Description
When you buy water in a soap/croap/cream [all still ‘soap’ to a chemist, remember], while it may often be easier to use its cost per use skyrockets, both in grams per session and – if it isn’t a bargain basement item like Proraso – in dollars per session.
Hard milled soaps, conversely, while admittedly not easy to master cost significantly less per use in both grams of product per session as well as in the $/shave sense, and that’s true even for the fancy ones from “fragrance houses” at high end department stores. If you’re lucky enough to have a Creed shaving soap, which apparently are no longer a thing, while they were extremely expensive things for the shaving soap world, they were so incredibly hard-milled that their true cost per session was lower than many of the popular American artisanal soft soaps, which hover somewhere around or just north of $0.50/shave.
If you can tolerate the generally higher buy-in costs, a collection of hard milled shaving soaps will keep their scent much longer than “croaps”, and cost less to run per year, though let us all keep this in perspective…a shaving soap hobby is not exactly expensive in the world of hobbies, and whatever money you do save by sticking with hard milled things, if investing was the goal you’d be much better off just taking those savings and picking off partial shares of Jeffy’s little boat.
Osma’s shaving soaps are actually truly economical.
There’s two versions of Osma shaving soap; the older “Rasage” one, which I’ve always preferred, and this much younger “Traditions” variation. Quite interestingly, they do not share their basic formulation, and in fact the older Rasage one used to have potassium alum in the shaving soap!
The main attractions of this Traditions soap are its significantly bigger puck, the lovely glass jar you get, and – perhaps most crucially – having its fragrance portion precision matched to their popular preshave oil and aftershave balm and aftershave lotion. The “older” Rasage soap is more of a generic clean soapy smell, and a more understated odor, but one still with some charm.
If you’ve bought Osma’s preshave or after shave and want a tip-to-tail experience themed for odor, this is the soap to get, though in each case these soaps’ odors are understated, especially in contrast to American artisanal stuff.
For the best performance, the recommendation here is to use as described below, it is a tried-and-true approach.
Load Fervently, Use in-Hand, Maybe Splash w/ HOT Water Too
To make the most of this soap, you may wish to work with it outside the reservoir, and to start by putting a tiny bit of very hot water atop it [to soften the surface] while showering prior to shaving, at least for the first few uses after you get your puck; that’ll ultimately cost you total shaves out of the soap for the $ you’ve paid in, but it’ll also make a bit easier time of things, so it might be a concession of interest.
Truly hard-milled soaps can often present a perpetual challenge of getting enough product loaded on to the shaving brush in the first place, especially to us Yanks, blessed with patience as we are. Indeed, since Geo F. Trumper changed their formula about ten years ago to become even rock-harder than it already was, hard-milled shaving soaps can even be too hard for their own good!
I recommend taking Osma’s soaps in hand and loading with a wet brush held with knot partially skyward, and soap above, until such time that the water’s all been absorbed and the foam’s rich and creamy. Get it a bit tarry. Take that tarry paste to the face to slather around. You’ll need more water to your water/air/soap ratio now, so go get a few *drops* at a time to add to your knot to play with the tar already on your face, until you get the foam the way you seek. You can use this way and still have a very economical running cost. The Osma soaps actually have quite good lather stability once dialed it in on your face, or in your little shaving bowl if you must.
Soap disc; ~3×1.2″ (73x32mm) and ~130 grams net weight.
Handmade in Craponne, France.
Ingredients: Sodium Palmate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Aqua/Water, Parfum/Fragrance, Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Oil, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Glycerin, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf Extract, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Palm Kernel Acid, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Coco-glucoside, Cetyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Stearate, Peg-100 Stearate, Ceteareth-33, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Chloride, Citric Acid, CI 77891/Titanium Dioxide, Benzyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Methylchloroisthiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone
