If you like sandalwood try Proraso or Fine.
TOBS Sandalwood - anything special?
- Thread starter Altonius
- Start date
The cream version of this was the first I tried when starting out but my wife said I smelled like a grandpa. She’s 20 yrs older than me and I didn’t want to remind her of grandpa, so I ditched it just to keep things at home good.
I can sooooo relate!
I preface everything by saying I am brand new to wet-shaving, but I had the same experience you had with TOBS sandalwood. The cream was my first and could be responsible for hooking me into wet-shaving.
Given my love of the sandalwood cream smell, and given that I was starting to favor soaps over creams, ergo, the puck in the wooden bowl was a no-brainer...until I opened it up and smelled it. One and done—returned it.
Your wife is spot-on; it smelled like a nursing home, or, as I read in these forums by another poster, like the inside of a lady's purse (or "old women gathered in the basement of the Methodist church playing bingo").
I assumed all soaps would smell like their respective creams, but these were markedly different...and in a bad way for me. It ruined me for buying soaps sight-unseen/smell-unsniffed!
Your pictured are unrivaled, sir.
Thanks for nice words!
Mysore sandalwood soaps are real deal. Try their Gold range for amped sandalwood scent. But overall the oil content is much less than what if used to be, say 10-12 years ago.
If you fancy a soap that is patchouli & sandalwood forward, look for 'chandrika' brand with a green - red packaging that looks right from 50s.
It's a crying shame TOBS don't even use a fake sandalwood scent to name their soap thus.
I'm a big fan for TOBS St James cream, and was having high hope for the Sandalwood after reading so much about it. Yesterday I finally got a lot of TOBS cream samples in mail, but wasn't all too impressed by the smell of TOBS Sandalwood cream.
I have the exact sentiment after smelling both the GFT and TOBS. Now I really do wonder what is the real smell of Sandalwood supposed to be...unfortunately Proraso Green gives me burning feeling on face, otherwise, I would have love to give the Proraso red a try.
My favorite is col conk glycerine soap I lather it up in a bowl and at the end I add a squeeze of either TOBS Sandalwood or proraso green or red. Amazing thick lather is achieved.
I enjoy using the TOBs creams and although the Sandalwood was nice the cedarwood was much nicer in my opinion.. subtle but really nice.
- Thread starter
- #31
Thought I’d add I figured out how to lather this stuff. Very light water to begin with and my 24mm synthetic worked wonders. Found my boars just didn’t work with this soap, hmmmm.
Great cushion, average slickness, cheap smell.
Great cushion, average slickness, cheap smell.
Im using a tub of TOBS Sandalwood now and I think it has a nice scent, although not overpowering. IMO, TOBS gets sandalwood just right. Its not supposedly to be overly sweet or overly woodsy.
IMO, you have some artisans like PAA who try to make sandalwoods that are so over the top that people sometimes forget what a sandalwood is suppose to be like.
IMO, you have some artisans like PAA who try to make sandalwoods that are so over the top that people sometimes forget what a sandalwood is suppose to be like.
When I started de shaving, I began with TOBS Sandalwood cream. It was an easy cream to lather, & I enjoyed the scent. I haven't tried the soap. I moved on some time ago from creams & now only use soaps. I wonder if the rave reviews is for TOBS cream. It seems to be highly regarded as a starting point for creams.
I got my first puck of TOBS today, I find the lather quite good and the scent just okay, not great. I look forward to try “margaritas in the arctic” by Stirling tomorrow, that scent is just WOW 
I tried TOBS in the wooden bowl for the first time today. I used it with a new Parker Best Badger (BCPB) brush. It lathered up really well with my usual preparation method (bloom with warm water while showering, pour out the water, then swirl with damp brush).
After reading other reviews, I had been afraid it would take a while to work up a lather (FWIW, I have hard water). Nothing could've been farther from the truth. In order to keep my lathering routine the same, I swirled my brush around the top of the soap for 30 seconds. However, by 20 seconds, thick lather was spilling out the side of the bowl and dropped into my sink and there it stayed for the duration of my shave.
Although I'm a face latherer, I prefer using painting strokes instead of swirling. However, I do start lathering with swirls before moving on to painting. While I was swirling, the soap looked a little thin. I added some water to my brush and the lather started to build. I then added a little more water to my brush and switched to painting. The lather built pretty nicely, into roughly the consistency of yogurt.
The soap was pretty slick, but seemed a little less protective than with (my browned) Cella. I was able to make three complete passes (WTG, XTG, ATG with relathering in between each pass) and a touchup with the Cella (and my three band silvertip Van Der Hagen brush) without feeling any tenderness. However, with the TOBS, I started feeling tender during the third pass. Arguably, this means I got a closer shave with the TOBS. However, I got BBS shaves with the browned Cella.
Overall, the shave was okay. I'd say it was on par with a Proraso white shave (I've never used Proraso green, but I have used Proraso white; the white and red provide similar shaves IME). The scent was okay. It was definitely more perfumed than the Proraso or Cella soaps I've used. However, the scent didn't last beyond the shave. Besides, after splashing Aqua Velva and applying some Duke Cannon aftershave balm, any residual scent would've been covered up.
That said, I had no problems with how the TOBS Sandalwood smelled. If anything, I rather liked it. Sure, it doesn't smell "masculine" by modern standards, but it has a classic gentlemanly scent. It's a bit more sophisticated than the hard charging linear Duke Cannon fragrances. While I'm okay with the latter, I liked the former more. Then again, I also like Geoffrey Beene's Grey Flannel.
After reading other reviews, I had been afraid it would take a while to work up a lather (FWIW, I have hard water). Nothing could've been farther from the truth. In order to keep my lathering routine the same, I swirled my brush around the top of the soap for 30 seconds. However, by 20 seconds, thick lather was spilling out the side of the bowl and dropped into my sink and there it stayed for the duration of my shave.
Although I'm a face latherer, I prefer using painting strokes instead of swirling. However, I do start lathering with swirls before moving on to painting. While I was swirling, the soap looked a little thin. I added some water to my brush and the lather started to build. I then added a little more water to my brush and switched to painting. The lather built pretty nicely, into roughly the consistency of yogurt.
The soap was pretty slick, but seemed a little less protective than with (my browned) Cella. I was able to make three complete passes (WTG, XTG, ATG with relathering in between each pass) and a touchup with the Cella (and my three band silvertip Van Der Hagen brush) without feeling any tenderness. However, with the TOBS, I started feeling tender during the third pass. Arguably, this means I got a closer shave with the TOBS. However, I got BBS shaves with the browned Cella.
Overall, the shave was okay. I'd say it was on par with a Proraso white shave (I've never used Proraso green, but I have used Proraso white; the white and red provide similar shaves IME). The scent was okay. It was definitely more perfumed than the Proraso or Cella soaps I've used. However, the scent didn't last beyond the shave. Besides, after splashing Aqua Velva and applying some Duke Cannon aftershave balm, any residual scent would've been covered up.
That said, I had no problems with how the TOBS Sandalwood smelled. If anything, I rather liked it. Sure, it doesn't smell "masculine" by modern standards, but it has a classic gentlemanly scent. It's a bit more sophisticated than the hard charging linear Duke Cannon fragrances. While I'm okay with the latter, I liked the former more. Then again, I also like Geoffrey Beene's Grey Flannel.
I face lather TOBS and find, unlike my other soaps, it likes to come off the puck as a light airy foam. I put work into until it stiffens and becomes very dense and viscous, before adding any water. Slowly working water in at this point yields a nice yogurt consistency lather.
I went through the scented phase. I tried a tub of Sandlewood, one of Coconut and one of Almond. I then bought the TOBS sampler pack. It was so meh. I’m now back to straight barely scented soap, The Fat and TOBS Jermyn Street. If the smell doesn’t make me gag, or run SWMBO out of the bathroom then I’ll use it. The scent is gone by the time I spray my EDT on, so what does it matter?
What people "rave and rant" about is TOBS (Sandalwood) CREAM, not hard soap.
If you want that traditional English hard, triple-milled hard puck, I'd recommend DRH instead.
