Thread: Finally doing a soap review

I've been wanting to try anew soap for quite some time, but budget constraints have keep that at bay. Finally decided to buy a sample of one I've been interested in and bought a sample size of Cedar from Uncle Jon's Soaps. The gracious gentleman that he is sent me a second sample with it at no extra cost. Kudos to him. The second scent is called Pipe Smoke.
So this will be a review of one soap/two scents. As to the scents I need to state a disclaimer. My sense of smell is scent deprived, It generally must be very heavy scented to get thru to me. Opened each sample and sniffed and got a whiff of Pipe Smoke. Very pleasant, but seemed to disappear when made into lather. Cedar, on the other hand, didn't impress on first sniff, but developed quite a bit in lathering. Have a daughter in law with a very sensitive sniffer. Will check with her as to the strength of scent in these samples. To try to keep this test as simple as possible I decided on using the same razor for the several shaves of the test. I used a 5/8 Bellied Gotta. I did use different brushes to see their abilities with a soap.

Day one I lathered with a 22mm round Badger. 45 to 60 seconds of swirling to build soap level in a dampened and squeezed out brush. Took about a minute and a half, with small additions of water, to achieve a decent lather. Applied to a dry face and had a pleasing three pass shave. Good glide and cushion. This was the Pipe Smoke. Day two I did the same with the Cedar. Same results.

Day three I decided to use a large horsehair brush. Difficult to really load from a small sample with a big brush. Got a thin, airy lather. Switched to a smaller vintage somewhat limp badger with out much luck. Decided to use the thinner lather anyway, knowing that it would most likely dry out along the way and need frequent applications. This time I applied the lather, rubbed it in and then stropped my razor. Re lathered and shaved, re lathering in sections as I went. Well, you might think that I would have a disaster on my hands but I was more than surprised and pleased when, despite the lack of a medium to thick lather, the soap did not lose the qualities we highly desire, that of cushion and glide. Had that without a doubt. Another excellent three pass shave.

I'm quite sure that if I had a full puck of the soap I might not have had the troubles I had on the third day. But it is possible that there is some credence to a need to find the right brush hair type for the various soaps that we use. I trust my abilities to develop a good lather and was a little concerned when I didn't always get my usual results. Operator error? Could be. Requires further looking into.

Overall I was most pleased with the results of this test and look forward to better budget times to buy a full puck of Cedar. Please note, this neither a "ya gotta have this one" or "be with the in crowd and get this one"review. These are my views on a particular soap. If you try it your results can or might be different than mine. For a typical ending YMMV.