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No.88 Redux

Culmak make the vegan T&H, TOBS, Floris pucks and the tallow Salter/Harris ones.

From another forum, someone asked C&S directly and they said the new 88 shaving soap will be made in the UK, so I'd wager from looking at the new ingredient lists and the ingredients lists for other Culmak made soaps be it vegan or tallow, it looks quite similar.

To echo the sentiment from the other forum, I think it's probably Culmak who will be making the new C&S 88 shaving soap.

I'm assuming they make the Captain Fawcett one's as well? The ingredients look very similar to the Salter/Harris pucks
 
Should arrive Tuesday I think. Phil at Bullgoose said that the ingredient list was identical to the Valobra-made soaps.

It seems so… and Made in Italy… wonder who could make such a base other than Valobra…

Valobra stick:
Sodium tallowate, aqua, potassium palmitate, potassium stearate, sodium palmitate, sodium stearate, sodium cocoate, potassium cocoate, glycerin, palmitic acid, stearic acid, cocos nucifera, lecithin, parfum, petrolatum, zea mays, tocopheryl acetate, CI77891.

This is Phil’s post:
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For some reason, the ingredients list on the C&S website is different:

Sodium Palmate, Sodium Tallowate, Aqua (Water), Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Glycerin, Parfum (Fragrance), Lecithin, Petrolatum, Zea Mays Oil, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Chloride, Tocopheryl Acetate, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Geraniol, Linalool, Citronellol, Hydroxy Citronellal, Limonene, Oakmoss Absolute, C.I. 77499, C.I. 17789.



Wondering whether they've simply yet to update the packaging ingredients label.
 

garyg

B&B membership has its percs
For some reason, the ingredients list on the C&S website is different:

Sodium Palmate, Sodium Tallowate, Aqua (Water), Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Glycerin, Parfum (Fragrance), Lecithin, Petrolatum, Zea Mays Oil, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Chloride, Tocopheryl Acetate, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Geraniol, Linalool, Citronellol, Hydroxy Citronellal, Limonene, Oakmoss Absolute, C.I. 77499, C.I. 17789.



Wondering whether they've simply yet to update the packaging ingredients label.

Well, maybe it is as said in Post #3 - difference in leftover travel pucks & the new full sized .. ? Hope to hear definitively from someone who might have actual hands on experience
 
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Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
Mine should have been here today, but now it’s expected Thursday. Maybe the holiday has slowed things down. I also have a FedEx package coming from Memphis (400 miles/650 kilometers) that’s 6 days late…..
 

Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
Here’s the first impression. The new soap performs well but the lather dissipates, and kind of reminds me of the not so great English hard soaps. If you’re using a straight razor that doesn’t really matter, but DE users might be a bit disappointed.

I loaded both soaps with 40 swirls with two Simpsons Keyhole 3 brushes, as close to the same as one can likely get, then lathered in the nubby pet feeder bowls. I noticed the lather thinning while I lathered the Valobra, and have the new puck an extra 10 swirls, total 50. The puck seems a good bit harder than the Valobra-made soap.

One side of the face got the old and one side got the new. Shave performance was close to identical but then a freshly honed Filarmonica will mow down just about anything with ease. The new soap lather dissipated on my face though. I’ve included an image of the bowls after the shave and the difference in lather is noticeable. New on the left, Valobra on the right.

After the shave, I re-lathered the new soap and snd lathered a cheek while I was cleaning up, same result.

Unfortunately I swapped sides for the second pass and also because of the re-lather, I cannot say about post shave feel, but what I got was excellent.

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garyg

B&B membership has its percs
Curiouser & curiouser - those pictured in#28 above seem to have identical ingredient lists, contrary to what was thought (or at least hinted at by C&S in the release announcment) to be a reformulation, unless the tweaks to some ingredients were so minute that their position didn't change. But the test results are a bit disappointing .. though increasing the value of my hoarded stuff ..
 
The new ingredients list (Sodium Palmate, Sodium Tallowate...) is still on the C&S site.

In any case, thanks for the report @Steve56. Sounds like it's still slick (at least).
 

Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
YW sir Edge. The new puck was also very shiny, unused it looks like a piece of injected molded plastic. I fear that it is a bad English soap like some of the 3T hard soaps. I’ll keep at it, sometime soon maybe 100 swirls with a boar - the lather has all the hallmarks of not enough soap regardless that the Valobra did just fine with 20% less loading.

The scent is divine though!
 
YW sir Edge. The new puck was also very shiny, unused it looks like a piece of injected molded plastic. I fear that it is a bad English soap like some of the 3T hard soaps. I’ll keep at it, sometime soon maybe 100 swirls with a boar - the lather has all the hallmarks of not enough soap regardless that the Valobra did just fine with 20% less loading.

The scent is divine though!


A very nice comparison, well done Sir. You don't know it, but I'm toasting you with a gin and tonic. Cheers!
 

Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
Round two this Sunday morning, a large Thäter boar that people don’t seem to like very much was loaded for 125 swirls (up from 50 yesterday), about a minute and a half of loading it like I hated it. And no I didn’t pay full price for the brush, it came to me used for less than half price. I’m not a boar person, but the brush seems fine, so maybe I got a decent example?

There was surprisingly little difference. The lather held together a little bit longer in the bowl, not so on the face. By the time that I’d shaved one side and the chin, the other side was transparent. The solution for the second pass was a dollop of Truefitt and Hill rose cream, which made a sturdy, unctuous lather (as the French say).

I’ll probably try a Simpsons Manchurian on it later today, I don’t really need to shave with it. But I don’t have much hope - this seems to be a poor offering compared to the old. I’ve also tried to capture the shininess of the puck, I’ve been lathering the back.

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Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
It’s begun to rain a bit, so I got out a Rooney Silvertip which has more backbone and scritchier tips than my Simpsons Manchurian, and went at it, using distilled water. Load time was about 3-1/2 minutes (!) loading aggressively and dribbling water onto the puck or brush when things got dry. My idea was to load the brush with a paste-like mixture, then dribble distilled water into the bowl until I had lather. This works even with the alum-containing Osma.

It kind of worked - the lather held together better and longer in the bowl, but there was little difference on the face, I experienced the same dissipation. You can also see the large bubbles in the bowl, the image was taken about 3-1/2 minutes after building the lather. It’s noticeably better than the other two, but not what I want out of a premium product. ABC hard soap it isn’t.

This trial does seem to indicate that more loading will yield better lather, but if loading for 3-1/2 minutes doesn’t do it, I really can’t contemplate loading the brush much longer as a practical matter unless I load it the night before watching television.

Maybe they could make a cream?

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Bummer. Still hoping valobra will reopen one day. Looks like this new soap formula is useless and won’t be buying.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Steve56

Ask me about shaving naked!
This will probably be my last post regarding use of the new C&S 88 soap, I tried two lathering methods and both certainly put more soap on my face, but neither resulted in a stable lather. Both were thicker films and surprisingly difficult to rinse cleanly off. Both methods yielded a ‘lather’ that was too sticky and dense for comfortable SR shaving.

For the first pass, since I had stubble, I used the puck as a stick then lathered with a Persian Jar. This worked as well as anything, and I did get lather but the lather still dissipated in the time that it took to shave half of my face, and it was difficult to see where I’d shaved.

The second pass used the @ask4Edge method, just lathering it in my hands and applying to the face. This yielded little lather but plenty of soap, think brushless gel and you’d be close on thickness but unlike most brushless gels, this state of soap was not comfortably slick for a straight razor.

There may be some magic combination that yields stable lather, but I doubt it. Regardless of the method of application, the lather dissipated remarkably the same.

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