vegan, tallow, does it really matter?

Idea! A Tallow Safe-Space!

On dry shaving. My beard is normal (sadly gray now). Found that if my face is completely dry and I use a new blade each time (use Derbys) in the Feather DE and only use a WTG shave that there's little or no irritation.


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It's bollocks. There are good soaps and bad soaps and tallow is not what separates one from another.

Yes, I agree to a large extent. However, let me add another angle: it's easier to get a quasi decent shave from a bad tallow soap than with a bad vegan. The biggest "issue" IMO is not so much any glaring differences, but rather to decipher the cornucopia of reviews of any given shaving soap on the Internet as reviewers are just as varied as the soaps they are reviewing and I think they (just as we) can become jaded over time. After awhile the different soaps can meld into a numbing blur and our "wow factor" bar quite elevated.

Some days I think I should just give away all my soaps and use one puck of Valobra. :confused: ;)
 
Yes, I agree to a large extent. However, let me add another angle: it's easier to get a quasi decent shave from a bad tallow soap than with a bad vegan. The biggest "issue" IMO is not so much any glaring differences, but rather to decipher the cornucopia of reviews of any given shaving soap on the Internet as reviewers are just as varied as the soaps they are reviewing and I think they (just as we) can become jaded over time. After awhile the different soaps can meld into a numbing blur and our "wow factor" bar quite elevated.

Some days I think I should just give away all my soaps and use one puck of Valobra. :confused: ;)
Noooo, don't do it. Within two weeks you would get bored stupid even though Valobra is a wonderful soap, next you will be saying you are getting rid of all of your razor's and just using one! Madness I tell ya! ;-)
 
Noooo, don't do it. Within two weeks you would get bored stupid even though Valobra is a wonderful soap, next you will be saying you are getting rid of all of your razor's and just using one! Madness I tell ya! ;-)

Too late on the razors as I sold the vast majority last Fall & this Spring in two waves. After years I know what works best for my face regarding razors and only really use three most of the time: Tech, Krona & PAA Prismatic. I kept a few injectors as well just to add spice to the mix.
 
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Too late on the razors as I sold the vast majority last Fall & this Spring in two waves. After years I know what works best for my face regarding razors and only really use three most of the time: Tech, Krona & PAA Prismatic. I kept a few injectors as well just to add spice to the mix.
Well as long as you have a change of razor, I couldn't imagine having only one, would be like my cart days! :)
 
Old thread, but interesting! :)

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...beef fat and cocunut oil works best for me in a shaving soap. I agree with the view that tallow based soaps, as opposed to vegan soaps, provide better performance. So in answer to the OP's question - yes it does matter, but maybe not to you! That is not to say that I do not enjoy artisan vegetal soaps such as Nanny's, Wickhams etc but the performance or consistency does not match a good tallow based soap and weight for weight (in terms of how many shaves they provide) they are significantly more expensive than a tripple milled hard tallow based soap. I get through a vegetal soap much quicker than a tripple milled soap. The pay-off is usually the scent. I appreciate that some choose vegetal soaps for ethical rather than performance reasons however the enviromental damage and blood cost from petrochemicals used either in the plastic tub or packaging is not insignicant I would suggest.
 
With a DE - just about any soap is ok with me. With a straigt razor - I get picky and pick Haslinger that happens to be tallow based.
 
Well, I've only got two soaps (yeah, I know, what a lightweight eh?) - Kent (i.e. Mitchell's Wool Fat) and Saponificio Varesino. I believe that the former contains tallow and latter does not. I can't detect any difference in terms of performance.
 
There Has Been a Lot of Wars on Forums about Tallow Soaps & Vegan Soaps..More So in the USA..It has been Asserted for Many Years that a High Quality Tallow Soap is Hard to Beat..So Much So that Loads of USA so Called Artisan Soap Makers have Jumped on the Tallow Bandwagon..o_O

The one thing that Traditional Tallow Soaps have Often Lacked is Fancy Scents..The USA Soap Makers Know this & Attempted to Reinvent the Wheel with Highly Scented so Called Tallow Soaps..The Problem is that Most of them are Pseudo Tallow Soaps..They are Vegan Soaps with Added Tallow Oil what ever the Hell that is..Stirling Soaps are One of them..:eek:

They are not Tallow Based Soaps..They are Vegan Soaps with an Addition of Tallow Oil & most of them are Total Crap..Most of the Worlds Best Traditional Tallow Soaps all Come from Southern Europe..Most Come from Italy..:D

Billy
This.

Most "tallow" soaps only have a tiny bit of tallow which to me doesn't make them a "tallow" soap.

My main oil in my OSP soap is tallow.

I think as a community we need to start being a lot more aware of what is actually in our products.
 
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