That Rawleigh's looks great. I'd use it, because when I shave, I like to keep the "smarting" and the "puckering" to a minimum.
Vintage soap anyone?
- Thread starter TheDoughboy
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- #23
Yeah... I'm gonna Hit that next week...
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- #24
It's cool that Rawleigh's is still in business today. Sucks that they have dropped their shave line...
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- #25
Oh yeah, I'm going to break that big ol' fat puck in real soonThat Rawleigh's looks great. I'd use it, because when I shave, I like to keep the "smarting" and the "puckering" to a minimum.
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- #26
Well, I lathered up the Williams tonight. I made a separate post about it with pics here... http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...e-Williams-lathered-up!?p=4478437#post4478437
Can I highjack this thread since the vintage soap guys are here? I can get my Old Spice to give up some good lather. I've worn through the ship logo on my puck, and still get disappearing lather. And it smells so good 
Any tips?
Any tips?
Keep a few things in mind.
First off vintage soaps are decently high in stearic acid, but nowhere near what you'll find in soaps like MdC. Our modern performance soap recipes look a LOT more like turn of the century shaving CREAMS (minus the whipping/mixing stage of production) than vintage soaps. Vintage soaps have a few properties:
1. Moderate to high stearic acid levels.
2. VERY VERY low Lauric/myristic acid levels. Well below what you'll find in almost ANY products these days. These soaps were typically 50-70% tallow, with a small amount of coconut and stearic. A "Standard" shaving soap recipe from a 1922 soapmakers text is 15% coconut oil. There's another recipe that has ZERO coconut and gets its only myristic from the tallow.
3. Additives. Naaaaaaaaaaaaa.... There are a few additives in the recipes, but they are universally in very small quantities and are almost exclusively waxes that were intended to stabilize the lather. Bayberry Wax, Gum tragacanth, stuff that soap-makers these days probably didn't know existed. Water softeners? In your dreams.
4. VEEEEERY high levels of NaOH relative to KOH when compared to most of todays soaps.
What does this translate to? An extremely hard but concentrated soap that requires more time loading than the comparatively soft soaps of today. It doesn't "Explode in lather", because the "bubbly" salts just aren't there in the quantities that many modern soaps have them. But the flipside of that is that if you spend your time loading and work the lather sufficiently you will get a very dense lather.
In the end, the answer is the usual one. Be sure you wet the top of the soap and let it sit to soften the surface up a bit and then load a lot more product than you have been.
First off vintage soaps are decently high in stearic acid, but nowhere near what you'll find in soaps like MdC. Our modern performance soap recipes look a LOT more like turn of the century shaving CREAMS (minus the whipping/mixing stage of production) than vintage soaps. Vintage soaps have a few properties:
1. Moderate to high stearic acid levels.
2. VERY VERY low Lauric/myristic acid levels. Well below what you'll find in almost ANY products these days. These soaps were typically 50-70% tallow, with a small amount of coconut and stearic. A "Standard" shaving soap recipe from a 1922 soapmakers text is 15% coconut oil. There's another recipe that has ZERO coconut and gets its only myristic from the tallow.
3. Additives. Naaaaaaaaaaaaa.... There are a few additives in the recipes, but they are universally in very small quantities and are almost exclusively waxes that were intended to stabilize the lather. Bayberry Wax, Gum tragacanth, stuff that soap-makers these days probably didn't know existed. Water softeners? In your dreams.
4. VEEEEERY high levels of NaOH relative to KOH when compared to most of todays soaps.
What does this translate to? An extremely hard but concentrated soap that requires more time loading than the comparatively soft soaps of today. It doesn't "Explode in lather", because the "bubbly" salts just aren't there in the quantities that many modern soaps have them. But the flipside of that is that if you spend your time loading and work the lather sufficiently you will get a very dense lather.
In the end, the answer is the usual one. Be sure you wet the top of the soap and let it sit to soften the surface up a bit and then load a lot more product than you have been.
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- #29
Well, so far the Seaforth I have been using for a couple weeks lathers great with minimal loading and lathering in a bowl. The sample lathering I did with the Williams was the same way.
This thread got me psyched to use the Brigadier soap and without knowing the science that Slice discusses, let the soap soak in water for at least five minutes before loading. I could probably have loaded longer, in retrospect, but still got plenty of thick excellent product.
Here is my vintage soap...
I believe this cool bakelite Yardley stick is from the 1930's...still smells like Yardley
This wood bowl of Yardleys is from the 1960's I believe
Still sealed...
Old Williams...age unknown
Came in this neat old container that may of contained Yardley at one time
I believe this cool bakelite Yardley stick is from the 1930's...still smells like Yardley
This wood bowl of Yardleys is from the 1960's I believe
Still sealed...
Old Williams...age unknown
Came in this neat old container that may of contained Yardley at one time
Wow. Wow.
Very nice Michael!
Would Shulton Old Spice be a decent first vintage soap? I really want to try one. Have been scouring the bay, but really don't know what I am looking at for vingtage stuff. Figured it would be a good start and I need to have an Old Spice mug in my den anyway.
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- #36
I have never tried it myself, others seem to like it though. It is on my list to find though. Good luck!
Ron
Can I highjack this thread since the vintage soap guys are here? I can get my Old Spice to give up some good lather. I've worn through the ship logo on my puck, and still get disappearing lather. And it smells so good
Try removing the top layers of dry soap, ever happened to me and then the soap works perfectly
Question to all the vintage soap lovers. Do you all define vintage as no longer in production ala GFT tallow, Pens tallow? or do you define vintage by approximate age, e.g. pre 1990's?
Nice soaps, fellas. I want to sniff them.
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- #40
I am not sure really, hopefully a Soapster will chime in. I would think there is a difference between a discontinued soap and a Vintage soap. By how many years I don't know
