Thread: The Gentlemen's Quarter - Free Samples

Originally Posted by JP5

Out of curiosity. What makes your soap firmer? Is this intentional or a result of making a soap that lathers a certain way?

Tried the microwave method to soften it up. That seemed well. I guess if I wanted to lather off a puck (normally I don't) I could just warm it up to shape to whatever bowl/mug I was going to use and let it dry.

Good Evening JP5 .....that's actually a really good question, and one to which, I don't know the technical answer lol. If I put a good guess to it, I'd say because the base has no excess liquid. Cold-process (my bath soap) and hot process ( what most other artisans are making now) can be made with excess liquid and/or oils, and the ratio of Potassium hydroxide and/or Sodium hydroxide governs the viscosity of the finished product.

Now; as for the microwave. I personally don't recommend melting the soap all the way. Not because it will hurt the soap, but if it gets too hot, you'll burn off the essential oils and lose their good for you skin properties. Most fellas tell me they put the soap into whatever container they're using, and melt it "a little".....just enough for it to stick to the bottom when it hardens back up. That way you're not chasing the puck around.

Another method that fellas tell me about, is to grate the soap with a cheese grater, then press the bits into your container. I think this is a superb idea! It will form to any container you have, and the variation in texture would create a rapid lather. At least to my way of thinking; I should try the two side by side and see if it makes a difference

Yes, you are correct! And if I'm totally screwing up placement it's because I'm still pondering over when to use reply....and reply with quote lol.

There are SO many more options when it comes to ingredients that can be added to a formula to help address hard water issues than there were 15 years ago. Back then, the most accessible ingredient to help boost lather in hard water conditions was SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate).....but it's tagged as a skin irritant, along with other badness that we can discuss later. So when i first started out everyone was really leaning towards a more natural soap base, but the problem side to that was "hard water". So what to do? what to do?

But like I said, these days.....oh it's like a candy store when looking at more "naturally derived" additives, non-irritating to skin. I peruse skin care ingredients the way others look at the menu in a fine restaurant ( really...the girl should get out more ) I discovered that I could add a two well studied surfactants to increase the lather in hard water, but it also increased the cost, in my mind excessively so. I'm not confident that folks would want to pay "more".

It's possible that I could change the formula around a bit, add some of this....take out some of that, so the cost remains the same on your end. But I don't know what the breaking point is? Which means a "test round"

I'm very interested in trying out this other base that some artisans use. It may be a total flop on my end.... or it might work really well, and be cost effective on a gentleman's wallet too. I'm planning on sometime around mid-July to do a test round.

Originally Posted by JP5

Bay Rum

Attachment 290365

Hello, and Good Morning Gentlemen

JP5, would it be alright if I used your picture in a presentation ?

Originally Posted by mwnc252

Mam,
Do ya see in the near future any aftershave & or cologne in these soap
Fragrances , that would be awesome, can’t wait to try the samples ?
MHW

Mwnc252.....I can't believe I missed this! Yes......I will definitely have Aftershave ( what I call sweet water ) and Colognes.

Good Afternoon, Gentlemen

I hope everyone is faring well in the sweltering heat, it's time for a dip in the pond!

Decided I best sit down and catch up. I had to read back thru the thread a little to be sure I'm not covering the same subject twice. I wanted to share my ingredients with you. Of course if you order things wrapped, then the ingredient declaration is on the back label. They're pretty simple as you can see:

Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Safflower Oil, Glycerine (Kosher, of vegetable origin) Aloe Vera Gel, Goat's Milk, Shea Butter, Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol Propylene Glycol (made from vegetable glycerine) Sorbitan oleate, Castor oil, Oat protein, Wheat Protein, Clay, Allantoin, Slippery Elm.

Part of these ingredients are from a premade base, from a company in the USA that's been in business for over 50 years. Some of the other ingredients I add myself, and obviously you can see there's nothing extraordinary in there (other than Quality). The key is in the balance of everything.

The light came on one day when I was running a thread much like this one, and we were having a discussion regarding the "purpose of lather". It was an interesting and enlightening conversation. Changed the entire course of my formula! so never underestimate your comments, and the influence they can have.

Originally Posted by churley

Hello, and Good Morning Gentlemen

JP5, would it be alright if I used your picture in a presentation ?

Of course! Thank you for asking first!

Rule of thumb.....better to be safe than sorry Thank you !

First of all, apologies for the late feedback. I work abroad, so I had Colleen send the samples on to my US address and had them waiting for me when I got home for my annual visit.

So.

When I got back home, finally, I found, first, my soap samples nicely packaged: in a bubble-wrapped envelope inside of which they were wrapped in a very classy forest green tissue paper. Each sample was in an individual baggie, stapled with, again, a classy label that denoted the type of soap, Colleen's brand (The Gentlemen's Quarter) and motto (Finest Shaving Soap), all of which, except for the soap-type, got promptly filtered out by my built-in, mental anti-advertising mechanism (more on that later).

Jet lagged, I didn't immediately recall the finer points of the soap-heating/sticking discussion from this thread and so threw the first soap sample, Bay Rum, into the microwave. 10 seconds later, I opened the beeping microwave door to the most fragrant, saponaceous puddle I have ever encountered, set its bowl in a larger bowl of cool water, and proceeded to shower and prep for my first TGQ shave.

(Notes: 1) I have very sensitive skin; 2) My typical go-to soaps are DR Harris and Mitchell's Wool Fat; 3) I can be an incorrigible snob about what I put on my face)

Face prepped, soap congealed, badger brush soaked, and jet lag not reduced in the least (and, I should mention, skin feeling kind of weird, having just come from a monsoon climate of 95% humidity, spent the last 24 hours in A/C riddled ports of transit and aircraft, and now, in a climate with 53% humidity, sort of trepidatiously preparing to shave), I took the brush to what I guess could now, again, having dropped to an appropriate temperature, be considered a puck of soap. And:

Boom.

Almost instant, dense, creamy lather. Mountainous lather. A bowl shaving meringue. A thickness that subsumed my fingertips. That breached the edges of the bowl. It was The Blob (1958, 1988), only I WANTED it to eat me. Yes. It lathered well. And it smelled good. So. Damn. Good.

So I slid it around my face and I shaved with it.

And it did what soap should do. It lubricated the blade. It moisturized my skin. It tantalized my nose with a pleasing scent that dared me to make unnecessary passes (WTG, XTG, and ATG yes, but they WEREN'T ENOUGH! I wanted DTG [diagonal against the grain], ZZTG [zig zag that grain], and STG [skip from here to there around whatever is left of the grain]... it was just so good. So pleasurable. Like eating candy when you're five. Like drinking beer when you're fif... er, twenty-one. I didn't know where my limit was.)

And my whole bathroom smelled good.

As did my face.

And my skin was soft. So very soft. Planes and climate differences had nothing on this soap.

And afterward, as I was cleaning up, as I was happily putting the other two pucks back in their manly tissue paper (they still await), picking up the shreds of bubble-wrap envelope and getting ready to finally get some sleep, it caught my eye, and I saw, once again, that label that had been stapled to the bag, and the phrase that was on it: Finest Shaving Soap. But, BUT this time the words sunk in a little more. It wasn't a hollow slogan, that sentence, it was no throw-away motto. No, what it was was Colleen, simply stating, in plain, direct, and ACCURATE language, honest language, where her soap stands on the complex and oft-branched totem of shaving soaps.

It is the finest.

Truly I'm thrilled that you're happy with the soap, and I must say you're an awesome writer. It's been tough trying to pull this business back together, but I tell you true.......when you write something like that, and you're genuinely happy, then it makes it all worthwhile. I love it! Thank you so much.

A couple/few other notes:

1) I have already purchased both fragrance and a full-sized puck from TGQ, so, my money is where my mouth (fingers?) is. Or are.

2) I would like to request, humbly and for the distant future, the availability of matching fragrance aftershave lotions. Nothing more disappointing than covering the soap’s incredible scent up with some other smell at the end of the shave.

3) Sign me up for any future rounds of product testing, please! I could product test these all day long...