigorously swirling it on the surface of the soap for 10 – 20 seconds, until the lather that’s building up starts to look like the bubbles formed are really tiny. If I’m doing photos for the review, I might transfer some to the scuttle just by swirling it inside for a few seconds and going back to re-load for a few seconds more, but that’s mostly just so I have enough lather left after the fact to take some nice photos.
If we’re talking a cream, I’ll usually just scoop out a bit with my finger and wipe it into the bottom of the scuttle.
Once that’s done, it’s time to add whatever water is needed, and lather up. That varies quite a lot from soap to soap, and you often kind of need to experiment a bit to see exactly what works to get it just right for how you like it. Generally speaking, the more water, the more glide, the less water, the thicker. Usually, unless the problem you’re getting from the lather is that it’s too runny, adding more water will usually help; it seems like a lot of people underestimate how much it can take, especially if they’re used to a soap that doesn’t take much.
And of course, elbow grease! Put a bit of work into vigorously swirling your brush around, and add the water as you go. You want to add slowly, and then assess how it’s looking as you go, because of course, you can always add in more water, but you can’t really take it out.
Then, once it looks and feels good, shave!
You might need to add a few drops and mix it up a bit between passes as well, to account for the water that might have evaporated form the heat of the scuttle while you were shaving, How much will be dependant upon how hot your scuttle is and the soap in question.
As for a video… I have no video editing skills whatsoever, so I’d have to research a bit before I try something like that myself. But this seems like a nice demonstration of scuttle usage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDWQdjPm6eg
And mantic’s got many many shaving videos, while his “The Art of Lather Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXVxXvv_8yk&list=UUH95TR4r8JNRgLG1T1FVXhg&index=70) doesn’t deal with scuttles, it’s fairly applicable to lathering in general anyways. It’s a good enough starting point.