Thank you gentlemen. What an honor it us to be formally recognized by 2 of the greats from the Stirling Exchange thread
Lurking this thread proved dangerous for me. Some rather effective marketing “propaganda” present here! I am very interested to finally try out the products that inspire so much positive content by so many devoted fans. I’ve not even tried anything Stirling but thanks to this thread: last week I spent in excess of 3 cumulative hours, shopping the site and then referencing the web, and then changing my mind to create a new cart. Finally, I pulled the trigger. Since Friday I’ve been watching some more videos and reading up in anticipation. I have not geeked out on something that’s not a piece of hardware, or made with hardware, ever in my life. Amazing. I finally decided to do 3 flavors. Completely blown away by so much positive buzz re: the sheep soaps I settled to try 1 soap and 3 splash/balm/oil “combos” So here’s my order, slated to arrive Wednesday (likely/hopefully will arrive tomorrow) Splash/Balm/Oil Sandpiper Deep Blue Sea Ramblin Man (kept waffling this or SG and in the end decided to gamble on the more risky “new” scent) Soap Scots Pine Mutton Tallow Mentholated pre-shave bar I’m curious whether the single shave soap will disagree with any of the 3 after treatments. I don’t recall specific commentary on particular issues mixing in this way... any thoughts?
Huge fan. DE shaving was still a chore till I ran across Stirling. Wanna make me a fan? Give me top of the line products at an everyman price--Stirling did it. I've said it somewhere here before, but when I was shopping for a shaving forum, the fact that there was a Stirling Exchange thread at TSD sealed the deal.
I'm that lady in the elevator. I loved the citrus-peppery cedar of Arkadia--too much for my wife though. I use Sandpiper now for my cedar fix--it's a VERY close second for me. Piacenza is a wonderful, citrus-y cologne-like scent. Tsuka hits you hard with a lime-like citrus at first, but becomes something almost entirely different pretty quickly afterwards. I don't even consider it a citrus scent--way more floral. It took a while for my nose to unravel it, but I really like it. A little goes a long way, though. All their pine scents are a different kind of great, but if I had to choose 1, it'd be Christmas Eve. Bill's @Edison Carter got a great point about Scots Pine, though--that mutton tallow is fine stuff. Not much else I can chime in on.
My experience with Scots Pine was: Right out of the box and off the puck--"Holy Crud! It's Pinesol." After lathering and applying--"Hey! That's not bad." After shaving--"Niiiiice!" You can catch subtle whiffs of it throughout the day, but certainly nothing overpowering. I think it would play quite well with Sandpiper and Ramblin Man. I've yet to try DBS, so I can't help you there.
Today I got in my sample order of a dozen soaps, a couple aftershaves, and 4 oz unscented menthol balm. Opened all the samples up for a whiff as I put each in some empty tins I purchased for this purpose. 3 or 4 scents impressed me, but I'll reserve judgment until I actually wet and whip up some lather . The next couple weeks are gonna be fun. I will say out of the aftershave samples, Stirling Spice was the clear winner, definitely in the neighborhood of Old Spice I regularly used years ago. Not exact, but hugely better than the sickening sweet newer Old Spice. The newer Old Spice, to me is so bad they shouldn't call it Old Spice at all. Should be renamed "Sickening New Spice"
Well, I wouldn't mix'em. But a mix-match plan would be interesting, I suppose. And with that, let me say Good Morning Tim(oh, I just said it, whether or not you let me, chuk yuk yuk).
As members know, I've been(and always WILL be)satisfied with calling it "New Spice"(I mean after all, "no Shulton, no Old Spice".) I'm proud to agree with you on the new name idea.
I've got a little collection of EDT's (mostly dupes). I've done some experimenting with mixing them by layer. Usually it's because I don't care for one scent as much as another, so I'll put a small amount of the least desired scent on my skin and a little more over the top of a more desirable scent. Probably my cheap nature of not wanting to throw stuff out. Anyway, with a few exceptions seems to work for me. The most recent example was a nice smelling WSP EDP called Blackbeard. I at first liked it as is, but decided it's too strong, so I've mixed it a few times now using the previously stated method and got acceptable results. Black Amber Vanilla was the best one so far to mix with. I could be wrong but I have a guess mixing may work acceptably with Stirling shaving soaps having straight fruity scents: pineapple, orange, lemon, lime, etc. Maybe not nearly as easily with cologne scented soaps.
Want to addend my post a tad. Now I realize you guys were prob talking about mix & match different soap and aftershaves. My bad, but still I wouldn't rule out mixing different ones, just realize the aftershave is going to take over and become the primary scent
That will be a challenge for me this summer if I go ahead and purchase the Glacial Lemon Chill aftershave(Stoylin). Best match I have for that would be the Razorock Lime Burst. We shall see what happens, I suppose. Another idea would be to purchase Lime w/Menthol aftershave for the Razorock soap.
If I'm going deeper in this rabbit hole of more and more scented shave soaps and aftershave matches and even some matching EDT's I feel I've got to find some nice shortcuts, happy mediums, aka mix 'n matches and not think I have to buy full tubs of everything and full size matching cologne jugs like the rest of you reprobates (just kidding LOL). Otherwise it will cost an arm and a leg and other body parts to support and wreak havoc on my OCD tendencies. (in the last 6 or 7 years I've bought and sold 60 guitars and 70 guitar pedals. Currently ONLY have 8 guitars and 13 guitar pedals, so I've made progress controlling that)