The Shave Den – Egyptian Spice shaving soap

Tags

6/10, frankincense, myrrh, shaving soap, spice, the shave den

The next soap up on the chopping block is a sample from The Shave Den. The Egyptian spice is a mostly sweet scent with a bit of spiciness to it. They describe it as a “spicy fragrance with notes of frankincense and myrrh”. I can’t really say I know what either smells like, but it’s fairly pleasant.

It definitely could have used a bit more oomph to it; it’s easy enough to smell when sniffing the puck, but only a little of the scent seems to carry over to the lather.

For the lather, I’m not sure if I’m just getting better at lathering this stuff, if this sample is better, or maybe it just performs better after it aged, but it worked better than I remember. I used to have problems overshooting the sweet spot for water content, but not so much the last few tries with this particular sample; it didn’t seem easy to accidentally overwater. Managed a decent balance of glide and thickness each time without much difficulty.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 5/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality

So, overall, an underwhelming 6/10. Still not enough kick to the scent to really make it an interesting shave, IMHO.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: Mühle HJM Black Fibre
• Razor: 1966 Solid Nickel Gillette Tech
• Blade: Treet Dura Sharp
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Signature scent shaving soap

Tags

7/10, bay rum, bermagot, citrus, Glycerin, shaving soap, the shave den

The Shave Den’s Signature scent is a bay rum spiked with bermagot.  Bay rum crossed with Earl Grey, it’s a bit like the Caribbean meets England. It’s a bold masculine aroma which I rather quite like. It comes on reasonably strongly, with not much in the way of fading while you shave.

As for the lather, again, it does the trick, but it can be picky. I usually find I have to error a bit on the side of too much water, as having it a bit thin is usually better than not having enough lubrication. You should load the brush heavily and add water gradually, because it can be easy to overshoot the water content you’re looking for. It does however produce quite a lot of lather; volume definitely not a problem with this one.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality

I’ll be giving this a 7/10 overall. It’s a decent enough all-around soap.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Gillette 7 O’clock Black
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Winter Pagoda shaving soap

Tags

6/10, amber, Glycerin, musk, shaving soap, the shave den, wood

The Shave Den’s Winter Pagoda is fairly sweetly scented. And that’s about it; other than the sweetness, it’s not all that distinctive. It’s supposed to be “frost and white woods with sweet amber and light musk”, but to be honest, it’s hard to really make out any of the individual scents. Maybe a bit of the musk, but overall, it’s kind of bland. Vaguely pleasant, but boring.

And that’s when sniffing the soap itself. Once applied to the face, there’s not much there at all.

For the lather, the usual caveats for the Shave Den apply; load your brush very heavily, and then add your water gradually, and you’ll should be able to hit the sweet spot with a good balance of lather thickness and glide. It’s easy to overshoot though, and can be tricky to get just right.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality

So, overall, meh. 6/10 I guess. There’s definitely better stuff out there.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush
• Razor: Merkur Progress
• Blade: Croma Diamant
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Gunpowder shaving soap

Tags

5/10, Glycerin, gunpowder, novelty, shaving soap, spice, the shave den, wood

The last on-the-road edition of my reviews for the foreseeable future is The Shave Den’s Gunpowder.

So first off, what doesn’t it smell like? Gunpowder. Or cordite, or any other explosive or propellant that I’ve ever dealt with. What does it smell like? Well, it’s a fairly sweet scent, with what seems to be abit of spicy / acrid undertone with what seems to be some woodsy scents as well. It’s kind of hard to differentiate exactly what’s going on there, but overall I consider it to be pretty nice, but not outstanding. Strength-wise, it’s the usual, the soap itself delivers, the lather doesn’t.

The key to lathering this and other Shave Den soaps for me appears to be loading a lot of soap on the brush, and then working in the extra water slowly and carefully. I seem to have found out how to get a perfectly acceptable lather each time out of these soaps, but it definitely seems to have a pretty narrow range of moisture quantity which leads to an acceptable shave.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 5/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

I’m giving this a 5/10 overall. An ok scent, and ok shave, poor strength. I can’t really see myself reaching for this one again.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used (Roadshow edition!):

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Bic Comfort Twin
• Scuttle: A empty tub that formerly contained the Body Shop’s Maca Root shaving cream.

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Coconut Lime Verbena shaving soap

Tags

6/10, citrus, coconut, Fruit, Glycerin, Lime, shaving soap, the shave den, verbena

The Shave Den’s Coconut Lime Verbena is a nice sweet fruity concoction. There is just enough coconut to give the sweetness to the scent, without it overpowering the citrus of the lime and the verbena. It’s a crisp pleasant scent.

Strength-wise, it’s following what I’ve mostly seen from the Shave Den, strong enough when sniffing the soap directly, but only weakly detectable in the lather itself. Of course, anyone who’s been reading my reviews with any regularity will know that this is by far my most common complaint with shave soaps of all types.

I’ve been yo-yoing back and forth between a 7/10 and 8/10 for lather quality on the Shave Den soaps, and on this one we’re back up to 8/10. I think the key, at least for us bowl-latherers, is to load a whole lot on the brush, and then load some more. Then add the water needed fairly gradually. It’s easy to over-shoot the amount of water required, but it definitely needs it in order to get sufficient glide. Also, for those who use a scuttle, if you’re not adding enough water, the lather will certainly be breaking down far too rapidly between passes. Anyways, one thing to take away from the Yo-yoing is that it can be tricky to get right.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, this is a 6/10. Definitely a good enough shave, but the scent needs more punch.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
• Blade: Lord Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Mojito soap

Tags

6/10, citrus, Glycerin, Lime, mint, shaving soap, the shave den

The Shave Den’s Mojito scent is a nice sweet minty concoction, or in their own words “lime and spearmint blend, inspired by the Cuban cocktail of the same name”. As I’ve only had one Mojito in my life, I can’t really recall how well it might match, but it smells pleasant enough for sure.
Strength-wise, I’m detecting a trend. It’s strong enough when smelling the little cake of soap itself, but it doesn’t follow to the lather. It’s a bit better than previous two I’ve tried, but still not good enough. It’s faintly detectable for most of the shave, fading to nothing near the end of each pass.

On this one, I wasn’t quite able to get enough glide, but not quite as much as I would have liked, or at least not without also adding too much water for it to not become too runny and thin to provide sufficient cushioning. It seemed like too much of an either / or choice with lubrication or thickness of lather. There might be a “sweet spot”, but it isn’t wide enough to hit easily.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 6/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, it gets a 6/10. Not a great shave, and the scent doesn’t add enough to the experience to make up for it. And now off to this year’s Remembrance Day ceremony.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Lord Platinum
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Raspberry soap

Tags

6/10, Fruit, Glycerin, rasberry, shaving soap, the shave den

Sniffing the little baggie this sample came in revealed a quite nice raspberry scent. Not excessively sweet, it captured the fruit’s smell quite well.

The soap itself smelled strong enough. As is often the case, the lather did not. I could still catch the occasional whiff of the aroma while shaving, but it certainly wasn’t consistently so.

I found that this sample seemed to have a fair bit more slickness to it than the other soap I’ve tried from The Shave Den thus far. I was still able to get sufficient glide and have a comfortable shave while leaving the lather rather thick, although I can’t guarantee that this wasn’t due to some minor differences in how I prepared the lather rather than actual differences in the soap itself.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 6/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 6/10. The scent underwhelms, so it’s not recommended if that’s a big deal for you.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Lord Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.

The Shave Den – Pink Grapefruit shaving soap

Tags

5/10, citrus, Glycerin, grapefruit, pink grapefruit, shaving soap, the shave den

My first impression when I received a shipment of samples in from The Shave Den was that these were the most unappealing looking Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups I’ve ever seen!

I found the best method of using these samples was to just hold the sample in one hand, and then load up my brush with the other hand, suitably moist of course. Then either on the face face or in a bowl to build up the lather. In doing so, however, I wasn’t (as is often the case alas) able to find a balance I like with the thickness of the lather and the glide it provides. I had to go fairly thin in order to get what I consider to be a suitable amount of lubrication. It did at produce a fairly large volume of lather.

The scent was underwhelming. The soap itself smells nice enough, a pleasantly tart pink grapefruit. However, it’s not all that strong, and it certainly didn’t carry over to the lather much at all; I could barely tell it was there when applied to the face, or even when sniffing the brush.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 4/10 Scent Strength
• 6/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 5/10. There are other soaps out there that give better shaves and smell better.

• Cost: A one ounce sample goes for $2.50, or $6.99 for a full 4 ounce puck (an extra $2 if you want a tub with it).

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Croma Diamant
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Glycerin, Aqua, Olive Oil, Bentonite Clay, Sodium Borate, Sweet Almond Oil, Sodium Palmate, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Palm Acid, Coconut Acid, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and fragrance.