In my first month of wet shaving, I picked out the Ogallala Bay Rum soap to try out. The scent was intoxicating because I never smelled a bay rum product before. However, the fragrance burned my skin and I was not able to enjoy the soap as it intended (Turns out I react to every Bay Rum product).
Starting out, I had my trusty Omega 10066 boar and I struggled to lather the Ogallala soap. It was airy and bubbly and I could not get a dense, creamy lather out of it. No matter how much I tried, it just did not work out. I also had a Declaration Grooming OG soap to compare with and that was real easy to lather up. Therefore, I used it to clean my new brushes and used it all up.
Couple years later, I browsed through the sites and found Ogallala UNSCENTED. Since Bay Rum scent is what reacted to my skin, Unscented version should be fine. I did remember struggling with the lather but I assumed that my lathering improved by this point. So I picked one up.
I picked up a similar scent to the Bay Rum version but a lot more subtle. Maybe 1.5/10 in terms of scent strength.
It's a hard puck so I scraped out some soap into my trusty Captain's Choice bowl and put couple drips of water to soften the soap. The brush is Rudy Vey R7 synthetic because I use this one to test out every soap. What I learned is that synthetics are just easier to work with.
Here we go. Starts bubbly but I put in more water and mixed it more. Kept at it for couple iterations.
And here's the face lather result. Boom! Lather Explosion! Second pass was a bit more manageable/practical.
Lather Building Process - It was deceptively airy at first. Right as I started building the lather, it reminded me of Mitchell's Wool Fat. But as I kept mixing, I could tell that it was dry, even with the bubbles. So I kept adding water and it slowly became more creamy. The end result was a voluminous lather that was airy but kept its creamy structure. It's one of the least dense soap in my collection (50 or so?) but it does its job. Also, as a joke, I think this might be the US Mitchell's Wool Fat without the lanolin, if that makes any sense, haha. It reminds me of the bubbly lather and adding more water and mixing to build into a creamy lather (In some cases, it never gets creamy but that's a long story).
As for the shave itself...
The lather provided good slickness for the shavette. It did not dry my skin as much as I thought it would; usually soaps with high coconut oil content dries out the skin. It had decent residual slickness and I was able to shave some spots that did not have any lather.
As a result, I had a great experience with this soap. My skin reacted to Bay Rum version but not to the unscented version. It lathers airy at first but with more water and mixing, it becomes a creamy lather. Good slickness and residual and did not leave my skin dry. It has a great value at 6-7 bucks (I only found the unscented version on West Coast Shaving.. weird) and I am excited to keep shaving with this soap.
Starting out, I had my trusty Omega 10066 boar and I struggled to lather the Ogallala soap. It was airy and bubbly and I could not get a dense, creamy lather out of it. No matter how much I tried, it just did not work out. I also had a Declaration Grooming OG soap to compare with and that was real easy to lather up. Therefore, I used it to clean my new brushes and used it all up.
Couple years later, I browsed through the sites and found Ogallala UNSCENTED. Since Bay Rum scent is what reacted to my skin, Unscented version should be fine. I did remember struggling with the lather but I assumed that my lathering improved by this point. So I picked one up.
I picked up a similar scent to the Bay Rum version but a lot more subtle. Maybe 1.5/10 in terms of scent strength.
It's a hard puck so I scraped out some soap into my trusty Captain's Choice bowl and put couple drips of water to soften the soap. The brush is Rudy Vey R7 synthetic because I use this one to test out every soap. What I learned is that synthetics are just easier to work with.
Here we go. Starts bubbly but I put in more water and mixed it more. Kept at it for couple iterations.
And here's the face lather result. Boom! Lather Explosion! Second pass was a bit more manageable/practical.
Lather Building Process - It was deceptively airy at first. Right as I started building the lather, it reminded me of Mitchell's Wool Fat. But as I kept mixing, I could tell that it was dry, even with the bubbles. So I kept adding water and it slowly became more creamy. The end result was a voluminous lather that was airy but kept its creamy structure. It's one of the least dense soap in my collection (50 or so?) but it does its job. Also, as a joke, I think this might be the US Mitchell's Wool Fat without the lanolin, if that makes any sense, haha. It reminds me of the bubbly lather and adding more water and mixing to build into a creamy lather (In some cases, it never gets creamy but that's a long story).
As for the shave itself...
The lather provided good slickness for the shavette. It did not dry my skin as much as I thought it would; usually soaps with high coconut oil content dries out the skin. It had decent residual slickness and I was able to shave some spots that did not have any lather.
As a result, I had a great experience with this soap. My skin reacted to Bay Rum version but not to the unscented version. It lathers airy at first but with more water and mixing, it becomes a creamy lather. Good slickness and residual and did not leave my skin dry. It has a great value at 6-7 bucks (I only found the unscented version on West Coast Shaving.. weird) and I am excited to keep shaving with this soap.
