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Bathhouse Soapery is like some other small soapmakers in offering a broad line of soaps, including shaving soaps and the like. I bought a couple of soaps, even though they do not sell their soaps in containers—I dislike that, but probably someone who has only one or two soaps will not find it a problem. By externalizing the cost of the container, they are able to sell the soap at a lower price, of course.
I used my Kent Infinity synthetic. Their old-fashioned shaving cream (or, as they say, “Old Fashion Shaving Creme”) is soft easily coated the damp bristle tips when I twirled the brush in the tub. (For their creams, they do provide the container, thank goodness.) Good lather, and the fragrance was mild and pleasant, though not the touted “epitome of sexy sexy sexy!” The lather was good. The cream’s ingredients:
distilled water, mango butter, glycerin, sorbitol, sodium cocoyl isethionate, disodium lauryl sulfosuccinate, sodium chloride, phenoxyethanol, tetrasodium EDTA, fragrance oil, tapioca starch
This one definitely seems to be more detergent-like than soap-like. The ingredients in one of the soaps, which I’ll use tomorrow:
sodium cocoate, propylene glycol, sodium stearate, glycerin, water, sorbitol, titanium dioxide. bentonite clay, fragrance oil and essential oils
And the other:
coconut oil, palm oil, castor seed oil, safflower seed oil, glycerin, water, sorbitol, sorbitan oleate, soybean protein, aloe vera, bentonite clay, wheat protein, fragrance oil and essential oils
We’ll see.
I got a very smooth result with a Feather blade in the Gillette 1940’s Super Speed (center bar not notched). The Feather may not be right for this razor. I was thinking the Super Speed was quite mild, but it’s more aggressive than the Gillette Tech and I may have to back off some on the blade—to a Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge, for example: two micro-nicks that took me by surprise, but no problem to close with My Nik Is Sealed.
I finished with a splash of Bathhouse Soapery’s aftershave splash. (They also make a kind of aftershave butter.) The ingredients:
Organic Aloe Leaf Juice, Organic Lavender, Organic Bilberry Extract, Organic Sugar Cane Extract, Organic Sugar Maple Extract, Organic Orange Fruit Extract, Organic Lemon Extract, Organic Cranberry Extract, Phenoxyethanol, Malic Acid (from apples), Tartaric Acid (from grapes), Glycolic Acid, Lactic Acid, Vegetable Glycerin, Black Willowbark Extract, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citric Acid
That would seem to be quite soothing for sensitive (or razor-burned) skin. A pleasant but low-key fragrance from the ingredients themselves rather than from a fragrance oil or essential oil. The acid ingredients probably are present to refresh the skin’s acid mantle after shaving with soap, which is somewhat alkaline—on purpose, so that the soap will effectively wet the hair (see this post; the alum block (pH 5) would also work to restore the acid mantle).
On the whole, I think their aftershave might well be of interest, their soaps and creams somewhat less so: those perform well, but the ingredients are not so good as those used by other artisanal soapmakers.
Filed under: Shaving Image may be NSFW.
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