Thread: Yardley shaving soap

I scored one in ebay.The soap arrived today and,even when I didn't shave with it,I made lather a couple times to try it.What can I say?I only have seen the same kind of lather with the Gibbs shaving soap,the Old Spice and the old La Toja soap.
My question ishen as a customers did we lower our expectations in products and services?And when some of the traditional shaving companies have decided to sell us rubbish with expensive prices?I dont know,but this soap,even when I haven't shaved with it,makes a better creamy lather than any of the actual UK soaps.Its a joke to compare many of the actual Made in UK soaps with this one,even my beloved Edwin Jagger and Mitchells Wool Fat/Kent.
Since when do we accepted lower end soaps with ridiculous expensive prices?(I have a new Floris JF soap and I know what Im saying).
Anyway,this soap truly was a Made in UK pride product.33 Old Bond Street,what a great place used to be!

Back when this Yardley puck was made, the main ingredient would be sodium tallowate, in other words predominantly beef dripping and pork lard. Now superseded by sodium palmate made from palm oil in general industrial soap making, because of its admittedly superior cleaning performance.
Cleaning isn't really what we chaps are after though, is it? While every scrap of land between Everest and Bali seems to be being cleared for palm oil production, to devastating effect of course (apart from soap, it makes great oil for pre-coating frozen potato oven fries), it does not produce so dense a lather as tallow soap.
Tallow soap is really cheap though. Last week I bought three bars of unscented bath soap for 28 pence(U.K.) that's 45c for all three!
If I melt half tallow soap with half olive oil soap or maybe half coconut glycerin soap (sodium cocoate froths up madly) or perhaps a mix of all three with some water, then when melted take it off the heat and add a good dose of glycerin and a teaspoon of Fullers Earth, that's the clay in shaving soap to give the blade that incredibly important glide, some sandalwood/ginger/lime/geranium/myrrh/lavender oil (whatever!) stir it well to stop
the clay powder sinking until it solidifies........abracadabra! With a Sheffield 13/16 that's been shaving beards since 1850, I only wish my Bulldog would learn to live this cheap. I keep telling him, but although he listens, he doesn't even bother to stop chewing. I had wife like that once. Luckily not mine.

Originally Posted by Blackpool

Back when this Yardley puck was made, the main ingredient would be sodium tallowate, in other words predominantly beef dripping and pork lard. Now superseded by sodium palmate made from palm oil in general industrial soap making, because of its admittedly superior cleaning performance.
Cleaning isn't really what we chaps are after though, is it? While every scrap of land between Everest and Bali seems to be being cleared for palm oil production, to devastating effect of course (apart from soap, it makes great oil for pre-coating frozen potato oven fries), it does not produce so dense a lather as tallow soap.
Tallow soap is really cheap though. Last week I bought three bars of unscented bath soap for 28 pence(U.K.) that's 45c for all three!
If I melt half tallow soap with half olive oil soap or maybe half coconut glycerin soap (sodium cocoate froths up madly) or perhaps a mix of all three with some water, then when melted take it off the heat and add a good dose of glycerin and a teaspoon of Fullers Earth, that's the clay in shaving soap to give the blade that incredibly important glide, some sandalwood/ginger/lime/geranium/myrrh/lavender oil (whatever!) stir it well to stop
the clay powder sinking until it solidifies........abracadabra! With a Sheffield 13/16 that's been shaving beards since 1850, I only wish my Bulldog would learn to live this cheap. I keep telling him, but although he listens, he doesn't even bother to stop chewing. I had wife like that once. Luckily not mine.

Thanks for your inputs!Is interesting to know that you make your own tallow based shaving soap!
And regarding the Yardley,I shaved with it today,and as I did suspect,this soap is SUPERB,too sad about the lacking of its scent.Nothing much to add to that.

Originally Posted by Blackpool

tallow soap.
Tallow soap is really cheap though. Last week I bought three bars of unscented bath soap for 28 pence(U.K.) that's 45c for all three!

sorry to hijack the thread but I'm very interested in this, if you dont mind me asking, where did you find this miraculous soap at that price? the closest I got was £3.44 with postage(£18.34) which I thought was a little steep for delivery... but just a little

Tieste,

How true...Everything old is new again. Which may not be such a bad thing.

Originally Posted by gimpyalex

sorry to hijack the thread but I'm very interested in this, if you dont mind me asking, where did you find this miraculous soap at that price? the closest I got was £3.44 with postage(£18.34) which I thought was a little steep for delivery... but just a little

It's only Value Bath Soap (3x125g bars) from Morrisons supermarket! I just needed a basic tallowate soap, and though it also contains the ubiquitous palm kernel oil, it is mostly tallow. I have also found a very decent olive oil soap called 'Oliva' in Holland and Barrett, the health food shop for £1/$1.62, and a glycerin and coconut soap in The Body Shop for £2/$3.25. The cheap bath soap seems to be extremely similar to those little tablets of soap you used to find on hotel basins, marked 'Buttermilk'.

I have just been cutting corners really. I used to make soap for Christmas presents, for which basically you need fats/oils and sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda (drain cleaner!). But when you start mixing different fats and oils together, each one has a different saponific value, meaning you need to add more sodium hydroxide for one fat, less for another, and so on and so on. Then you have to leave it about eight weeks to thoroughly cure.

If anyone fancies having a go at it, rather than taking my haphazard advice, there are I am sure plenty of really expert websites available (but I wonder if anyone else has discovered that the very new invention of the rubber-like silicon cookware roasting tins are the answer to a soap maker's prayers). I'm quickly talking my way into starting again! The most important ingredient in shaving soap in my humble opinion is the clay, without which, as you will know when you've had to make do with ordinary soap, the razor acts on your face like the shoe on a drum brake!

I too used Yardley for this morning's shave and it truly is excellent. Rich creamy lather, excellent slip and in the case of my puck, great scent too. I would use it more often if I could replace it. Since it is no longer available, I only break it out occasionally. I also have a puck of the newer (1970's or early 1980's) Yardley Black label which is also quite nice.

Originally Posted by Blackpool

It's only Value Bath Soap (3x125g bars) from Morrisons supermarket! I just needed a basic tallowate soap, and though it also contains the ubiquitous palm kernel oil, it is mostly tallow. I have also found a very decent olive oil soap called 'Oliva' in Holland and Barrett, the health food shop for £1/$1.62, and a glycerin and coconut soap in The Body Shop for £2/$3.25. The cheap bath soap seems to be extremely similar to those little tablets of soap you used to find on hotel basins, marked 'Buttermilk'.

I have just been cutting corners really. I used to make soap for Christmas presents, for which basically you need fats/oils and sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda (drain cleaner!). But when you start mixing different fats and oils together, each one has a different saponific value, meaning you need to add more sodium hydroxide for one fat, less for another, and so on and so on. Then you have to leave it about eight weeks to thoroughly cure.

If anyone fancies having a go at it, rather than taking my haphazard advice, there are I am sure plenty of really expert websites available (but I wonder if anyone else has discovered that the very new invention of the rubber-like silicon cookware roasting tins are the answer to a soap maker's prayers). I'm quickly talking my way into starting again! The most important ingredient in shaving soap in my humble opinion is the clay, without which, as you will know when you've had to make do with ordinary soap, the razor acts on your face like the shoe on a drum brake!

I'll need to give this a go, as I haven't found a soap thats absolutely wowed me yet, thanks again Blackpool

regards alex

EDIT: found Wright's traditional soap for 80p a bar with sodium tallowate and sodium cocoate in it, and palmolive original naturals olive oil soap with tallow in them, gonna see how they mix.

Originally Posted by Teiste

And regarding the Yardley,I shaved with it today,and as I did suspect,this soap is SUPERB,too sad about the lacking of its scent.Nothing much to add to that.

Not that surprising that the scent has faded away over, what...40 years? However I have noticed that a great deal of the Yardley range is back on the shelves, spearheaded by their "Lavender" range of products -- talc, eau de toilette etc., so we can all be optimistic that the shaving soap's resurrection is not too far away!

Originally Posted by gimpyalex

found Wright's traditional soap for 80p a bar with sodium tallowate and sodium cocoate in it, and palmolive original naturals olive oil soap with tallow in them, gonna see how they mix.

Whoa! don't forget to add Fullers Earth cosmetic grade powder, or calcium bentonite powder.

I have been musing (since this morning, thanks!) about making a shaving cream out of Wright's Coal Tar Soap --- the most masculine smell on the planet, wouldn't you say? --- coconut glycerin soap, water, liquid glycerin and maybe a little white emollient cream to help it along. A teaspoon of Fullers Earth powder should be enough. It's innocuous stuff: they used to sprinkle it on babies bottoms to either cure or ward off nappy/diaper rash. And also swallow it, though I'm not sure why!