For me it has to be Palmolive stick or cream. Massive glide & comfort once you get the water balance right.
Arko is anther bargin that will always be in my rotation.
If I had only these 2 to choose from I would be content.
Cheers Paul
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For me it has to be Palmolive stick or cream. Massive glide & comfort once you get the water balance right.
Arko is anther bargin that will always be in my rotation.
If I had only these 2 to choose from I would be content.
Cheers Paul
Since Max chose to be frank, I shall gladly take the opportunity to comment on Palmolive and Arko...
Palmolive stinks. At US$7.5 for 1.8oz, it is more expensive than Green Mountain Soap.
Arko literally stinks. Yes, you can cook it in a saucepan to get rid of the smell, and add essential oils. Unfortunately, this will propel said Arko soaps into the price range of Green Mountain Soaps. Because high quality essential oils are expensive, cf. Castle Forbes or Meißner Tremonia.
In a nutshell: Green Mountain Soap is what you want.
Classic shaving brand soap. At $5.99 a puck I get fantastic results with'em. And the scents are true as well.
Truth be told, I picked up the first hit on Google. It's even more expensive over here, so $7.5 seemed about right. That said, I wouldn't use it if you paid me for it. If I had to use a shave stick, it would be a Calani stick. Unobtainable in the US, but stellar stuff. Not quite as good as Meißner Tremonia in my opinion, but another outstanding artisan soap. "Artisan" as in "hand made by real people with high quality ingredients", mind you, not "made with melt-and-pour base from China with cheap, nasty fragrance oils from God-knows-where". As I said, good stuff. Seriously good.
Well the Dollar Tree version has a list of what it's made of & nothing pops out as bad for you. Not saying it's the best out there but for a buck, it works & smells nice to me. There is a local Urbana IL soap maker & she does some real nice shaving soap. Talked her into making pucks instead of square bars. I need some more. She is in the old Post Office building in Urbana IL.
Slawman
Had anyone here tried the hallows scent from barrister and mann? I tried to get some this season but missed the deadline.
For years I've used VDH and have been reasonably satisfied...I heard about the GMS and read up on it...forgive me if I'm restating something already posted...I stopped reading about page 6 & jumped forward, I don't know why :shrug: anyway, what I liked is the ingredients...quality stuff by any standard and I weighed it against the Meibner Tremonia...pulled the trigger on the MT, which, admittedly is spendy and I love it...however...I'm still curious about the GMS...I think it's about 11.99 a puck, which is well under the $20 but twice what some of the other favorites stated are. Having no experience with it, I ask, how is the lather, creamy/long lasting glide/cushion...? Thanks in advance for any response.
My 2 Favorites bought early in my wet shaving years - Kell's Hemp Original Blend - Energy and Straight Razor Place's Bulgarian Rose. Both of these soaps lather well and have great scent and fave feel - razor glides with these 2.
I like the c o Bigelow for the under 20 bucks.
Alosmt every Eastern European and Spanish/Portugese cream....take your pick
I will have to say Ogalla Bay Rum works great for me and a bargain for around $6 for a puck
Also Razorock The Stallion
Serbia produces 3 shave soaps. Underrated, because they are not rated here at all, I guess that counts?
1. Albus "Palmira" - a company with 180 year long tradition of soap making. Soaps come in cubes, they are not your modern day quality, but work extremely well. They are probably better than Arko and sure smell a lot better. Cost $0.8 US / 80g
2. Vreto - A few years old artisan soap, vegetable- based. Comes in Barbershop (cubes of 90g) and Premium packages (100g plastic box with a lid and many scents, of which I most like Bay rum and Mint eucalyptus). Cost $1.5 for the barbershop version, $3 for Premium. An absolute favourite. Beats most of the stuff I've tired.
3. Dendi - This is fairly new, comes in pucks and there's only one scent right now, it's Lavender Tea tree. Caolin(?) clay based, works very well, although I am not a fan of clay in a shaving soap. Cost $2 US / 80g.
Other than that, we have Palmolive available at cca $1.5, Denim as well, Nivea is similar.... All of which perform just fine for me.
Last summer i bought a couple of Albus Palmira soap cubes, aswell as the sapokrem (shaving cream).
This summer i bough some Brion Sensitive Shaving cream, but i could no longer see the albus soap cubes in the stores :(
where could I get the Albus nowadays, and the artisan vreto soaps?
Srdjan, thanks for reminding me. Your friendly neighbours make Ralon and Brinell. And if you can live with the scents, they are as good as the Polish creams, but even cheaper. I can see both on German Amazon, but nowhere else. Then again, the Croatian coast is always worth a visit.
TOBS...great product, reasonably priced
You can get Albus cubes by asking me nicely and I could stick a few in an envelope and send em your way :)
You cannot get Vreto because it's currently out of production and we've already bought everything there was to buy LOL. Once it's up and running again, I will let you know!
Taylor is made by Creightons. And when I tried the various Creightons products (Truefitt & Hill, Taylor's, Trumper's, and so on), I found that there is little, if any, difference.
That said, Creightons also makes this: GROOMED | Beauty@Creightons. And at £1.05/125ml, I cannot think of a better value for money.
Strangely enough, they have increased their price for St James shaving cream by an order of magnitude. I bought mine for £3.45 or thereabouts. Yes, with the glass jar. Yes, shipped.
Godrej menthol mist, inexpensive but a good performer.
I'm a big fan of the Oglalla Bay Rum soaps.
I have always liked the original VDH. Good lather, slick and close shaves. Having moved to East TN mountains with a well (packed full of iron and minerals) it is near impossible to get a good lather now. That is not just for the VDH either. The Dawn in the kitchen and the soap in the shower, as well, suffer this fate. I will try the larger puck of the newer VDH soap and see. I do have a good bit of the older smaller puck size though. I did see a Crabtree & Evelyn outlet near to me in Sevierville though that I may go hunt some other soaps down at. We shall see. Whiskers are hard and soap lather is lacking....bad combo.
I may try the bottled water thing to see how that goes.
My wife got me some L'Occitane products for Christmas ( don't usually splurge on myself ) and gotta say their soap is a superb performer. Nice and slick with a fine scent.
Other than that, I always fall back on my trusty VDH! Just works great now matter what!
While this soap is not under $20 it is sold in 1kg packages. So in comparison to the volume you get, its well under the $20 ceiling. I just finished another glorious shave with Vitos Red. I won't promise the most exotic and deep scented perfume on this soap. Quite the contrary. Its a very simple and very light almond scent. But it performs exceptionally well. Its definitely in my top 5.
Is Vito's red like Cella? Tc
Its been a long time since I used Cella. But I stopped using Cella because I just found it underwhelming. I'd give it a go again but I'm sitting on a giant lump of Vitos. So it may be a long time before I check it out again. But to be fair, I was lathering differently then and maybe wasn't gettign the most out of it. A couple years ago I switched to giving all of my soaps their own bowl to lather in. The whole damn puck gets jammed in a cereal bowl and I build my lather on top of it. But I don't recall Cella being as nice of a lather as this. As I stated, Vitos won't win any awards for its intoxicating scent. But unless I find the scent objectionable, it comes down to performance. Vitos performs.
Thanks, I was wondering , both being Italian and a block kg and almond scent ,, I hadn't seen any others with the block. Tc
I like the proraso red.
I've really been enjoying Pre de Provence and Shannon's Coconut Lime recently, both around $12 as I recall.
I really like Mama Bear Soaps' Orange Essential Oil. Man it smells perfect!
Cold River Soap Works Oliva. This soap has probably been the single most improvement to my wet shaving adventure. It's an olive oil based soap but yes it lathers and does not break down. Creamy and dense but it's calling card is an incredible slickness. I had been using a couple of other soaps for a week as a test and this morning came back to the Oliva. Forgot how good it is.
VDH and Proraso are both good inexpensive soaps in my humble opinion.
I have bought some really good soaps on eBay. Love My Skin Shaving Soap. The seller is sbtanning. They have 59 different soap in 2 different sizes.
I compare everything to Mama Bear's and pretty much go right straight back to Mama Bear's. The Palmolive and Arkp sticks lather the best but don't smell as nice. Palmolive would be my travel soap and the Arko is for fun. Let's face it you have to roll in the mud to get the smell to go away :<0) I suppose if I gave some of the ones I see here a better chance than what I have experienced in a sample size they might grow on me. It's just that Mama Bear's is not to small and not to big, Just right. Hmmm I heard that somewhere before.
Catie's Bubbles. I keep going back to them and think they are a great value for 200g of really nice soap.
Is caties bubbles a hard or soft soap