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тдс (TDS) Cosmetics Shave Soap PIF Comments/Review THREAD

TDS "Evergreen Juniper" Shave Soap Review Part 1.


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I opted to start my TDS experience with "Evergreen Juniper". The soap is a typical croap style common these days but leaning more toward the softer side in consistency. The sent off the soap is light, with a lovely herbaceous evergreen aroma, the quality of which leads me to believe the makers used EOs rather than a synthetic fragrance oil. Due to the container size I didn't try to load directly from the soap but instead grabbed one of my long unused bowls to build the lather. When applied to the face the scent becomes stronger and I could appreciate it more. It's a fantastic scent, one that almost begs to have menthol added and I was a little surprised that it didn't contain any. The soap produced a very slick lather that provided an excellent base. The lather was not as cushioning as I like, but I attribute that more to my poor bowl lathering skills than to the soap. When I get around to trying this or another TDS sample, I'm going to use my little 22mm YAQI White Knight and face lather where I can get immediate feedback on the lather quality.

In summation, TDS's Evergreen Juniper is a fantastic soap, IMO on par with some of the best available today. It's too bad they're not available outside Belarus as I'd think they'd do very well in the global market. I'm looking forward to trying the other soaps, as well as this one again at a later date. Thanks again to Matt for making this happen.
 
So today I used the TDS Birch Tar scented soap. This time I used a little less soap and my little Whipped Dog badger as the lathering tool. I am more convinced now than ever that this soap (when enough is used) is thirsty stuff that is capable of yielding a nice "Wet", thick lather. As I said before, I don't typically comment on face feel etc., mostly because I shave early enough in the morning I rely on muscle memory rather than cognitive thought to achieve my morning tasks. (Y'all may recall I produce silent-bob style shave vlogs). All I can say with certainty is that this soap/lather falls in the "it's good" category. As far as scent, I think that is where this soap/brand kicks butt. The Birch Tar is described as being an aromatic composition ...but I THINK it is straight up Birch sap/tar/resin. The best way to describe it is a "dry birch", the kind that you would find in Creed's Aventus (under all that pineapple). The scent strength was great, strong enough to remain present during the shave and linger close to the skin afterward. I dare say, I think I got a whiff of the birch coming through several hours after I applied the Alpa Chypre AS. I think the use of "tar" in the scent title instead of "Sap" or "resin" had me expecting the sour or really smoky notes you usually associate with a "pine tar" type soap.

Oh, and the scent had an initial camphorous note that when blended with the birch notes BREIFLY made me think of the Sir Irisch Moos Shave Cream @Spider sent me years ago. Sadly, BOTH the camphor note and the dry birch note have been the most difficult note for me to capture as cleanly as this soap did.
 
This morning I used the EVERGREEN Juniper scent. The lather this morning was a bit thinner despite my using what I thought to be a similar amount as yesterday, although it is possible I added too much water to fast or made some other error. In the end the lather was serviceable and provided the necessary slickness etc for a nice single edge razor shave. Other than being lighter than the others as I had already noticed from the 'sniff testing' the scent itself was not at all what I expected. I was expecting sharp and bright but what I got was almost dusty, which is kind of cool because I live in a desert and the juniper's around here have more of a dirty/dusty tone than a bright or fresh note. I am convinced (as others have mentioned) that this company used Essential Oils to scent their soaps...Why? because the real scent treat this morning occurred when I rinsed the soap into the hot water filled sink and got a light juniper steam facial. AS light as the scent seemed to me throughout the shave it was clearly present in the steam and as a post shave residual scent on my skin...which made the Carnation scent of the Alpa AS absolutely disgusting choice. To be clear, I had no idea the bottle I grabbed was going to smell like Carnation (it was a green label, I thought the pink label was carnation). For a good 3-5 minutes I fought the urge to vomit as the two scents fought for control of the airspace around my nostrils.

If my opinion of this brand were based solely on today's shave I might think less of the brand than I do/did based on the previous 2 shaves. The lather was a little thinner (quantity of soap-to-water?) and the boldness of the scent wasn't at a WOW level, but the steam facial effect was cool. Had I not filled my sink with HOT water this might not have happened, but Juniper oil might do a similar thing in a sink filled with cooler water. I will admit, my face remains happy so the soap must be pretty good stuff.
 
I was most excited to try the Patchouli Vetiver as those are two of my favorite scents..... but after lathering it up, I had to dump it down the drain. HATED the scent. In my haste to grab what I thought was going to be the perfect scent for me, I did not read the scent notes, as I assumed it was going to be just Patchouli and Vetiver. But no, the third note is Lavender. And I have come to detest Lavender when it is a main note. Honestly, Lavender is the only thing I smell. Ugh.


So I went with the next sample.... Evergreen Juniper. Not what I was expecting, as I thought there would be some sweetness to it, like other juniper soaps I've used. Nope, this is straight up, stick your nose into a juniper tree and take a big sniff. And for that reason I absolutely love it!

On to the soap itself.

It's definitely softer than I expected. Definitely more of a cream than a croap. I scooped out 1/4 of the sample and smeared it into my lather bowl. It easily produced copious amounts of lather that had a really nice sheen on it. Shave was ok, but did not offer the level of slickness that I prefer. Possibly a result of not having the water ratio right, as I am a die hard face latherer, and it's much easier for me to dial on a soap that way.

Based on soap performance, I would likely not make a purchase, unless the scent absolutely wowed me. The Evergreen Juniper comes close to doing that.
 
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Today I went with the Sandalwood. The scent off the sampler smelled woody, but my sniffer was acting up, so the scent wasn’t really strong. Once in the scuttle, it seemed to have a slight medicinal scent, which was odd. I typically face lather, but today I used the scuttle to build a nice lather adding water as I went. I purposely went with a thinner, well hydrated lather. The soap had plenty of slickness and residual slickness too. You could easily do a bit of clean up without a re-lather. Very nice shave. It rinsed cleanly and the post shave feel was very nice too. I didn’t chase it with witch hazel or an AS and it wasn’t needed. I will circle back to this one another time. But I want to try some of the other scents first. Thank you Matt for the opportunity to try these!
 
CBLindsay said:
So today I used the TDS Birch Tar scented soap. This time I used a little less soap and my little Whipped Dog badger as the lathering tool. I am more convinced now than ever that this soap (when enough is used) is thirsty stuff that is capable of yielding a nice "Wet", thick lather. As I said before, I don't typically comment on face feel etc., mostly because I shave early enough in the morning I rely on muscle memory rather than cognitive thought to achieve my morning tasks. (Y'all may recall I produce silent-bob style shave vlogs). All I can say with certainty is that this soap/lather falls in the "it's good" category. As far as scent, I think that is where this soap/brand kicks butt. The Birch Tar is described as being an aromatic composition ...but I THINK it is straight up Birch sap/tar/resin. The best way to describe it is a "dry birch", the kind that you would find in Creed's Aventus (under all that pineapple). The scent strength was great, strong enough to remain present during the shave and linger close to the skin afterward. I dare say, I think I got a whiff of the birch coming through several hours after I applied the Alpa Chypre AS. I think the use of "tar" in the scent title instead of "Sap" or "resin" had me expecting the sour or really smoky notes you usually associate with a "pine tar" type soap.

Oh, and the scent had an initial camphorous note that when blended with the birch notes BREIFLY made me think of the Sir Irisch Moos Shave Cream @Spider sent me years ago. Sadly, BOTH the camphor note and the dry birch note have been the most difficult note for me to capture as cleanly as this soap did.
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Chris I liked this one too!


Scent notes By TDS:
  • TOP NOTES: bergamot, lemon, orange, sage, citral, d-limonene.
  • HEART: fir, clove, juniper, nutmeg, tea tree, black pepper, ylang-ylang, eugenol, geraniol.
  • BASE: birch tar, cedar, incense, patchouli, sandalwood.

I was really skeptical about this scent from the start. After I first smelled it I thought, wow this is going to be an experience and I wasn't let down. I really was concerned that the scent of birch tar would overwhelm me and be too much, but boy was I wrong. The scent which was strong tar at first evolved into a cedar patchouli/woody scent which I quite enjoyed! It was intense at first, but not near as bracing a scent as I thought. I did not smell like a tar worker who just finished his 12 hour shift sealing the highways and the wife quite liked the scent. The aftershave was interesting, as you can see, I didn't shake the bottle well enough and I could see dark spots of oil in my palm. The aroma was quite strong from the splash but it quickly dried down to a very masculine woody scent. I'm nowhere near as good at explaining what's going on within the scent and how it evolves as others, but I can tell you that I liked it and was intrigued by the combination. The lather and slickness were typical TDS and the soap took on a ton of water and provided a nice shave.
 
Alright today I had a 2 day growth and opted for the TDS Sea sample. I scooped out more than I needed and got an excellent lather. Super shiny, slippery, and wet... (TWSS)

I don't really have a lot to add that others haven't said but I will say I really am enjoying the post shave feel from these soaps. That's where they shine.
 
MilkCrate said:
View attachment 84229
Today I went with the Sandalwood. The scent off the sampler smelled woody, but my sniffer was acting up, so the scent wasn’t really strong. Once in the scuttle, it seemed to have a slight medicinal scent, which was odd. I typically face lather, but today I used the scuttle to build a nice lather adding water as I went. I purposely went with a thinner, well hydrated lather. The soap had plenty of slickness and residual slickness too. You could easily do a bit of clean up without a re-lather. Very nice shave. It rinsed cleanly and the post shave feel was very nice too. I didn’t chase it with witch hazel or an AS and it wasn’t needed. I will circle back to this one another time. But I want to try some of the other scents first. Thank you Matt for the opportunity to try these!
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Just noticed the razor, that one looks familiar!
 
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