Joshua Tree Soap Works anyone?

I purchased a tub of spiced bayrum a couple days ago online, wondering if anyone has tried this brand before?
The price was reasonable, hope it lathers and smells good.

Got it in today, scent its pretty good, lathered well. As with new soaps, was sure if it liked a lot of water or a dry start. So I started with a mildly wet brush. Lather was a little bubbley, and dissipated faster than I like between passes. But it has potential to be a good soap, I think next time I will start off dryer add in water to brush as needed se if that dials it in better.

thebluesbox said:

Lather was a little bubbley, and dissipated faster than I like between passes. But it has potential to be a good soap.

Click to expand...

One of the primary ingredients is olive oil. Olive oil does not make for a good shaving soap. Almost all examples that use olive oil as a primary ingredient are a total disaster as a shaving soap.

Thin, bubbly lather that quickly disappears. I think the lather you got is the best it will get for this soap.

Many artisan soap makers are totally clueless as to the properties of what makes a good shaving soap. Some are even known to take their bath soap recipe, add clay to it, pour it into a round mold, and call it a shaving soap.

do you think I can add anything to it that will enhance it a bit?

I made a batch of pure potassium stearate soap to test a "recipe" for vintage colgate someone had found. Of itself it's very unimpressive, but to test it I had mashed it into the bottom of a lathering bowl, where it turned exceedingly hard. It struck me as a pretty interesting idea to play on the way people "superlather" poor performing products to get them to work out. It would be possibly the ideal option to superlather with. Grab a cheap shallow dish, pour some K-stearate in there, mash it into the form of the bowl, then lather poor performing products right on top of it. It's quite firm so it won't wear excessively fast despite being K-based. And it resolves the two problems with almost all poor performing shave soaps (Too Na-heavy, Insufficient Stearate). It's also very easy and quick to make if you're comfortable making soaps. Presently, I don't think any soap-makers offer a pure stearate product (as I mentioned, it's lackluster on its own), but if you ask one who does custom orders, perhaps they would accommodate you. I expect Tiki, LASS, and several others would find it relatively easy to make for you. They use high stearate recipes and should be comfortable working with a pure batch. Of course, then the question is how much is it worth to you to avoid the alternative of just using this soap as a shower soap? That's what most of us do with disappointing shave soap purchases.

I have their bay rum and like soap and really couldn't get it to later well either. It's thin, bubbly and dissipates fast. It is fairly slick though, and it smells wonderful. Hopefully you can have better luck with it than I had.

I just ordered their Havana Bay scent, which they say smells like Bay Rum, Lime & Tobacco. Sounded interesting enough for $5. I bought it (after reading reviews here) that I'm likely going to have to use unscented KMF with it as a super lather. I'm OK with that. Some of the soaps I buy, I just buy for the scent...

As expected, lather sucks. Scent is awesome and it's slick as snot. Got a great shave, even without using KMF for superlather. It'll be in my rotation, but in the future - KMF superlather will be the way I go...

Just received a puck of their Bay Rum-Lime soap. Have used it for 2 shaves. Their marketing claims that they've reduced the amount of olive oil and increased the amount of vegetable and coconut oils to make it better for shaving. Mine came as part of a package with a brush, mug and after shave that has the same scent.

Good thing I like the mug, brush and AS, because the soap still lathers like crap. Thin, soapy, big bubbles that die on the face. I still have a little Barbasol aloe in my medicine cabinet. I think I'll try super lathering the 2 and see what happens. The soap still stinks on its own.

Bridgelover said:

The soap still stinks on its own.

Click to expand...

Let them know that they still need to tweak it some for more stability. I hope it works in the shower!

I recently got a puck of the Joshua Tree Key Lime soap. After close to four years of wet shaving, I'm sorry to say that this is the absolute worst product I've run across. This soap maker has no business selling products to the shaving community.

The Key Lime scent is reminiscent of turpentine, but the real killer is the lather. There is none! I'm not kidding. You can whip it till your arm falls off, but the result is barely any lather at all. And what's there disappears in about 10 seconds. I have good water, so I can't blame it on that. I truly hate the fact that I have to be so negative about this, but really, no shaving qualities whatsoever.

One day, I'm actually gonna try this stuff. It can't be as bad as EVERYONE says, can it?

Sounds like a very good bath soap.

I'll put it this way-- I was so disappointed in their shaving soap that I gave them a poor rating on Ebay, even though they shipped on time etc. The soap was just that bad that I felt no one should be encouraged to buy their product. I even tried combining it with Arko using a cheese grater to make it lather... wouldn't happen. (Made a fine bath soap at least).

There's a few threads on this maker ... I got stuck with the Havana Bay, and "salvaged" it by poking holes in it and filling them with a lathering non-scented soap.

Shame the maker doesn't get the hint and drop the olive oil. It's handmade, smells nice, price is right- just isn't any good for shaving.


AA

Didn't like anything about it.