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What is your favorite non-tallow, non-lanolin shaving soap?

What is your favorite non-tallow, non-lanolin shaving soap?


  • Total voters
    117
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Wish you guys had "SMELLOVISION!" as this stuff is out of this world.

It was sent to me by @njpaddy , as my bleeding brain recalls, but I could be wrong, and if I am, I'm sorry to whomever it was.

Maybe they could chime in? It's wonderful stuff!

Yeah, that was me. Hippy Heaven!!!. It's like shaving in a head shop. The scent was way too strong for me, so I passed it on. So glad you're still enjoying it. SRD was one of the the best soaps ever. It was a glycerin soap with 11 or 12 scents, but as good as any tallow or veggie soap out there. I can't believe no one picked up the formula when SRD went out of business. I'm currently nursing a tiny ring at the bottom of my SRD West Indies Bay, and have a quarter tub left of SRD Opus X. I love Opus X. My wife and daughter say it smells like black shoe polish, but to me it smells like crushing a good black Cavendish tobacco in the palms of your hand. That one's Nirvana.
 
I have my old favorites, like Captain's Choice, but the best non-tallow, non-lanolin soap I've tried this year is RazoRock Plague Doctor. Besides being a great, easy-to-lather, Italian soap, with a very light scent, you get a great label with a pic of the Plague Doctor to freak people out. It also contains Argan Oil, which has always worked well for me.

Unfortunately, the Plague Doctor aftershave had a much stronger scent and stuck around too long for my liking.
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
So I like tallow soaps, but what I'm finding is that I like tallow in hard commercial soaps. I don't care for it in the artisan offerings as I can pick up the tallow scent too much.

You left the very best vegan soap off your list: Grooming Department Nai version 2. The 1st version had some milk products, the 2nd version is strictly vegan.
I tried this. The scent, no good. Apparently Mrs. Rud's didn't like this one either. I know it doesn't have tallow, but I've had exactly three GD soaps, one I sold, one went bad and the Nai plus a little cash was it's replacement. Two had tallow and one didn't, but all had a scent that I'm starting to associate to his products. I'm sure it's one of the oils or something, but I just don't care for it. Fortunately there are a lot of other makers.

MdC, and LaToja are a couple of my favorites. Haslinger is good. One that would be in the "other" category would be Viking Soap's Longship, I find it very good too.
 
So I like tallow soaps, but what I'm finding is that I like tallow in hard commercial soaps. I don't care for it in the artisan offerings as I can pick up the tallow scent too much.


I tried this. The scent, no good. Apparently Mrs. Rud's didn't like this one either. I know it doesn't have tallow, but I've had exactly three GD soaps, one I sold, one went bad and the Nai plus a little cash was it's replacement. Two had tallow and one didn't, but all had a scent that I'm starting to associate to his products. I'm sure it's one of the oils or something, but I just don't care for it. Fortunately there are a lot of other makers.

MdC, and LaToja are a couple of my favorites. Haslinger is good. One that would be in the "other" category would be Viking Soap's Longship, I find it very good too.


I know that your preferences in soaps differ from mine. I am not a fan of hard tallow pucks. They are great if you use them every day, but I have so many soaps in rotation that it dries out completely before I use it again. That means loading and lathering is a pain.

My face is too sensitive to face lather, so if I use a shave stick like LaToja, I have to grate it and press into my lather bowl. That is too much trouble.

I have never tried Haslinger back when it contained tallow. There is something in the recent Haslinger Schafmilch formula that severely irritates my face; so I cannot use it.

Scents are definitely a YMMV thing. While I love the performance of Grooming Department soaps, I love some of the scents, like some and dislike others. I like the scents of Aion and Otium, but I do not love them. Mohammad intentionally keeps the Nai scents on the lighter side of medium, so they are not likely to be offensive, even if you do not like them.
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
I know that your preferences in soaps differ from mine. I am not a fan of hard tallow pucks. They are great if you use them every day, but I have so many soaps in rotation that it dries out completely before I use it again. That means loading and lathering is a pain.
I hear you. I've said that's the reason Williams is hated so. Most soaps lather easier than William's though.


My face is too sensitive to face lather, so if I use a shave stick like LaToja, I have to grate it and press into my lather bowl. That is too much trouble.
I generally do that too. I am not a fan of the feel of the stick rubbed on the face. I often load in a bowl and face lather. Arko August is coming up. I'm going to use the stick unless I decide I can't, then I will grate it and load from a bowl.

Scents are definitely a YMMV thing. While I love the performance of Grooming Department soaps, I love some of the scents, like some and dislike others. I like the scents of Aion and Otium, but I do not love them. Mohammad intentionally keeps the Nai scents on the lighter side of medium, so they are not likely to be offensive, even if you do not like them.
I can't fault the quality, just the scent. I did like how it performed. Having oily skin, it may have been too much for me to use everyday, but if the scent agrees with you, it's top notch soap.
 
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Thanks for the comments, everyone. Just as an update, the votes for Others so far by my calculations:

Beehive 1
ByLuna 1
Cella Extra Extra Bio 1
Dr Jon 2
Extro 1
Goodfellas 1
Grooming Department Nai 1
L'Occitane Cade 1
La Toja 1
PAA ck6 base 2
Razorock (Plague Doctor) 1
(RR makes other non-tallow soaps, but this one was singled out so far)
Stone Cottage Shave Soap 1
Straight Razor Designs 1
Taconic Shave 2
Truefitt & Hill Aspley 1
Viking Soap Longship 1
Wickham 2
WSP Rustic base 2
 
KLAR Classic ...
Ingredients: Potassium Palmate, Sodium Palmate, Potassium Stearate, Potassium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Glycerin, Aqua, Palm Kernel Acid, Parfum, Cocoamidopropyl Betaine, Soyamide DEA, Pentasodium Pentetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Linalool, Limonene, Benylbenzoate, Coumarin, CI 77891

IMG_20190611_210410.jpg
 
PIF Still have a few Beehive Woodlands samples for anyone interested.

Samples will be smashed in the baggy and shipped in no-lick envelopes. We live out of town, so self isolation is normal and intentional. Note the soap was cut up as received, never saw water or a brush. It was unwrappd, cut and placed in baggies to be smashed and mailed. See link below.

Ordered some shaving soap from Beehive. Got a sample of Woodlands which I already have. Asked the maker if it would be alright to PIF so folks could try it. She said sure.

Cut it up into +/- 7 gram samples which will be smashed flat in the baggy to mail first class . This stuff lathers, shaves, hydrates, psf etc. similiar to MdC. I only have 10 samples. If you 'get' MdC this is worth a try.

PM if interested. I'll need an address to mail the sample to.
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La Toja is my #1 pick.

Recently, I got a puck of Ach. Brito Mogno and am really pleased with its great performance.
Hi Marco;
Looks like an interesting soap. I would like to get some when I make an order for La Toja.

If you like PM an address and I'll gladly send along a sample of Beehive Shaving Soap. It would be interesting to see how long it takes to get to you from the Pacific Northwest, if shipping times have improved or not.
 
Shipping samples of Beehive tomorrow.

No one is obliged to report, review, write compare anything so don't let that scare you off. I just got a (big) sample of a scent I already have so thought it would be cool for folks to give it a whirl. PM if you want some.
 
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