Etsy.com

Here are the ingredients for a soap I just bought on Etsy.com.

chamomile tea, tallow, lard, olive oil, coconut oil, hemp oil, essential oil, blend green clay

Judging by the ingresients this should really be a great soap!

olive oil and clay.....maybe not.

buddydog said:

olive oil and clay.....maybe not.

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ditto.. olive oil really kills lather. Hope you've found the exception.

Lard?

goby said:

Lard?

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I think that is for flavor, which presumably will be better than Cella.

poonjaji said:

I think that is for flavor, which presumably will be better than Cella.

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Cella requires garlic.

--james

Clay is good in shaving soap, not so much olive oil.

Vinny Bobo said:

Here are the ingredients for a soap I just bought on Etsy.com.

chamomile tea, tallow, lard, olive oil, coconut oil, hemp oil, essential oil, blend green clay

Judging by the ingresients this should really be a great soap!

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I hope the soap you purchased from Etsy wasn't one made by ManCave. I received some as a gift and it was just terrible. I too would suggest avoiding the olive oil based soaps.

I've tried some olive oil soaps that were top-notch...in the shower.

Shaving soaps? Not so much.

Tallow, Lard, animal fats and oils: they all have their place in soaps, imparting their own particular characteristics to the final product. No one fat/oil alone makes a tremendously good soap; you need a combination in the proper proportions to achieve what you're looking for. I must say, lard is more common in other types of soaps than shaving soaps, but why not?

And, what does everyone have against olive oil in shaving soap? Y'all better hurry up and inform Palmolive (so named because its excellent tallow based shave stick contains both Palm and Olive oils) of their huge mistake.

i must be the only one to have good luck with olive oil. had a puck (and waiting on one as we speak) of susies bubbles with olive oil and goats milk it lathered good but you had to work it a little..like williams..it took longer to whip up. the nivea cream in the blue metal tube IIRC has olive oil..i loved that stuff. it was easy to work up a good lather..thick too.

You can never judge how a soap is going to perform by its ingredients. Even if two soaps have the exact same ingredients, one could perform, while one could be absolute crap. While certain ingredients may make a soap better, the quality of a soap is more so correlative to a soaper's skill than the ingredients present therein.

CaptainK said:

And, what does everyone have against olive oil in shaving soap? Y'all better hurry up and inform Palmolive (so named because its excellent tallow based shave stick contains both Palm and Olive oils) of their huge mistake.

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Soaps with Olive oil as a base are terrible terrible terrible. As evidence I offer the combined experience of anyone who's ever used one. By the way, Palmolive is just the name of a European brand that sells lots of cheap stuff. The Palmolive stick that's well reviewed on the shaving boards is Tallow based; there is one that's sold in eastern Europe that's Palm oil based, and its not as good. The one we we all know and love has 'Olea Europaea' way down the ingredients list, and is obviously by no means an Olive oil based soap.

mretzloff said:

the quality of a soap is more so correlative to a soaper's skill than the ingredients present therein.

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+1. Ingredients, proportions, process ... all play a role.

Ignatius said:

The one we we all know and love has 'Olea Europaea' way down the ingredients list, and is obviously by no means an Olive oil based soap.

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How does one define the "base" of a soap? The first ingredient listed? I've seen soap recipes with 4 different fats/oils listed, with each one representing the same proportion of the recipe. (I don't know how the listing order is decided in this case, but I suspect it's left to the soapmaker's discretion.) A soapmaker needs to choose his fats/oils, and the proper proportions thereof, to achieve the desired effect.

True, olive oil on its own does not produce a thick lather, but it brings other qualities to a shaving soap. It helps stabilize the lather generated by other ingredients, and it brings a magnificent moisturizing quality. It definitely has its place in my book!

I received the soap and have found it to be one of the slickest soaps I've shaved with. It is thinner and has less cushion than most but it softens the beard and does a great job lubricating. I give it an 8.5.

sfcablecar said:

I hope the soap you purchased from Etsy wasn't one made by ManCave. I received some as a gift and it was just terrible. I too would suggest avoiding the olive oil based soaps.

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Weird...I bought a puck of Man Cave Gatsby soap and melted it into a stick and it's wonderful. Not the greatest soap I've ever used, but definitely in my rotation. Perhaps it's the stick form that makes it better.