SMF

Hello people,
I want your thoughts on what do you think are the best homemade shaving creams. I've been using raw honey and cocoa butter to shave and it's worked wonders for me.
I've also heard that using organic shaving creams is also an option. Haven't used any at all. I don't think I will but I'm curious to hear someone's opinion on this.
Cheers!

I can't imagine what one might mean by an 'organic' shaving cream. Organic NaOH? Organic palm oil? (Hint: palm oil is industrialised farming of the slash and burn kind and will drive the orang utan into extinction soon. At least tallow is renewable.) And talking of tallow, I suppose that might be obtained from cows raised with less than the usual ton of antibiotics, but I'm not eating the stuff, so I'm not moved by that argument. My objections to indiscriminate antibiotic use in farm animals is because it has been shown to cause massive amounts of bacterial resistance, making said antibiotics less useful for humans.
There is no reason to think that something labelled organic or natural will shave you better. There are good shaving creams and there are terrible ones, and they should be judged on their ability to function as advertised, not pre-judged on the basis of a label that is all too often a way for charlatans to scam us.

Home made cream? I've told that story before. Creighton's are better at this than I am. My best advice is to ask around of long time members what are their best recommendations and try them out. There isn't a magic solution hiding in plain sight. It is possible, however, to make a better shaving soap at home than you can buy in a shop. That's a worthwhile endeavour.

Now 'raw honey and cocoa butter'? I find that hard to credit, as it would be a sticky non-lathering mess.

Chris

If I were to begin a quest for ancient shaving cream recipes, such as were evidently born in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, I'd probably start looking at old books and sundry publications from those ages. The ingredients were obviously substances that existed in those early times. Bear grease and ambergris for example. Might be an interesting intellectual pursuit. That would be my humble suggestion.