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Two & Three tier soaps: any purpose for them?

I have a hard time getting rid of soaps so I just let them all accumulate. Very often I'll try one that I hadn't in years and find it works different and better than I had originally thought, sometimes due to weather, a move(water softness), or just plain preference has changed. A lot of soap tastes are subjective so what you might like this year could change in a few years. That's the biggest reason I keep mine around.
This is me but I am finding some losing their scents. I try to use them up when this starts to happen. I dump them if they lose all their scent. They really don't serve a purpose to me.

I agree with @dfoulk on his choices. I have not tried grooming department but have the others. They are all top and mostly all I use.

I have not been purchasing just for scent but for tier, lately. I would use lessor tier, if it wasn't too much, but have issues understanding some scent descriptions. Although a top tier, grooming department is one I cannot really read and know what I'm getting.
 
This is me but I am finding some losing their scents. I try to use them up when this starts to happen. I dump them if they lose all their scent. They really don't serve a purpose to me.

I agree with @dfoulk on his choices. I have not tried grooming department but have the others. They are all top and mostly all I use.

I have not been purchasing just for scent but for tier, lately. I would use lessor tier, if it wasn't too much, but have issues understanding some scent descriptions. Although a top tier, grooming department is one I cannot really read and know what I'm getting.

With the newer ones Grooming Dept has gotten really good with the scents. We're all taking a chance in ordering these as you can't really know exactly what they're going to smell like but many of the newer ones are really, really impressive. On a positive note you can remove a small sample and do a test shave once they arrive. Since they seem to sell out of everything the ones you don't like you could still likely get full price back for them on the BST if you just removed a small sample and didn't lather on the soap. The scents really come alive when lathered so if you just smell them in the tub and then sell them off you're likely missing out. There are some in box 4 of the soap sample passaround and there will be some new scents added later on. I think that you're in on that so you should be able to smell them there.

The Tallow & Steel scents are bold and not for everyone but I really enjoy them. These are in the soap sample passaround box 4 as well.
 
If you want to try some really high end soaps then look into Tallow & Steel and Grooming Dept. These are my top two. Wholly Kaw (Donkey Milk version), Sudsy Soapery, PannaCrema (Nuavia and Pure2O), Declaration Grooming and the Barrister & Mann (Reserve Line) are all really, really impressive tier 1 soaps as well.

These are the ones that many of the people that try everything out there would consider to be the very best of the best at this moment in time.
Couldn't agree more. I have been doing my best to unload the girth of products I picked up since April as I learned what works and didn't work for my face.

I now have to shave daily so the quality of gear is very important.

Converting as much gear to L&L, Wholly Kaw DM and B&M Reserve which for me are my tier 1 soaps.

I do have a few tubs of Stirling (Lemon Chill, Dirty South Shavers and Eskimo Tuxedo) and Chiseled Face (Ghost Town Barber) as well as a number of Strop Shoppe soaps sticking around just because of scent. I may run those on the weekend. They are solid performers but don't outperform my tier 1 stuff.

I have tried T&S a few times and it just hasn't worked out like I thought.

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rockviper

I got moves like Jagger
I have one Tier-2 and one Tier-3 soap, the rest are all top notch (including Arko).

Tier-2: Pitralon, someone one described the scent as rotten salad :lol:
Tier-3: modern Williams
 
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I have lesser products that are leftover from my hunt for better products.

Same here. Also, I used to buy online based on customer reviews. I’ve since improved on my buying habits. Nowadays, I do a search on Badger and Blade forums for the product I’m thinking of buying. I then read reviews and commentary. There are people on this site that are adept at describing the products and their opinions hold weight. Then, of course, there are impulse buys when shopping in a physical store.
 
I've tried Asylum and Chiseled Face and consider them to be somewhere in the middle of my tier 2. The Chiseled Face soaps in the Zoology scents are really nice. Wild West is one I haven't tried but I have read a couple good reviews about it, I'll have to give that one a try.

I've tried just about everything out there as I stopped counting at 600 soaps. For me Tallow & Steel and Grooming Dept are the best soaps on the planet right now.
When you say 600 soaps do you mean brands or just scents?
 
I have a tier 2 soap that I always have on hand. The performance is average, but the scent makes me very happy so I always keep it around.
 
Some finicky water here, but can usually coax a decent lather with most soaps. Initially thought @dfoulk was nuts with Nuavia this and Sudsy Soapery that... Come to find out he's on point near 100%. So tier 2 stuff gets mixed in with super lathers or shower duty..
 
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The scent comments are interesting to me. It is said that men have poor olfactory abilities as they age. I guess that’s true with me.

I can smell gasoline, hydrochloric acid, food, aftershaves, EDTs, and EDCs, but not soaps. Therefore I’m searching for soaps with robust scents.

I have tried all of the Haslingers, (except coconut), Tobac, Proraso red and green, Cella, RazoRock, a bunch of Geo F Trumpers, and a handful of other not worthy to mention.

Proraso Green and RazoRock XXX are the only two that I would consider to have a scent, aside from the GFT samplers.

I am always hunting for a robust scented soap. I might switch to GFT, or other creams just for that reason.


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When you say 600 soaps do you mean brands or just scents?

I'm not sure that there are actually 600 brands of soaps out there so probably more like individual soaps, though my goal is not to try every scent that for example someone like Mama Bear's has ever created as I suspect there's likely fifty or more scents right there, probably more. To put it into perspective I've tried three soaps from them some makers I've tried a couple and others really good makers maybe six or eight. There are probably a couple hundred soap makers that either have existed in the past or do now, maybe slightly more. I've hit just about all of what's out there with the exception of some very small sold on ETSY or Ebay fly by night brands that nobody's heard of and I've even tried some of those.

I oversee a soap passaround box here on the forum and I try to stock it with everything that's being talked about as well as just about everything else that's been popular in the past. So when a new company comes out that's getting some great reviews I'll usually reach out to the soap maker. There's soap makers from all over the world represented in those boxes. That passaround is four boxes with about a hundred different soap samples in each box.

Before I started to oversee the sample passarounds I'd buy full tubs of everything that was getting good reviews. I started a goal of finding the ten best soaps in the world. My shaving den quickly went up to about 100 tubs of soap. I gave away a bunch of them and put aside quite a few more to get it back down to the top twenty or so. Then the new brands came out and the count quickly jumped up over a hundred again. I've repeated this process about three or four times so far. I'd also make up samples and trade them with other users on this forum as well as other forums in trying to try everything out there. At this point, I suspect that I've likely tried as many as anyone else in the world including the well known so called shaving soap experts you see on YouTube making soap review videos. I have no interest in doing anything like that though and I don't usually agree with many of their assessments. There are some soaps that I still haven't tried (because at this point I'd rather use my own favorites) though there certainly aren't too many. Now I tend to look for the unknown ones getting the really great reviews (from people that I know and trust) and only seek those soaps out.
 
The scent comments are interesting to me. It is said that men have poor olfactory abilities as they age. I guess that’s true with me.

I can smell gasoline, hydrochloric acid, food, aftershaves, EDTs, and EDCs, but not soaps. Therefore I’m searching for soaps with robust scents.

I have tried all of the Haslingers, (except coconut), Tobac, Proraso red and green, Cella, RazoRock, a bunch of Geo F Trumpers, and a handful of other not worthy to mention.

Proraso Green and RazoRock XXX are the only two that I would consider to have a scent, aside from the GFT samplers.

I am always hunting for a robust scented soap. I might switch to GFT, or other creams just for that reason.


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I wouldn't consider RazoRock XXX to be a strongly scented soap. There are plenty of soap companies out there with Robust scents. For example the Tallow & Steel soaps are strongly scented as are the Wholly Kaw and many of the Grooming Dept ones. I'm sure I could come up with many more as well and would be happy to recommend something for you if you were looking for a particular scent. Just PM me.
 
I guess I never really broke mine into tiers. I would guess if I broke mine down I use my tier one soaps on special occasion like road trips or going out to eat my weekend shaves sometimes. By that I would say I mainly use my tier two soaps/creams in between just to use them up because they are nice soaps and scents. My tier three soaps I guess I hardly use and just let them accumulate. They do get used but rare but hard to get rid of also because of the reason I bought them to begin with. I currently have 26 soaps/creams and maybe a fourth of them tier 1 half tier 2 and the other 1/4 tier three. If it is a soap I don't like they have been sold or given to my friend if he likes the scent of them. A couple cheap ones I just tossed.
 
Based on my own experience dfoulk's recommendations are spot on. Many may disagree which top tier soap is one's favorite, but not so much on which are top tier. Where it gets interesting is which non top or near top soaps get some love. For me.....mine is Cella. Just. Love. It.
 
I definitely break soaps down into tiers. Can't help notice the difference between the many artisans out there. Scent is a important category, although if the performance is good enough scent can be secondary. On the other hand, I still use soaps that smell great but the performance may not be as good as it gets.

Much like @dfoulk I have tried almost all of the major artisans on the market, as well as some lesser known ones (some of which have become favorites) and enjoy the variety of trying different soaps and posting my thoughts so others can be pointed in the right direction and save them the aggravation from buying less than stellar soaps.

With that being said, everyone is different, YMMV and all that. As long as you like the product it really doesn't matter what tier someone else considers it.

The ingredient list can tell you a lot and soaps loaded with skin food tend to lead to a better post shave although that is not always the case. Sometimes its good to revisit a soap you haven't used in a while and see if you still have the same opinion. So many variables could effect the lather.
 
My soaps are stacked on shelves. I periodically look at the bottom of the stacks, obviously they haven't been used recently, and give them a go. Once in a while it is obvious why it worked to the bottom and stayed there, in this case it gets moved to the shower. Other than the natural selection process happening on the shelves I don't rank soaps into tiers.
 
I wouldn't consider RazoRock XXX to be a strongly scented soap. There are plenty of soap companies out there with Robust scents. For example the Tallow & Steel soaps are strongly scented as are the Wholly Kaw and many of the Grooming Dept ones. I'm sure I could come up with many more as well and would be happy to recommend something for you if you were looking for a particular scent. Just PM me.

I don’t know that RazoRock is particularly strong. I can smell it though. I will PM you. I thought Tabac was meant to not conflict with their cologne an not necessarily have a scent.


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My tier 2 soaps can be summarized as great performing soaps, they just lack that 1 thing to put it over the top, normally elite post shave feel. I have plenty and use them regularly because something about them is unique, generally a scent that cant be found anywhere else. Tier 3 doesnt exist in my den, they have been sold or binned
 
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