Soap with best glide/slip?

The properties of soaps and creams (e.g. glide, cushion, moisturizung, scent) as we here have come to understand and discuss them sometimes are confounding to me (especially cushion, but that's for another post). Glide, or slip, however, is one that I can easily discern when shaving. Thing is, I'm having trouble getting a good glide from the soaps and creams I've tried. Since all of them are considered very good or even great products, I think there might be a problem with my lathering technique. Possibly I'm over-working the lather past the point of it being slippery, but it doesn't seem dry to me. Or maybe the lather is too wet, and I've been watering down the slipperiness of the product... but it doesn't seem too wet.

My lathering technique aside, can you guys recommend some soaps and creams that are widely regarded as glide/slip champs?

For reference, here is a list of the soaps and creams I have:
-- P.160 (morbido)
-- Cella
-- Vitos Red and Coco
-- RazoRock Original
-- Castle Forbes Lime
-- Tabac soap
-- QCS creams
-- Malaspina Triple Delight cream and soap
-- J.M. Fraser's Original
-- Speick cream
-- TOBS Sandalwood cream
-- GFT Rose cream
-- Palmolive Original cream (Euro)
-- T&H Almond cream
-- The Real Shaving Co. cream
-- van der Hagen Deluxe
-- Williams (new formula)

I find that Cella, Tabac, MWF and the Speick (shave stick) are very slick.

I might get in trouble here but.... for the past 4 days, I've been shaving with RazoRock Shave Gel. Kept moist, it is absolutely the slickest stuff I've used. I might write a post or review of it but I'm hesitant. There is going to be some angry fallout when this stuff gets reviewed. It is top-performance stuff that ISN'T soap and does not require a brush. Knowing how emotional some folks get about their soaps and brushes.... they won't take this well.

My two soaps from Benton Clay are probably the slickest and easiest to lather soaps (aside from smelling amazing). A close second are VDH and Arko sticks.

Before someone comments, I do have some higher end soaps and creams such as Tabac, Irisch Moos, GFT Limes, and some others. These soaps are great but the Benton Clay just works the best.

I would concentrate on Tabac soap until you get it where you want it. Then you can use that as a baseline.

RazoRock. Any RazoRock.
Followed by Cella and J.M. Fraser's, which I rank the same. They're closely followed by Proraso. If RazoRock is ever made available with a Proraso-like scent, I'll buy it to the exclusion of Proraso.

For me, it really is that good.

Jeff

You've certainly tried some quality soaps there.

D.R Harris is great, as is MWF, AOS and L'Occitane Cade.

I'd persist with Tabac, Castle Forbes, and Cella. All are great products and if lathered correctly will provide a great slick later.

The slickest stuff I ever shaved with is the Dovo soft soap that comes in the white tub. Crazy slick. Not all that cushiony but slippery like eels in a bucket. I haven't read much about it here or elsewhere but it's slippery beyond my ability to describe in words. Makes P.160 feel like dry gravel. I'm not so very into 'slickness' so it's not in my rotation anymore but it's worth checking out if slick is what you're after.

You have several soaps considered "champs", your technique seems to be the issue for sure.

I've never tried anything slicker, soap or cream, than J.M. Fraser's.

KarlMaldensNose said:

The properties of soaps and creams (e.g. glide, cushion, moisturizung, scent) as we here have come to understand and discuss them sometimes are confounding to me (especially cushion, but that's for another post). Glide, or slip, however, is one that I can easily discern when shaving............

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I don't know what any of them mean to be honest. Even glide doesn't make too much sense to me. You can get superb glide using a wet razor and a bar of any old hand soap. I'm sure that if you were to get 100 wet shavers to describe the same soap using those terms, the results would be hilarious. Looking at the enormous list of soaps/creams you've got there I suspect you've been looking for the magic bullet rather than changing your technique.

Irisch Moos
Valobra stick
DR Harris
Trumpers
Art of Shaving
Valobra soft soap

I'm not sure if I can remember which one was the absolute slickest for me. I have had so many that perform well.

Cremo is the slickest I have tried, but I gave it up since it's brushless

Are you sure are aren't maybe making your lather too dense, rather than too wet?

If your shave cream won't rinse off your razor in a matter of seconds with a light trickle of water, you might not be adding *enough* water to the mix. When the lather gets too dense, it will drag against the razor, and even push it away from the face, either giving you a less than close shave, or forcing you to apply more pressure to the blade to keep it in contact with your skin?

I often need to dip my brush into water and lather a little bit on my face to get the consistency of the lather just right for that "perfect" shave. It's a whole lot easier starting out too thick/rich than it is to try to thicken up a too runny lather.

I tried an Arko stick just today for the first time, face lathering... Ran the stick over all the areas of my wet face a single time, took a badger to my face and face lathered. I could tell it was too thick of a lather, added a bit of water, took a couple of strokes and went to rinse my blade and the cream still stuck to it. Dipped the brush twice more in water to loosen up the cream on my face a bit, and everything was perfect, but that first stroke was "sticky" and wanted to bounce on my face.

Pbalkan said:

I might get in trouble here but.... for the past 4 days, I've been shaving with RazoRock Shave Gel. Kept moist, it is absolutely the slickest stuff I've used. I might write a post or review of it but I'm hesitant. There is going to be some angry fallout when this stuff gets reviewed. It is top-performance stuff that ISN'T soap and does not require a brush. Knowing how emotional some folks get about their soaps and brushes.... they won't take this well.

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Please go ahead and write a review. If the stuff works then it works. Joel, the owner of this site, wrote a review about Oliveology (a brushless gel) and lots of people have tried it and liked it. I tried it but it wasn't for me because it was clear so I couldn't see very well where I had shaved. Nothing wrong with gels in general.

bkfist said:

Are you sure are aren't maybe making your lather too dense, rather than too wet?

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What he said. The soaps you have are great. I would say VDH is probably the "slickest" since it's 50% propylene glycol... but tabac, cells, etc are all very slick when lathered well.
The water in the soap is what makes it slippery so the more you add the slicker it will be. Though you reach a point where the lather won't stay on your face anymore...
I Usually keep adding water to my lather till the peaks get loose, flop over on themselves. I know it's wet enough when after 4 or 5 strokes the lather wants to drip off my razor.
I've done some friction tests with different lathers and I've found the amount of friction decreases with an increasing water to soap ratio. After a while the lather becomes too slick to measure so I'm working on a way around that because I'd like to make a chart comparing different soaps...

Of the ones you've listed, I imagine that the slickest would be the QCS, then tabac, then Cella.

I personally love Arko, MWF, AOS and Razorock XXX for their slickness

Tabac is some of the slickest I have tried, if you can't get glide with it I would concentrate on your technique...

I just had a thought: I wonder if water hardness plays a part in slickness? I've noticed when rinsing off soap (both real soap and detergent) with soft water that my skin feels very slippery, even when all the soap is seemingly rinsed off. Now, I have hard water here and the opposite is the case, soap rinses off my skin very easily and I get no slippery feeling at all. I don't see why that would be any different with shaving soap and cream.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not brushing off my probably suspect technique, but this could add another variable to the equation. I also think that Pjotr has a point when suggesting that slickness, cushion, etc. are themselves very YMMV concepts, that one man's slick is another man's drag. That said, it seems that some soaps such as Tabac, Cella, MWF, AoS, Castle Forbes and RazoRock tend to consistently pop up in conversations about soaps with good slickness. For the time being I will concentrate on my technique using some proven performers I already have, like Tabac, CF, Cella and RazoRock. Looking for magic bullets can get very expensive (see my other thread re. ordering MdC).

rockviper said:

Cremo is the slickest I have tried, but I gave it up since it's brushless

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Ya know...I use Cremo with a brush sometimes. Not the most classic lather, but very slick and effective.

Right now (as it always changes) I'm into a Valobra stick topped with a bit of Kiss My Face mint cream. Ohhhhh boyyyyyy...LOTS of lather and maybe the slickest I've used!