I purchased a tin of this in a recent Amazon order, as they are a new Vendor at B&B and I wanted to give the soap a try. The company claims "natural, organic, chemical-free" beauty products, so though I don't have a complete ingredients list handy, I'll assume for now that it doesn't contain words with twenty letters and phrases like "hydroxy-" or "dodecyl." The shave soap does contain cocoa, shea and mango butters. It comes in this tin:
In size, it's fairly comparable to the one from Pre de Provence, and contains a hefty 4 oz of soap. I'd characterize its consistency as harder than the Italian soft soaps and those I've encountered from artisans like Mike's and Saint Charles Shave, but it doesn't approach a triple milled soap in its consistency. Without having a complete ingredients list handy, I can't tell just looking at it if it's a glycerin based soap, but have a look for yourself (this was post loading, hence the smeariness to the surface):
I did a test bowl lather last night, just in the interest of science, of course, though bowl lathering soaps is not my favorite way to do it, nor is it my forte. I soaked the surface of the soap for about 5 minutes in warm water, then took a damp brush (my recently-acquired Rudy Vey synthetic with a Mühle STF 25 mm knot) to load it for about 40 seconds. I got a nice protolather to form, and proceeded to build the lather for a couple of minutes, progressively adding water. This yielded the following:
The lather quality was decent, though the bubbles were a bit larger than normal. In cases like this, I often find that lather to be unstable, so I left it to sit for 5 minutes to see if it would break down. I have watched Captain Fawcett's Shave Soap break down before my eyes, even when starting from a comparable amount, so I was pleased to see that it stayed together quite nicely:
When I applied it to my hand, it was ok, but seemed pretty airy. This morning, I used it for an actual shave and face lathered instead, as is my preference. This time, I loaded for 1 minute and then built the lather on my face. I'm happy to say that the lather was very rich and slick, and also proved to be very stable. After my usual two passes, there was sufficient lather in the brush for another two if I needed it. Post shave feel was excellent. You can really tell that there are shea and cocoa butters in there. The scent is advertised as Bay Rum, Orange and Clove. My nose pretty much picked up Orange, though the bay rum was there in the background, kind of like Orange Juice with a twist of Bay Rum. The clove was not noticeable to my nose. My only real quibble was the tin. Granted, I was using a 25 mm brush, but loading from the soap felt a bit cramped. That's a minor complaint, though, as the performance was very good.
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