The Obie Memorial First Tier Soaps and Creams Thread.

[SemperFi]

Phrank, I did a LPL weigh in this morning. My 2 never-used test tins lost over a gram of H2O the 1st week and now are averaging just over a 1/2 gram per week (am 4 weeks into this test). Based on the numbers, I'm estimating it'll probably take longer than 6 weeks for my 2 LPL test tins to cure....

[Dieseld]

Jay, I appreciate what you're doing. It takes someone to step up and try to do these things. We all benefit form this.
Sad thing is, you have to do it............

[SemperFi]

Thanks, Dave! Hopefully if the LPL works well at the end of the test period (i.e., it's fully cured), it'll give folks having poor results a possible solution and perhaps also save them some money by not tossing it in the trash like Bob and I did.

Wish I could have done something similar with the new Floris 89 formulation that we tested and had poor results with.... No hope there since it was a hot process soap with a poor formulation--best solution there was pitching the soap and letting others know to avoid the soap until it's fixed.

[Gibbs]

This is really odd. Never heard of wanting to dry out soap, nor the necessity to do so. It's like taking a bottle of fine wine, pulling the cork and letting it set for a while to breathe. 1 hour may be fine. 1 day a bit much. 1 week and you have oxidized wine, that tasted like crap. One month and you have a nice vinegar for your salad..... or the sink.

Water is used in soap making, but the concept of drying/curing it baffles me. I put my simple VDH soap in my shaving mug and it gets wet whenever I shave and dries out somewhat between shaves. Used to be several days. Now it's been quite a spell since I got in this Geo. F. Trumper's Almond Shaving Cream (love it!!). First ingredient is water, then 2 different acids (buffers) and then Potassium Hydroxide, followed by another acid (coconut acid) and then Glycerine (Glycerol) a type of ahcohol, and used extensively. Glycerol is a by-product of biodiesel production, and many other commercial endeavors. Used in soaps, fuels, cigarette vapors, food stuff like icing and other uses (Food and human safe) and rather cheap. A few years ago it was selling for an average of 3.5 cents per kilogram (2011) It is useful in soaps since it has the ability to moisturize by drawing up oils from skin layer to prevent the drying out of your skin. Then it (Geo.F.Trumper) has an additional caustic, Sodium Hydroxide (lye) some fragerance and other ingredients.

If you dry out your soap, leaving it to air, (and since I'm from western Nebraska I KNOW Denver is pretty dry) but wet your face and apply water to the soap via your brush, then what is the difference? Seems like your are only shrinking the water content to re-introduce it later.

Fragrances, on the other hand are more of a volatile ingredient, and like alcohols, and other volatiles, they are more easily evaporated from a liquid or semi solid (which is what soap is) and if something "were" too fragrant, then the outer layers of a semi solid bar or puck of soap would have the tendency to evaporate. You might question the original manufacturer for how much variance their soap pucks are from batch to batch, but consider that once manufactured, they are probably out the door in just a few days or weeks. Then they are stored in warehouses in different areas, where they then are sold to distributors, more wholesalers, or retailers and who knows what kind of hot, cold or dry or humid storage conditions they were at between the mfg and when they arrived in our hands.

I love my Geo. F. Trumper's shave cream for the smell. I don't care for the fact that it dries on my face so quickly. I mean if I don't keep a wet brush in my scuttle with that shave cream ready to re-apply, my soap stars falling off like snow or huge dandruff! LOL I don't get that with the van Der Hagen shave soap (puck). It has 40% moisturizing ingredients and includes Shea butter and Aloe Vera. If it were almond smelling THIS is what I would shave with all the time, and have been for many years, before I tried the Almond Shaving Cream. The VDH may be on the basement tier of the OP, but it's in the top tier in my list. We all have our favorites I guess, and I would dare say, what you do to your face B4 shaving is probably more important than the age or dryness (cure) of your shave soap.

[Phrank]

I guess an analogy that would apply would be cooking a fine sauce.

You start with quite a large amount of various ingredients, mix together, and then it is, "reduced" using heat to a third of it's volume in order to produce the end result.

Some soaps are the same, as in a previous post, MdC actually advises you to leave the lid of their soaps to allow this process to occur.....

[jmercer]

My PannaCrema Nuavia Blu came today. Nice addition to First Tier rotation. Thanking you. I'm not big on scents/fragrances but I like this one. Refreshing and it did not linger. It is an interesting brown colored soap that lathers up quite white.

One of the things I look for is how easily the soap rinses off my face and out of the brush. Like most FT this one rinses easy.

[Gibbs]

Now, wouldn't one of the things that determine how well a soap rinses out of a brush and off the face would be the hardness? In the Sandhills of Nebraska, where there is little hardness soaps rinse out of clothe rather easily, but not so say in Imperial or McCook Nebraska, and other places, where the water is pretty hard. I lived in Seattle for a spell and that water was relatively soft compared to others. I would imagine Lakewood would be the same. Now where I live near Glenn Michigan, there is a lot of iron, some sulfur and minerals in the water that you have to be careful in the shower that you don't get bruised from the water. Harness of water has an effect on rinsing out of clothes, and should be the same for shaving brushes.

[Dieseld]

Now where I live near Glenn Michigan, there is a lot of iron, some sulfur and minerals in the water that you have to be careful in the shower that you don't get bruised from the water.

[Obie]

This and that . . .

Gentlemen,

After much consideration, and with all the conflicting thoughts offered by our friends here, I feel I should move Le Pere Lucien soap to the Second Tier. It's a good soap, but not good enough to sit at the same table with, say, Martin de Candre, Klar Seifen or Castle Forbes. I stopped using it a while back for some of the same negative reasons friends have offered here.

The Los Angeles Shaving Company sent me a tub of its Fougrere shave soap with my purchase of the BBS-1 safety razor. The razor is dazzling in looks and glorious as a shaver. The soap has impressed me enough to deserve a Second Tier seat in our lineup. I like the fragrance, which is pleasantly mild. The soap lathers well, is moist, and has good cushion and glide. It's good stuff.

[Phrank]

Have to agree with you Obie - LPL, a soap with enormous potential, had all the right ingredients, but in the end, a T1 soap should embrace being used, blossom into lather and not require 10-15 dates and being plied with vast amounts of liquid enticements to finally put out....

That didn't come out quite the way I meant it......what I mean to say is, it should be a consistent performer and it's clearly not - wonderful soap, and it will sit at the T2 table, by the kitchen doors on the way to the Loo....:-)