I know that reviews are always risky business, so I would like to start by stressing that this only represents my own opinions. With that said lets get into it. Truefitt & Hill's luxury shaving soap was actually my first shave soap purchase, I used it for several months before moving on to other brands, and have recently come back to it for another whirl. After all of that here's how I feel about it's qualities: Scent: A clean, fresh, soapy scent that lingers for several minutes after the shave. Lather: This is definitely a hard English-style soap, one of the hardest pucks I own. For quite some time I had been under the impression that a hard soap like this would require a scrubby brush with lots of backbone and using such a brush I actually initially was disappointed with the lather. However, after revisiting it with a silvertip that had a larger knot I had very positive results by wetting the puck a bit first and lightly swirling the brush tips on the puck, so I have found that it isn't the case that hard soaps don't respond well to soft brushes. My findings were quite the opposite. The lather's personality is fairly "dry" and somewhat airy compared to a soap like Cella or Valobra and far less slickness. In fact the protective qualities felt like little more than if I had shaved with a standard block of shower soap however, that being said I did get a good close shave. I found it to be somewhat drying to the skin though during winter months, when tried in the summer I found it's crisp nature to be quite refreshing and it feels less heavy on the face that my Italian soft soaps. Irritation: Other than the drying effect noted earlier, I experienced no irritation and I do have sensitive skin. The soap washes away from the face more cleanly and easily than other shaving soaps I have used (literally just a splash of water will take it all off). But perhaps part of the reason why I find this soap less protective against the blade than others I have used. Price: This is where Truefitt & Hill has to take the hit. This stuff is spendy! Granted I bought mine at a boutique, but I paid $33 for a puck and this was disappointing to me since my subsequent soap purchases included Valobra Almond which only cost me $10 and Cella which came in at $11. Both of these less expensive Italian soaps outperformed the Truefitt IMHO. However, the Truefitt puck does last a good long time. All in all a good soap; not my favorite but good and I'm glad to have it in my rotation. If you want to try a classic English style soap and have some coin, why not. But as for me, mainly due to the price point, I won't be purchasing this product again. (But the puck's gonna last forever anyway.)
Mitch, Try rubbing the puck on your face like you would a stick. For problem soaps that are hard to lather, this always works for me. And no, your milage will not vary.
That's a good tip, I'll try that next time I use it. It take a very long time to "wake the puck up." But my greatest disappointment with it is that as I mentioned even after I achieve a heavy lather from it, the lather quality is just not as creamy or as slick as what I typically enjoy. I bet for some folks though, preferences differ. I like my Italian soft's which as you know are just so creamy and slick. But it's good to have variety.
I agree. My best soaps are Italian too. If you don't find a liking to English soaps, there are German soaps such as Speick, which is awesome, Irish Moose and one of my all time favorites, Tabac.
I haven't tried Tabac yet but have wanted to, it gets a lot of good reviews. I like to have a wide selection. The one nice thing about the English soap is that since it has a "fluffier" lather as opposed to the Italian which I would consider to be "thick and creamy," is that it does rinse from the face and shaving tools with great ease. My Valobra really clings to everything, face, razor, etc. But the downside as I experienced it is that the lighter Truefitt lather also doesn't provide that heavy, slick coat on the skin which is a great protective. The English style gives a much "drier" shave and my skin doesn't love that. But its not that I haven't gotten a good shave from the Truefitt because I have.
Wanted to update this thread with one detail. I recently returned to this soap after hearing some helpful advice on working with hard soaps and I tried using hotter water and more of it in my brush before lathering and that has helped. I was able to achieve a great lather with the Truefitt yesterday, it just took some adjustment.
Glad the Truefit is working for you. I noticed that you found the stuff to be pricey.. here's a 59 video with a much less expensive alternative. I've tried the RS which I did find locally and it might very well be just a re-branded version of the expensive one ..
Thanks SlipperyJoe. I haven't looked too widely for it, it may have something to do with where I bought it to. I bought it at a very upscale Haberdashery where nothing is cheap. It may have been marked up but it was the soap I bought when I was a newbie so I didn't know any better. I hadn't even found the Shave Den yet at that point. Glad I did! Even though I have coaxed the Truefitt into a good performing soap I don't think it's quite enough to pull me off of my Italian soaps though.
You should put this information in your original review. Add it as an Edit. Some people might not make it down to the bottom of the page before they quit reading
How do you think a Vulfix super badger would do with this? I have two different brushes one is average sized and the other is huge!
As long as you wet the top of the puck for a few minutes before loading the brush with soap, the Vulfix should be fine. This technique works with any triple-milled soap, not just Truefitt & Hill. It makes the soap softer and easier to load on the brush. Some people use this technique and some don't. In theory, any brush should be able to lather any soap. (and they do!) In practice, some brushes are better with some soaps. YMMV.
Yep I've found that wetting the puck is helpful too. My Frank's Silvertip is quite large, maybe 2x the width of a Tweezerman. I think the fatness greatly increases its lathering effectiveness with this soap. All I know from my trials is that if you're using a hard soap, you don't necessarily need a brush with more backbone. In fact with the fat brush I find a light touch works well. The bristle tips are what needs to work the soap, you don't need to grind it in there. Trial and error though.
