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Still not impressed with Tabac

My guess is not blooming the soap and/or insufficient load time.

Try the Marco Method. It can be wasteful, but it is impossible to mess up
This. About the only soap I have ever used that the Marco Method did not work is Trumper's Eucris. I have never been able to get a satisfactory lather out of that soap. Everything else...wonderful! Oh, and Tabac is a fantastic soap for me.
 

JCarr

More Deep Thoughts than Jack Handy
I've been sniffing the Tabac cream I got about a week ago. It reminds me of medicated facial cleanser.
 
I can't wait to hear how it works for you. I had good luck with MWF.
I have a few shaves under my belt with Tabac at this point and so far the results have been... Okay.

As for Tabac's scent I understand now its polarizing nature! I'd say I like it more than love it.

Performance-wise I'm not having aaany trouble getting Tabac to lather using my relatively hard tap, or distilled, water and a Simpson's T3; it's "falling off a log" easy to lather in my experience. What I'm not really experiencing is the legendary slickness, at least not when compared to the slickness I'm getting using Stirling. So, as of right now, Stirling is winning out over Tabac. Not by a huge margin but, in direct comparisons (one involving my wife doing a blind test via palm lathering), Stirling IS proving slightly slicker. I'll be using Tabac again later this morning and I plan on using a little more product to see if that puts Tabac over the top.
 
Same here. As for the scent, it smells like bath soap to me.
A dry puck of Tabac, held right under my nose, smells intensely soapy to me. Once it's lathered I can get past that soapy scent and detect some floral notes but 1) it's hard to get past the soap smell and 2) the floral notes I can detect come with musty undertones.
 
Question to @Dominic , the original poster...do you still have your Tabac box with the ingredients? There's been a new formulation, it may be interesting to see which one you tried.
No, unfortunately I don't. I've been reading that thread, but I threw my box away and don't know if it's the version with or without tallow. I bought it earlier this year. I don't know with the change was made.
 
OK, I've used Tabac several times now, and I still can't get a slick lather out of it. I've been told to add more water, so I did. No real difference. The smell is fine. The soap is not. I'm just not impressed. It sure has a lot of fans, though. So far, I don't know why. The puck of Williams I had immediately before this performed better.

Correction to my post:

Tabac is one of the best performers on the market. If the lather is not slick enough, the soap is not the culprit, that's for sure.

Should read:

TABAC ORIGINAL is one of the best performers on the market. If the lather is not slick enough, the soap is not the culprit, that's for sure.

Sad to see yet another tallow soap going down. I imagine soap manufacturers prepare (or buckle) for the demands of the Millennials and Generation Z. Ten years from now I will still shave with good tallow soaps but not sure after that.
 
...Ten years from now I will still shave with good tallow soaps but not sure after that.

Might be time to encourage tallow producing artisans, eh? Tallow and Steel, Mike's Natural Soaps, Stirling seem usable. Mikes has Orange, Cedarwood, & Black Pepper in stock right now, a favorite I've read.

If some tallow using artisan would make a straight up simple, cured soap sans the race to the rainbow of fattyness they might attract a herd of new clientele. Doesn't even have to be triple mill, MdC is plenty hard cured as is. I'm a little concerned when a shaving soap looks like it would fail the DQ Bizzard Test. But, Inshallah I just picked up a dozen sticks of Speick. So got time.
 
While I appreciate all artisans' work and talent, at three times the price for the same performance, that market belongs to other fellows. I am always looking for the best value, and while I (sometimes) step outside that comfort zone, in the long run I always get back where I belong. I would definitely "encourage" artisans (with my wallet) but they have to tone it down a notch.
 
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