A couple of weeks ago I was the only person entering into a PIF by our very own @fram773 where he PIF'd away a, in his own words, "horrible soap". So, expectations for this soap was set a couple of inches below sea level. What it may look like if you buy it new: The official description of this soap reads: "A rich, lathering Shave Soap with Patchouli to rehydrate and soothe the skin. Lavandin to soften and stiffen bristles for a closer and smoother shave. Fragranced with Scottish Fine Soap's Classic Male Grooming Signature Cologne" I mean, that sounds great right? What can go wrong? Ok, let's get to it... review time! Scent 5/10: Smelling the puck I really didn't pick up on a lot of scent. It kind of just smelled like soap. Maybe a bit of Lavender..but I may be imagining it. No offensive scent at all - just a bit generic. When lathering up what scent was there in the beginning was hardly noticeable anymore. Lather Part I: 7/10: I pull out my Robert Becker Scuttle and get to work building some lather. (If it matters, I have very soft water). I notice I have to add more water than normal to make things happen...quite a bit more. After about 90 seconds I have managed to build what I think is some decent lather: I apply it for my first pass and it actually doesn't feel half-bad. It's pretty thick and seems like it may perform rather well. I even wait for a minute to see if I can see any of it dissipating but the lather seems to have good lasting power. Maybe this isn't a horrible soap after all! Performance 6/10: Razor of the day is my Gillette Slim set to 8 w/ an Astra SP blade in it. First pass, WTG, is not bad. I do feel a lack in glide and protection though. It's a passable shave but not up to par with say Cella, 3P or most Stirling soaps. Lather Part II: 4/10 What happens next is a bit of a surprise. I use the remaining lather from the brush, there appears to be plenty, but the lather I am getting this time is thin and even trying to do some face lathering I fail to build a good lather for the second pass. Odd. Looking at a close-up of my lather I think I may see why - there are a lot of air in the lather and that may well have affected the lather on the brush in a way that by the time I was done with the first pass the 'perceived volume' had disspitated. Conclusion: Is it a 'horrible soap'? I'm not quite sure. I don't think it's a great soap. Taking the lackluster scent and the performance into consideration I'd be tempted to give it an overall score of 5/10. So middle of the road. I'll give it another try in a week or so... Thanks @fram773
It is the second worst soap I have tried- after an amateur soap I tried that I bought on eBay. I could not get rid of the airiness at all. I have read the posts on B&B where people say to add more water. It seems counter intuitive to add more water but it does lose its airiness and appears to be thick and peaky but it is merely an illusion. It is still nothing but air. No amount of work seemed to solve this. I am one of the people that find MWF easy to lather but this soap really stumped me.
If you send it to me, I'll give it a shot and post my results. Then I'll send it on to the next patsy. I mean, person who may want to see if they can get it to work.
I'm actually gonna see if I can get 5-6 undesirable soaps into a small flatbox from USPS and do to a PIF about it. Why one bad soap when you can get 5?
I've never tried that soap in particular but I've tried enough bad soaps to have no desire to pay to ship that thing around. It would probably make a great shower soap though, just to use it up. It sure was packaged up nicely though. I would have thought it would be a high quality expensive soap in looking at it.
