Klar is definitely a top soap. I wish they had more scents. I also wish their stuff was easier to come by.
Everything I have seen says Kabinett has been discontinued. I love the smell of It, that one stands out in my mind from the pass around box. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
If that is true then it is too bad. It would be an extremely affordable soap and you get 1/2a kilo for not much. The scent was nice too. It will be another loss for our hobby in my eyes
June 29 - Back to the Pass Around Box Samples - Provence Sante Merkur 34C Voskhod (Day 3) 23mm AOS Pure Badger DIY PSO Provence Sante Soap Alum/Thayers/AOS PSB Seeing on another forum a thread about French soaps, I decided that I wanted to try a second one of the three being talked about. I have tried PdP and today, I chose to use Provence Sante. I do not recall which scent this one is. All I can smell is a clean soap scent that is rather light. I pressed some l pieces into my bowl and it took a while to dissolve. I read that this soap is not very thirsty so I kept the water down. Seemed to pay off well. Lather was rich, dense and thick. Slickness was just short of Stirling but still very good. Residual slickness was also good. I could feel my face nice and slick even after the lather was removed. 3 passes yielded a DFS+ ( spot or two on jawline got missed) and the alum was light on bite. Seems the Voskhod is getting better with usage. Where this soap excels is in post shave feel. I only applied balm to one half my face. An hour later, I could not tell which side was which. Nicely moisturized. I think the lack of scent was because of age. The soap in the box was a bit crumbly so I suspect it is on the older side. In all, a very nice soap. Have a great day everyone.
I've been at the beach this week, and decided to bring my pill bottle samples of the Route 66 soaps. These soaps receive a lot love on these boards, and I can see why. They give good performance, and all the scents I sampled were pleasing. Unfortunately for me, I have trouble smelling scents unless they are really strong, so I now reserve most of my purchases for those stronger smelling soaps like Stirling, Caties Bubbles, etc. If you like scents that are a little more subtle, you'll probably really enjoy Route 66. I just prefer scents that punch you in the face. (In fairness, the small sample size may have caused me to not use enough product to get as much scent as you would get loading from the tub. More reviews to come...
June 30 - Success with Rt66!! Merkur 34C/ Voskhod (Day 4 - Pass 1,2,3) Rockwell 6C Pl#3, Rockwell SS(Pass 4) 30DC LE Brush (Thank you Jason!!) DIY PSO Rt66 The Black Pearl soap Alum/Thayers/AOS PSB Today I got a near BBS shave with Rt66. If you recall, I, for some reason, have a hard time getting a good lather with Rt66. I have no idea why but after having taken some time off from the pass around box samples, I found I have two Rt66 soaps left. Today was The Black Pearl. TO prevent over watering, I squeezed out my brush and shook it out. I only took half of the sample I took which turned out to be very helpful later. I went very slow with the water. a few sets of additions and I had a light lather that wasn't very dense but had good slickness. I tend to like a denser lather and I recalled someone mentioning that more soap might be needed. I grabbed the remaining soap from the sample and just whipped it in. The lather got super dense, rich and beautifully creamy. FINALLY!!! perfect lather. The scent was also great. Their website lists the site as I would put it at a strong medium strength scent. I have a hard time describing the scent myself but suffice it to say that I really enjoyed it. To me, the scent had a richness not unlike the richness when comparing a Hersey's bar to a high end Swiss or European Chocolate. The Hersey smells like chocolate and is sweet but that's about it. A good chocolate has a buttery creaminess that Hersey's lacks. There is a richness and smoothness in the European chocolate. The Chocolate from Europe just melts in your mouth where as the Hersey's must be chewed. This is how I found The Black Pearl now. It was just rich, creamy, dense, slick and decadent. The Voskhod was showing wear and after 3 passes, I pulled out the Rockwell to do a touch up. Alum was quiet. The soap also has great post shave moisturizing properties. I again only PSB half my face and the wife could not tell a difference. In fact, she selected the PSB side as being dryer! I will say I now love and hate the pass around box. I love it for the exposure but hate it because if you fail to grab enough soap or mess up a sample you can easily come off with a bad experience that has nothing to do with the soap. Being new, the exposure has helped my lathering skills. I will say that I was reluctant to take samples. I did not want to take too much in fear of depriving someone else down the road from experiencing something. When you take a small sample of a soap you are unfamiliar with, it is too easy to mess up the water quantity. For me, I am sure I ruined most of the RT66 soaps I tried. Today has shown me that they do produce an excellent lather. I always knew they have a wonderful scent. Once some room opens up in my den, Rt66 will definitely need to be added. The pass around box definitely helped me improve reading the lather and knowing what to do next not to mention broadened my exposure to so many great soap companies. I have Lavender Woods left and I am sure it too will produce a great lather. Looking forward to it!
I had this exact same issue with route66 lather and wondered if I needed more soap as well. I also felt the scents were good, but not strong enough for me ... about the intensity of Razorock, as apposed to more intense like Stirling. Now I know more soap would have improved the lather. I wonder if it would have improved the intensity of the scent as well.
Question asked and answered. Like Frank, I was having trouble keeping a lather that was thick enough and would hold up to 3 passes using the Route 66 soaps. Today, I took what I had left of my Route 66 samples of rum runner and bourbon jungle (which is about 3 times the soap I would usually need to make a decent lather) and I was able to make great thick lather that held up for three passes. Unfortunately for me, the scent strength still wasn't where I like it to be. I confirmed this by whipping up a dense lather with cranberry citrus. Final verdict for me: Route 66 has good soaps that are well regarded by many. For me, they require more soap than normal to produce a dense lather, and the scents are outstanding, but of only medium strength, which just isn't strong enough for me.
July 4 - more Razorock Merkur 34C Astra SP (day 3) Dark Chocolate (JR148) DIY PSO Razorock Classic soap Alum/Thayers/AOS PSB Another pass around box soap and this time it was Razorock Classic from a white tub. I think this is the newer formula since the ingredients match the website's listing. Nice almond scent on the medium side. Lather was thick and slick but was light very similar to most better vegan soaps. Post shave wasn't bad but I still applied PSB. 3 passes grabbed the BBS. Alum showed a little sting. This soap was much thicker than the flying saucer black container had. The new container I just got of the Classic is a black cylinder shape and I believe has the same ingredients list as the white container so it should perform the same. Might find out tomorrow. For an inexpensive soap, the latest base seems very good. Happy 4th everyone!
I'm getting back to trying samples from the pass around, and hoping to put up more reviews soon. Quick question first - which scent was the TSE for men sample?
Figured it out - Espresso. Today, as noted above, I tried the TSE for Men Espresso soap. I really enjoyed the scent and performance of this soap with one exception. The lather seemed to dissipate over time, requiring me to continue to whip up more in the bowl between each pass. I've had this problem before with other soaps as a result of not using enough product, but this wasn't the case today. Not sure what the deal was. My sample has enough remaining for another shave or two, so I'll probably try it again once I power though the other soap samples and see if I can figure it out. Either way, this soap was enjoyable enough to try again, but unless I can dial in the lather to last, I probably won't be buying a full tub. (Secretly I'm routing for a win here, though, as the soap is only $10 a tub.
After a month long Soap of the Week June Focus, I'm back to my usual something different next shave style. I take some of my inspiration by choices from folks in SOTD & 30DC. Coates shave cream caught my eye, and I recalled having but not using it yet. I didn't know this manufacture had shut down. There's still some Coates around but the supply is shrinking. Recalling the tube from The Soap Pass-around plus a second sample from The Shavey Awards I checked both samples - must be drying out as the consistency is near waxy & thick. I smeared a chunk in the bowl and when it wouldn't take to a softer badger knot it got scraped up and smeared on my beard. Light on candy lime scent but building an acceptable lather it's a decent product. I liked the residual slickness. Though the creams scent is light a splash of Lime Sec did well to carry the candy flavor of the lather.
Sorry, I am late with posting this here. I finally got the chance to compare a new tub of Razorock Classic July 5 - Straights and Razorock! Black Straight made in Soligen, Ge. : Pass 1.5r Merkur 34C/ Astra SP (day 4: pass 2-4) Rockwell 6C/Rockwell (clean up pass) 30 DC LE brush Razorock Classic Black tub Alum/ Thayers/ AOS PSB Today was my first attempt at a straight. I figured all you guys were trying a popsicle razor, this would be the closest I could get and live, maybe. Fuzzy PIFed me a pair of razors made in Soligen Germany. He already had them sharper by @gssixgun recently so I cleaned and disinfected them and made myself a newspaper strop on a nice 6"X1" x 14" board. 25 passes on the paper and I threw caution to the wind. Hot towel and a lather more on the wet side, I proceeded with my first attempt. Not being very ambidextrous, I kept it in my right hand. I tried to keep the angle about the width of the spine of the razor away from my face. I kept the strokes short and tried to keep my focus in the middle of the razor. The tip won't nick me if I am using the middle most. In all, the first pass was a little rough but I was able to remove all the lather. No blood or at least none that didn't take a little while to show. Two weepers showed up while I was attempting a XTG pass . I quickly realized that I had no idea HOW to do one with a straight! Well I normally do them eat to nose but couldn't figure out how to hold the razor so I attempted to do a nose to ear instead. Al was going well until..... I hit my ear where my earlobe attaches. Eureka! We found blood! Not a lot and it was a small cut but a cut nonetheless. I finished my right side and gave up the straight for my DEs. Got the RR Classic a little more dialed in and the scent was better and more almond like. Might be due to being fresh or what I do not know. Lather was on the thinner side, anticipating the need to be thinner since I was using a straight today. I do enjoy the scent but the post shave could have been better. I did need the PSB. I think it was a good soap but now that I have tried the Stirling Almond Creme, I am not sure I will buy another. Stirling is just that good. The Merkur had a 3 day old Astra SP so I said what is one more pass. It was one pass too much. The blade had had it. I did my usual and then a clean up with the Rockwell. In all a BBS mostly. Alum was a bit less than a burn and more than a tingle. Dulled quickly. I will call this a success. This was my first try at an SR and in all it went well. Not so scary either. Thank you Fuzzy! The adventure begins again!
This morning's shave saw another razor change (to the New OC) and another soap from the pass around - Dapper Dragon Tiamat. I decided on the Whipped Dog high mountain knot in Dad's custom spalted maple handle. Every time I use this brush, I wonder why I don't use it everyday. The look of it is rustic, but the feel is absolutely luxurious! Anyway, the New did its job, as did the soap. I really liked the scent of this soap. Don't know how to describe it - vanilla, amber, not tobacco but almost that kind of feel. It is really incredible. The only issue I had was residual slickness was lacking between each pass, which would be a non starter for me. Future uses will determine if this makes the cut eventually. Overall, the soap pass around has produced a lot of "very good" soaps, but not many have taken the top spotsheld by Stirling, B&M and Catie's Bubbles in my Den. I'm curious what others have experienced with this soap. Feel free to chime in, gentlemen.
My Dapper Dragon Tiamat comments from the box are here: http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/soap-pass-around-volume-ii-2017.54093/page-37#post-1233946
I saw Randy & Frank gave Dapper Dragon a test shave. My sample wasn't the same scent, but I'm assuming it's a similar soap base being tallow. Rather than read and be influenced, I shaved, reported, and will go back to see what y'all had to say. From The Pass Around (or Shavey Awards?) assuming the base is the same I thought I'd take this Dragon for a spin. Also new to me - my first Semogue brush (Thank you Randy @BaylorGator). Since I don't know how well broken in, and complicated by giving the knot a perfunctory Dawn washing I'll save my opinion about the brush for another day. Nothing negative; soft bristles like a well broken in boar & comfortable handle. But the soap is where I was really Focused. Wet my face with cool tap water, rubbed in a blob of the malleable soap and face lathered. I had a hard time raising a lather so I dug up more soap from the Dollar Store tub. A little more water and agitated - there it is! Decent glossy in the bowl, easy spreading on my beard. The scent was very little coconut, acidic limeishness, or that could have been the verbena. Three passes and cleanups tells me the soap can give glide. Having handled blobs from the sample tub there a good bit of residual slick. The scent may be reduced from time in a non-manufacture's container. As it was I'm nonplussed for the flavor but the tallow soap base is acceptable.
Funny you had more residual slickness than I did. One thing I have found with samples is that it is a bit tough to get a good reading on a lather from trying to approximate a real brush load using only a dollop in a bowl. Today I test lathered with B&M Adagio, and it didn't whip up like all my other B&M Soaps that I load from the puck. I know it's the same base, so it was the technique, not the soap. (I also used a Semogue brush today, as well FWIW.) I'm curious for your review on the brush. I have two boars (both Semogue) which I like better than my original Omega Pro (now being enjoyed by @Drygulch), as it was way too stiff for me. Maybe I needed to break it in more, but it just wasn't worth it to me. The jury is still out a bit for me on boars. They are a nice change of pace, but I haven't found any that I enjoy as much as my badgers. If I face lathered instead of bowl lathered, I might see it. By the way, just for clarification, the Shavey awards didn't come from the pass around. However, I did clear out a lot of samples from my den and added them to a few guys award package (notably you, who was early in the pass around, and @Keithmax, who being in Korea didn't have the opportunity to participate.) Many of those were my own, and some were leftover samples from the pass around, which after recovering from my "soap drunken" state, I subsequently smelled and/or test lathered and determined they were not keepers for me in terms of scent. Rather than toss the sample, I added them in the Shavey packages of those who I thought would use and appreciate them.
I agree. B&M, Catie's bubbles, and Stirling are my top soaps as well. There are some others that are of similar quality, but they are harder to get and often cost more (saponificio varesino, Martin de candre, nuavia pannacrema, penhaligons) I also like Dr. Jon's and Mickey Lee Soap works...but they don't have quite as many options as my top 3.
