SV for me
One soap for rest of the year
- Thread starter Wei
- Start date
That's what I've been using for four weeks now, nary a dent in it, so I'm gearing up for a full year I reckon. Great scent, post-shave excellent, super price, made in France ... tough to beat I'm telling ya!
Pull away from the artisans if you want a really long lasting soap. Look over the 3017 thread, too.
- Thread starter
- #43
Well you could always go with a kilo of Cella
DE shaving since the 90’s, used pretty much everything. All the new bases. $36 for 7oz. ETHOS. it is the best soap made today. Better than Sebum Gold in my use and Kaizen with their gaudy cheap fragrance oils.
It’s easy to make a great base now. They all do it. ETHOS’ proper use of essential oils and it’s performance places it easily on top of anything else on the market. Other great ones are Eufros brand new update and SV 4.3.
New M&M Aon base is slicker than Excelsior IMO, great performance and residual feel. Size (5.5 oz compared to 4 oz) is a plus, and fragrances are outstanding.
I like my Williams, ToBS, Stirling, Shannon's, andseveral others. They all perform to my satisfaction, and part of an enjoyable shave is rotating thru a different soap every day. I just took delivery of a cheap soap that performs up there with the best of all my others: Ogallala Bay Rum. It's about $7 for a puck, and unlike most of my other soaps & creams, is a veggie-based soap. It easily whips up to a dense lather with plenty of residual slickness. For the price I was impressed. Also being a vegetable-based soap, it easily melts in the microwave to fill the bowl I'll store it in. You can pay more for a spendy imported soap that may come from some exotic soap merchant, and it may be a ¢rapshoot, as detailed by many others in various posts telling of money thrown down the rabbithole for a soap that was a disappointment.
Another made In the USA soap worthy of pursuit is Shannon's Soaps. Whether Barbershop, or any of the other choices, all perform well beyond their price point.
As for limiting yourself to only one soap - why? If you're impoverished to the point of not being able to afford multiple soap choices, then stick to your Sterling soap - it's a worthy brand. I prefer to have a variety in everyday choices. Why limit yourself to only Ramen noodles when there's an endless menu of foods to be had. Same goes for choosing only one razor, one gun, one car, one color of shirts, one horse, one song on the radio, or one woman. Having options for all makes life much less boring or routine.
Another made In the USA soap worthy of pursuit is Shannon's Soaps. Whether Barbershop, or any of the other choices, all perform well beyond their price point.
As for limiting yourself to only one soap - why? If you're impoverished to the point of not being able to afford multiple soap choices, then stick to your Sterling soap - it's a worthy brand. I prefer to have a variety in everyday choices. Why limit yourself to only Ramen noodles when there's an endless menu of foods to be had. Same goes for choosing only one razor, one gun, one car, one color of shirts, one horse, one song on the radio, or one woman. Having options for all makes life much less boring or routine.
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- Thread starter
- #49
This is a good idea.Just buy a 12 pack of arko for 25 bucks
I'm not joking, nor am I Joe King. I'm just Dave the Tanned Farmer. But seriously, Arko is cheap and performs as good as it gets.
Lots of folks complain about the smell. I happen to like the smell of a clean men's room.
But even more seriously: nothing else for $35 is going to be that much better than Stirling. Not enough that you will notice. And I have not smelled one of their scents that I find the LEAST bit offensive.
My shave today, which I will get around to writing about in my "just like Grampa used to shave" thread was with a soap that I have no idea how much it costs, but if you tried it I think you would love the base of. Leaves my incredibly handsome face feeling better than before the shave. Mr. @Chandu sent it to me. It's called The Vergulde Hand, meaning "the Gilded Hand" and is wonderful stuff.
My 2 cents, Dave
Chandu
I Waxed The Badger.
The Vergulde Hand is about $10 via Amz. If you are in the Netherlands, it's much cheaper. As you say, excellent. Arko is good too and the 12 pack would last probably 3 years of daily drives. I do like the Vergulde scent better though.
Thanks again for that "bonus" you gave me, lol. I rubbed it on my face and then lathered it up. It definitely punches above it's weight class!
I'm convinced I could live with using nothing but Tabac. So now I trying to use up four other soaps I have so I can just stick with that.
I have yet to try it. But I will.
My three favorite soap brands are Stirling, Barrister & Mann,
and Ariana & Evans.
To the OP ..... If you're happy with Stirling, these other two
may make you “a little happier.“. Have fun !
and Ariana & Evans.
To the OP ..... If you're happy with Stirling, these other two
may make you “a little happier.“. Have fun !
I'm in the midst of re-evaluating my soap choices. I've got English Soaps, Spanish Soaps, German Soaps, and an increasing number of American Soaps.
I've always been a believer that the traditional recipe = tallow-based soaps were the pinnacle of soapdom. I can make a superior lather from all my soap choices; not a real dog among all of them. BUT, some have a little better residual slickness between passes that others lack, so I'm looking beyond the usual fabulous lather qualities.
I've also recently gotten a number of vegetable-based soaps ... cheap ... How good can they be? Many whine about poor lathering qualities, but almost all admit to a better-than-average slickness.
So, lately, I've been lathering up the veggie soaps, and grudgingly have concluded that they appear to have the advantage over the moderately priced tallow-based. And my choices are all cheap! No sense in buying a spendy soap, only to pay exorbitant offshore shipping fees. All of my soap choices from here forward will be US of A made (but not necessarily limited to veg-based) . This, after my nearby ToBs source in Las Vegas selling out his entire inventory - no cheap and convenient source any longer.
So far, I'm impressed with my new Ogallala Bay Rum, Col Conk Amber and also Bay Rum, Taconic Excalibur. They all measure up favorably in performance to Stirling and Shannon's soaps. And they're all cheap, proving that performance has no exclusive relation to price.
I've always been a believer that the traditional recipe = tallow-based soaps were the pinnacle of soapdom. I can make a superior lather from all my soap choices; not a real dog among all of them. BUT, some have a little better residual slickness between passes that others lack, so I'm looking beyond the usual fabulous lather qualities.
I've also recently gotten a number of vegetable-based soaps ... cheap ... How good can they be? Many whine about poor lathering qualities, but almost all admit to a better-than-average slickness.
So, lately, I've been lathering up the veggie soaps, and grudgingly have concluded that they appear to have the advantage over the moderately priced tallow-based. And my choices are all cheap! No sense in buying a spendy soap, only to pay exorbitant offshore shipping fees. All of my soap choices from here forward will be US of A made (but not necessarily limited to veg-based) . This, after my nearby ToBs source in Las Vegas selling out his entire inventory - no cheap and convenient source any longer.
So far, I'm impressed with my new Ogallala Bay Rum, Col Conk Amber and also Bay Rum, Taconic Excalibur. They all measure up favorably in performance to Stirling and Shannon's soaps. And they're all cheap, proving that performance has no exclusive relation to price.
This.
I would further recommend that you try LeGrande Chypre, unless the scent notes are things you already know you don't like.
It’s my favorite.
And that’s saying something. I’ve got about fifty to choose from. But..... using it every day???? I still say SV.
I used Stirling almost exclusively for about four years, and then last year like you I wanted to check out some of the more expensive ones. I guess there are 6 or 7 makers that always come up in lists of the best, and most of them have been mentioned here. I went with B&M, DG, and A&E. Are all of them a step up from Stirling? Yes. Is Stirling still great and worth using? Yes. Do I think these three are better than the other top-tier soaps I haven't even tried? That would be ridiculous. Would I rank these three best to worst base? No, I think each has slightly different properties but it is really splitting hairs which is best--what will make you reach for one more than another at this point is just how much you like the scent.
So the advice above to get samples from Maggard's is probably the best, because what are you going to do if you pick one scent and you dislike it. If you really don't want to get samples, though, the safest blind buy is probably B&M Seville. Pretty much everyone likes it, and it's not super strong like some of these artisan scents. It's also the cheapest in their line, or at least used to be. That's my two cents, though of course I defer to people who have used everything that's out there.
So the advice above to get samples from Maggard's is probably the best, because what are you going to do if you pick one scent and you dislike it. If you really don't want to get samples, though, the safest blind buy is probably B&M Seville. Pretty much everyone likes it, and it's not super strong like some of these artisan scents. It's also the cheapest in their line, or at least used to be. That's my two cents, though of course I defer to people who have used everything that's out there.
