Garden Variety Soap Company – Bergamot Cedarwood shaving soap

Tags

6/10, bergamot, cedarwood, citrus, clove, garden variety soap co, juniper, Lime, patchouli, shaving soap, wood

So I received this puck of shaving soap after getting an inquiry from the soap maker about doing a review. I frankly kind of wish she had contacted me prior to coming up with the formulation; perhaps I could have helped to steer her in a bit of a better direction.

As we often see from people who are already making soap that decide to delve into making shaving soaps, it looks like it’s basically hand soap with bentonite clay added. I suppose I can’t blame them terribly; after all that’s pretty much what comes up on the first page or so if you google “How to make shaving soap”. The problem being that they’re all listed on soap oriented websites, and not anyone with any real “cred” with regards to shaving. I’d liken it to someone who was trying to figure out how to bake a cake following a recipe on an breakfast website telling egg lovers how they can alter their omelet recipe by adding some flour, instead of actually listening to the advice on a baking site.

Which isn’t to say that some type of clay can’t be a small component of a good shaving soap (as seen in Mike’s Naturals amongst others), but it sure as heck can’t be the only thing that you’re using to try and make it into a shaving soap instead of something else.

Anyways, enough of a generic rant, about this soap in particular: it seriously lacked lather stability. If you do use it, I’d suggest tailoring your lather mix to be on the water-heavy side, so at least you get a very good amount of glide, since you’re not really going to be able much to speak about in the way of thickness. It did at least have some decent moisturization properties, but that’s not really enough to salvage the performance.

The scent was pleasant; the bergamot seems to be predominate with the cedar and the other scents providing a nice base. There’s a bit of sweetness to the mix as well, which might be from the shea / cacao butter. All together, it came together for a nice combination.

It was about a middling strength; not strong, but not weak, with fairly decent staying power.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 6/10 Lather Quality

Anyways, I’ll be giving this a 6/10; I can’t really recommend it due to the unsatisfying shave it provided.

• Cost: As mentioned, I was given this puck free of charge for the purposes of this review. You can get your own 4 oz puck for $8.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Merkur 37C Slant
• Blade: Personna DE
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Water, Sunflower Oil, Castor oil, Coconut oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Palm Oil, Shea Butter, Cacao Butter, Bentonite Clay, Essential Oil Blend (bergamot, cedarwood, juniper, patchouli, lime, clove)

Man Cave Soapworks – Mountain Man shaving soap

Tags

6/10, basil, cologne, Glycerin, juniper, lemon, Man Cave Soapworks, patchouli, sandalwood, shaving soap

Mountain Man is billed as a “woodsy mix of basil, juniper, lemon, sandalwood and patchouli”. All in all, I didn’t find it too bad, but it’s definitely far too sweet of a scent for something that I would consider calling “Mountain Man”. Frankly, the sweetness was enough to mostly drown out the other scents.

Strength-wise, it wasn’t all that good. There was just enough there that you caught a bit of a whiff while shaving, but to actually get a good appreciation of what it smelled like you needed to go straight to the puck of soap.

And the lather, eh. It did the trick, nothing special. It’s your typical melt-and-pour shaving soap.  It provides a perfectly reasonable shave, with a decent balance of thickness and glide. Nothing to write home about, just a nice solid shave, which left the face feeling nice.

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

So, anyways, I’ll give this one a 6/10. Not bad in any aspect, but it doesn’t particularly stand out at all, IMHO.

• Cost: A 4 oz puck in the jar as pictured goes for $8, with just the refill being $4.50.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Vintage Gillette Travel Tech
• Blade: Shark Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Safflower Oil, Glycerin (kosher, of vegetable origin), Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide (saponifying agent), Organic Shea Butter, Bentonite Clay, Sorbitol (moisturizer), Sorbitan oleate (emulsifier), Soy bean protein (conditioner), Wheat Protein (conditioner), fragrance

The Strop Shoppe – Baker Street

Tags

10/10, baker street, bermagot, citrus, floral, Jasmine, juniper, patchouli, shaving soap, strop shoppe, wood

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

– 1895 by Vincent Starrett

With their Baker Street soap, the fine folks over at the Strop Shoppe attempted to evoke images “of sitting rooms, pipes, and foggy London streets” to start off your day with “The Game Afoot”.

And I would say they succeeded marvellously. The blend of Bergamot, Juniper, Jasmine, and Patchouli have combined wonderfully to create a scent that could easily be something that Mr. Watson or Sherlock Holmes would have worn. This is my 2nd favourite scent, behind TOBS’s Jermyn Street.

And they didn’t skimp on the scent either. The soap itself smells quite strongly, and the lather carries the aroma rather nicely, staying noticeable throughout the entire shave, without fading. I might have liked perhaps just a fraction stronger, but I am hardly complaining.

The shave itself was likewise great. It lathers up very easily into a thick creamy voluminous foam, with quite a wide “sweet spot” for the amount of water it needs to balance the thickness with the slickness. During a normal shave, it left the skin feeling quite and moist afterwards. The only downside I saw was some irritation when I left it sitting on my face for a while (when I was testing how long the scent would last), but that took longer to emerge than the average shave takes me anyways, but those with sensitive skin might want to be a bit wary.

I’m not sure if it’s on purpose or not, but the cakes sent out fit just perfectly into the wide-mouthed mason jars I use to store most of my soaps (when I don’t feel like paying extra for a jar from the manufacturer). A nice bonus. One note, this review was of the original vegan-friendly vegetable-oil based configuration. This scent is also one of ones being offered in a tallow-based soap or in their “special edition” with shea and cocao butter.

• 10/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 9.5/10 Scent Strength
• 9/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Normally, I might be debating whether or not to give it a 9/10 or a 10/10, but seeing as how this is currently my favourite shave soap to date, I’ll go ahead and round up. 10/10. Sir Conan Doyle would be proud.

• Cost: $9.95 for a 4 ounce puck from their website. Edit: If you want to avoid their website (as there are semi-frequently significant delays in shipping / customer service issues I’ve heard reported), the tallow version can be found in the US for $10.99, or from Canada both the regular (which this review was based upon) and the tallow can be found for $11.50.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Merkur Progress
• Blade: Shark Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Stearic Acid, Glycerin, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Rice Bran Oil, Fragrance.

Saponifying agents : Potassium Hydroxide, Sodium Hydroxide.

May contain : Sunflower Oil (Used as a substitute for Rice Bran Oil when needed).