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[Old Hippie]

I've been meaning to crank out another batch of "O.H. Puck!" -- my cedar-scented tallow shave soap. But lately my wife handed me a bottle of mint essential oil that she didn't want any more, and that simultaneously cranked up my motivation to make a batch of shave soap AND to make it minty.

So I did. Old Hippie's Peppermint Trip Groovy Shave Soap is cooked, cast, pucked and curing for a week. The whole house smells like a mint explosion. I think I'm gonna like it. Pics and reviews eventually...

O.H.

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[dmshaver]

Sounds delightful! Looking forward to pics & your shave review.

 

[Old Hippie]

Aaaahhhh...the humidity finally climbed back up a little and I got a real shave. We're up to 14 per cent, nearly five times what it was a couple of days ago. I had some bits of the new soap that I scraped out of the mould and mashed into a piece about the size of an almond in shell. Even though it's not cured yet, I decided that trying it on would be a good thing.

I've been using a different, non-shaving, soap for a while and got used to that. I didn't forget that my own soap has a lot of slickness from tallow, but I hadn't thought about it for a while. Wow. Seriously minty! Chill, Baby. Mrs. Hippie wandered by and asked how I liked it.

"Peppermint trip, man."

I still owe pictures of the pucks -- but they're looking better as they cure so I'll wait for beauty in a week.

O.H.

 

[dotKomo]

Congrats!! Love peppermint soaps.

 

[ShavingPanda]

Sounds like a success!

Cedar scented and mint scented soaps sound like you have summer and winter seasons covered!

 

[Ad Astra]

Dig!


AA

 

[Old Hippie]

I finally packed up the Peppermint Trip this morning. I got six nice pucks and one half-thickness puck. I put the "sample" size in my shave mug to use, and put the pucks in a container. Here's just before wrapping them:

I will admit to posing the pucks to show their best sides. I had a small void in the soap column even after filling slowly and pounding the mould on the floor a few times, but better than the last batch so I must be learning.

The cedar was a total Hail Mary shot but it worked. That'll probably be my next batch because I have one puck left of it that I should use up. I'll need to restock a few things before I can cook another batch, though.

For now, really diggin' the Peppermint Trip! It's not a vegan soap, though -- tallow and lanolin in addition to coconut oil and shea butter. We render our own beef tallow and lard. The soap has plenty of residual slickness. I notice that there's a bit of a transition between the soap I was using and this one in my brush. That's improving.

I tested the Peppermint Trip on lathers ranging from "homeopathic" to "cake icing" consistency and didn't have any problems except for the predictable outcome that the really thin lather ran into my ears and down my neck. But it was slick. I am a Buddhist shaver; most of my lathers take the middle path no matter what shaving format I'm using.

Also floated the lather bowl in the sink to test how it was as a warm lather. Interesting and didn't blow up my easy-to-irritate places like warm lather sometimes does. Shaving with a milder razor (RazoRock BBS-OC) seemed to help.

O.H.

 

[psfred]

Home made soap is the way to go. Reminds me I'm almost out of bath soap, need to cook up a couple batches to let cure. Down to hand soaps that are going south, have to use BHT and citric acid in mine to keep them from getting DOS.

 

[Staggers and Jags]

where can i get some of this and for how much id LOVE to review it