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CBL version of Williams Tonsorial Shaving Soap

The Monkey

The Monkey

"I See the Good in Every Shave"
Legacy
Chris was kind enough to send me a sample of his new hard soap.

I uses the Oatmeal Stout today. Here are some first thoughts:

1 I'm a big fan of the harder soap. This is just a psychological thing I suppose. I've never been a fan of creams and the CBL regular line was a hard adjustment for me (no offense meant). I got use to his very soft soaps but I just love having a puck.

2. The soap was very easy to load. I didn't load enough at first because I'm use to the softer soap so I was more gentle than I needed to be.

3. It lathers great. I have semi hard water and this soap just whipped right up.

4. It seems more thirsty than the CBL soft soaps. This reminds me of a well hydrated vintage Williams. This meant that it took longer to build the to the yogurt consistency I like. Not a problem , just something I noticed.

5. The after feel was great. I was rubbing my face all day. It is a drier after feel than the softer soap. CBL's normal soap leaves a more oily feel. Not bad at all, mind you. I'm guessing that the normal soap maybe superfatted more? This puck leaves just a nice soft feeling skin behind.

If the other samples are like this Chris has a winner on his hands.
 
Similar thoughts with mine and looking forward to the future of CBL Soaps. Wait........................you got the Roasted Oatmeal Stout !!!! :love: :cool:
 
My Williams 3017ing has been suspended so I can provide some evaluations and testing of 15 of Chris's Tonsorial soaps. I haven't even used his regular stuff yet, but being asked to test something that isn't my wife's cooking (which is 99% great BTW!) is an honour of (misplaced??) trust.

Scent: Money

Texture: Definitely different than his regular line of softer soaps/croaps. Nice and firm, but not quite rock hard like the older 3 T's or Williams. Some medium pressure between my thumb and forefinger shows the soap to not be rock solid but somewhat malleable/squishable. Proceeded to smoosh it into my Dr Dittmar round-bottom bowl and... voila! It started to flake apart. If shooting for a hard puck, it probably needs more curing time as a hard puck should crack and break with pressure rather than flake. That's not a knock, but an observation. Most folks have common sense and wouldn't try to round-peg/square-hole a puck of soap, buy hey, I'm special (that's what my mom says anyways! LOL).

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Finger pressure alone would not reshape the large flakes into a puck, which says that the puck is well on its way to a full cure as there is not enough moisture in it right now to be croap-y and self-moldable.

Adding about a tbsp or so of water allowed me to rebuild a proper puck surface and it is SLICK! The "slime" from reshaping with my fingers leads me to believe that this will provide an excellent dense lather.

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Lather: OMG!! (yes, that needed to be bolded as well :)) Used my Shavemac 2-band and it loaded very quickly and provided an nice dense creamy/yogurty face lather in no time flat. I was also extremely happy to get an excellent 2nd pass lather as well. That is something that I have gone a few months without getting from my poopy-poop-poopy soaps.

Post Shave: Like Williams (modern or vintage), rinsing my face post-shave demonstrated exactly how slick this stuff really is. I could easily have used my razor alone with relathering for an additional pass if I so wanted.

Scent: Apparently, I must be a very poor person; a pauper, almost. I have no idea what the scent of Money is supposed to be. The only scent I get from this puck is soap and something very mild and delicate that I cannot quite place. If given the test puck "blind" and asked to describe the scent, I would have ventured "unscented" as my guess.

Looking ahead: I will use a variety of brushes (Shavemac 2-band, Omega silvertip, Omega boar, horse, Chubby synth, Yaqi Sagrada synth) over the coming weeks as I run though the various test pucks/slices that Chris has provided.

VERDICT:
Winner winner! Chicken Dinner! With just a single shave under my belt, I believe that Chris has hit a home run with this formula. As with most hard soaps, I expect things to get better as the soap gets used over the space of a week.

Thank you Chris. Not just for sending me some samples to test/evaluate, but for everything you do for the Cadre and the wet shaving community at large.



Errata: Ooops, did I say 15 new soaps in the opening sentence? I meant 4. As someone would say....... * 🤪
Hope nobody had a heart attack.
 
Well, I'm going to assume you'll do these soaps the due respect of 3017ing them and we can be relieved of mediocre shaves for a good while!
 
I also received a package of 4 soaps from Mr. Lindsay. Two slightly different formulas, but both performing very similarly.

I"m not really going to talk about scent, but I will say this. I did not think that there was a soap out there that could possibly smell better or more delicious than Chirs' Roasted Oatmeal Stout......... One of his pucks was labeled just Oatmeal Stout and holy carp!!! It's amazeballs. Smells so delicious, and the loose buck was roughly cookie shaped and sized and it made me think it was a real cookie. IT smelled so good it made me forget it was soap and I was half tempted on severla occasions to actually take a bite! that's just crazy..... Amber said that at our party I should hand the soap to some drunk person and see what happens when they take a bite, LOL.

OK, now for the soap. BLUF.... it's amazing. It's meant to be a no frills soap..... but it still has frills!

Since these were loose pucks, I just held them in my hand to load them, just like I would with a Williams puck. Once some water hits this thing, you realize just how fricking slick this is. Williams is my benchmark for slickness. And I often tout Stirling for being very slick as well. This CBL soap blows them out of the water in slickness. It's crazy!

The water band seems fairly wide, although I didn't push it. My first couple shaves, I was able to shave my entire face with no razor rinsing, one full pass, and all of the lather stuck to my razor. (I know that drives @NurseDave crazy!). None of the lather fell off, it just clung there. Awesome! I love that. My last shave, I did make the lather a little wetter, and while none of the lather was falling off, I did feel like I needed to rinse the razor a couple times..... For NurseDave's sake.

This lather is really unique in the artisan community. It feels soooo creamy! If you've ever used a puck of vintage soap like Williams or Old Spice, then you know the creaminess that I'm talking about. Yes, it's that good. That creamy lather that has folks paying $10 for a puckk of vintage WIlliams or $20 for a puck of vintage OS, this is that exact same creamy lather. And it definitely has a soft feeling on your face. You notice it right away. It's crazy. I've only felt this super soft feeling from a couple of soaps, and they are using exotic butters or oils to achieve that. Chris has achieved that from just Tallow!

The shave, is everything you could want from a shave soap. Nothing stands out as being superb, but it has cusion, glide, slickness and all that other good stuff you want. It's not lacking in anything.

Post shave. Here's where the no frills really kicks in. As said, there are no crazy oils or butters in this formula. It's stipped down to just what soap was meant to be, before it became a hobby. As such there isn't the same post shave feel that we have some to expect from Tier 1/Elite soaps. But, it's no slouch either. There is absolutely no drying feeling left by this soap. My skin doesn't feel over- or under-hydrated. My skin just feels the way it is supposed to feel. It's perfect. Granted, my skin does not feel as good as if I'd used CBL Premium, or LNHC....... but I'm also not left with a lacking feeling either.

Now, since it is stripped down, and lacking a lot of high priced ingredients, this is going to be a less expensive soap. Chris has shared some of his thoughts on this with me, which I wont share, but I think everyone will be pleasantly surprized, if not amazed by the price of this soap. It will be competitive with some of the other bargain artisans, like Stirling.

In the past, I would have always recommended that someone needs to try Vintage Williams, at least once, to experience that type of lather. Honeslty, as a whole, Chris' soap is at least on par, if not better, than vintage Williams in every way. Also, If a new wet shaver ever wanted a recommendation for a starter artisan soap, I'd usually recommend Stirling. When this becomes production, my recommedation will shift to CBL. In my opinion it is also superior to Stirling, in every way.

Like John, I'm a big fan of hard pucks. I think it's just easier to load, in a more consistent manner with a hard puck. And I'm very excited about this project moving forward. With Chris having this Tonsorial line and his Premium line, there will really be little need for any other soap in my den. I've already scaled back the number of artisans in my Den, and this will make me scale down even more.




woodpusher said:
Errata: Ooops, did I say 15 new soaps in the opening sentence? I meant 4. As someone would say....... * 🤪
Click to expand...
I was kinda wondering what the other 11 scents were.... assuming you got the same 4 I did.
 
This is an exciting thread. At some point in the future I do want to try Williams for the experience, but if I can get something better than that, I'm all in. I'm looking forward to the release.

Great reviews @The Monkey @woodpusher @Spider!
 
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