seannottingham
Shave Member
I thought I would start a journal starting with documenting a shave with products from another market place that we would probably never know about. My wife has an online storefront that deals in selling products that are only plastic free. They must also be sustainable, ethical and have a story that shows authenticity. I must be clear here. I am not posting this in an attempt to sell products, I understand that this is not the place for that, but since I have not done a review before this I thought this might be the space to play with ideas and garner feedback. Therefore I will talk about the products but am not going to state or represent the store name of my wife's work at this time. Her site sells alot of body soaps and hair soaps. So occasionally I will get a bar for my shower to use. One such soap product I was given was from a artisan company named Bogue. These soaps use goat milk and other organic oils and scents. The creamy later that was produced from the bar soap I used was amazing. I mentioned to my wife how great this soap was and if they had any for shaving.
So here I am.
Certainly ECO friendly, I like the porcelain mug, the boar brush seems reasonable and the soap puck intriguing.
I commenced with soaking the brush and added some warm water to the top of the soap while I opened the next product, the razor.
The razor comes from another company over in the UK called UpCircle. They sell products for other beauty markets but they did have buried in their offering a safety razor.
Here it is:
This razor is made of chrome but then they powder coated the surface of not only the handle but the head pieces as well.
The 90g weight is nice, as is the length of the handle if you like longer handles that is.
The head is the exact same one that is used on the Gillette Heritage Kit that amazon was selling last year. Which I think by all my reckoning a Erwin Jagger 89.
The 2 blades that accompanied are V Vidyut SuperMax from India. A blade I have not used.
After putting the blade in the razor I proceeded to go to work on making the lather.
I did not prepare the brush prior to this shave except for the 5 minutes of soak, so it still had the musky animal scent a bit. The handle is made of a very light wood but the boar hair was adequate and who knows it may break in and end up being a great brush.
The soap immediately went to making a foamy (lather?), perhaps a result of the coconut oil? At any rate the creaminess I expected did not show itself. I loaded the brush for a couple of minutes.
I brushed the soap on my face in a paint fashion with tips of the brush getting dipped in water on occasion until it seemed thick enough and wet enough to splay the brush. When I did however all it did was make the soap evaporate. No suds here. Okay try again and work it longer to see if I could get the soap to cream up like the bar I used in the shower. Cream began to show up but again, wait a moment then poof, it evaporates.
However the residual slickness from the soap seemed to be okay.
At this point I thought I should just commit and start shaving.
Well the slickness of the oils in the soap ruled so the shave ended up working out BBS.
Some irritation though from the new SuperMax blade.
The razor actually performed very well, as the blade seemed to add aggressiveness missing from the Gillette Platinum included in the Heritage.
The UpCircle razor description talks about the powder coating adding to the smoothness of the shave. I think the jury may be out on that. My thoughts are that the chrome added very good weight to the razor while the powder coated surface provides stain protection for the chrome from the soap and possibly add to the unisex market they are going after due to the creme color.
I will try the soap again some other time, I think if I soak it longer in the sink it may bring more of the fat up and make a better lather.
Interesting experience all in all. I do thing that ECO market could stand to have some of our great artisans put their soaps in non plastic containers. But hey that's enough politics for one day.
Thanks for reading if you got this far.
-Sean
So here I am.
Certainly ECO friendly, I like the porcelain mug, the boar brush seems reasonable and the soap puck intriguing.
I commenced with soaking the brush and added some warm water to the top of the soap while I opened the next product, the razor.
The razor comes from another company over in the UK called UpCircle. They sell products for other beauty markets but they did have buried in their offering a safety razor.
Here it is:
This razor is made of chrome but then they powder coated the surface of not only the handle but the head pieces as well.
The 90g weight is nice, as is the length of the handle if you like longer handles that is.
The head is the exact same one that is used on the Gillette Heritage Kit that amazon was selling last year. Which I think by all my reckoning a Erwin Jagger 89.
The 2 blades that accompanied are V Vidyut SuperMax from India. A blade I have not used.
After putting the blade in the razor I proceeded to go to work on making the lather.
I did not prepare the brush prior to this shave except for the 5 minutes of soak, so it still had the musky animal scent a bit. The handle is made of a very light wood but the boar hair was adequate and who knows it may break in and end up being a great brush.
The soap immediately went to making a foamy (lather?), perhaps a result of the coconut oil? At any rate the creaminess I expected did not show itself. I loaded the brush for a couple of minutes.
I brushed the soap on my face in a paint fashion with tips of the brush getting dipped in water on occasion until it seemed thick enough and wet enough to splay the brush. When I did however all it did was make the soap evaporate. No suds here. Okay try again and work it longer to see if I could get the soap to cream up like the bar I used in the shower. Cream began to show up but again, wait a moment then poof, it evaporates.
However the residual slickness from the soap seemed to be okay.
At this point I thought I should just commit and start shaving.
Well the slickness of the oils in the soap ruled so the shave ended up working out BBS.
Some irritation though from the new SuperMax blade.
The razor actually performed very well, as the blade seemed to add aggressiveness missing from the Gillette Platinum included in the Heritage.
The UpCircle razor description talks about the powder coating adding to the smoothness of the shave. I think the jury may be out on that. My thoughts are that the chrome added very good weight to the razor while the powder coated surface provides stain protection for the chrome from the soap and possibly add to the unisex market they are going after due to the creme color.
I will try the soap again some other time, I think if I soak it longer in the sink it may bring more of the fat up and make a better lather.
Interesting experience all in all. I do thing that ECO market could stand to have some of our great artisans put their soaps in non plastic containers. But hey that's enough politics for one day.
Thanks for reading if you got this far.
-Sean
