Martin de Candre

I've tried a few tubs of MdC in the past few years. The last time, it was when I used up an entire tub of Fougere from start to finish. It lasted exactly 100 days. It was OK, but not the best ever. I haven't been tempted to use MdC again for several years. My personal observations are that (1) it costs too much; (2) it is not slick as I like in comparison to many others, particularly when doing the final smoothing and buffing pass with water only; and that (3) there is an unpleasant background chemical scent that is common to every tub I've ever tried. When the rose version came out, I was able to get a sample from someone in UK, and the rose scent was too strong for my tastes.

I used a tub of Vetiver from start to finish and I got nearly 250 shaves from it. Some days I knew when I had loaded too much or not hydrated the lather enough because the slickness wasn't there and I would see a soapy build up sticking to my blade even after I rinsed it under the tap.

I found I had to be very disciplined in not over loading and also making sure I added plenty of water.

I pretty much only use MdC nowadays; my skin has never been clearer and the value for the soap is excellent.

A lot of folks don't care for the benzoin scent base, personally I love it that much that I'm tempted to order the “Natural” MdC soap which is supposed to be scent-free but in fact smells of the benzoin base. To each his own.
 
It is a lovely soap , a very nice natural formulation , I love the scents (I have tried them all except Rose). I find the performance excellent but you have to get the mix just right , It lasts for a long time and I don't get bored of it.

I have a lot of skin reactions to soaps , but MDC always leaves my skin feeling wonderful , I am a big fan , but then I tend to be content with just owning a few nice soaps and using them over and over again , I know others love the variety of trying many different ones. Oh and I should say I alway Bowl Lather so that could of course make a difference.

Maybe pickup a sample or 2 from shave dash and see what you think.
 
I picket up a sample of MdC Fougere and to be honest the performance exceeded my already high expectations. I ordered half a dozen varous soap samples such as Wholly Kaw, Valobra, Le Pere Lucian etc all in fougere scents and found the MdC the most natural scent out of the all. I have only tried Wholly Kaw and MdC so far and while both are superb MdC had the edge for me. YMMV and all that.
 
Well had my first shave tonight with my Dovo and MDC fougere, it really was superb, faultless and very smooth and comfortable, it was one of four samples I bought and this was the first of the four, I can see me buying this. I have a new to me vintage shell strop with a silk linen strop, I think this linen strop has made a big difference to my edges, what I thought before really good now has a different level....but with three changes...the mdc soap and the strops it could be all things combining or even just one, but something has changed and i'm going mostly for the strop, all my shaves have improved since I " Refurbished it" but I must admit I do like the mdc, wish they would bring it down in price to around £5 a tub :)
I have seen some going in the marketplace a bit cheaper but used...I may go down that route if it becomes available again.
 
Well had my first shave tonight with my Dovo and MDC fougere, it really was superb, faultless and very smooth and comfortable, it was one of four samples I bought and this was the first of the four, I can see me buying this. I have a new to me vintage shell strop with a silk linen strop, I think this linen strop has made a big difference to my edges, what I thought before really good now has a different level....but with three changes...the mdc soap and the strops it could be all things combining or even just one, but something has changed and i'm going mostly for the strop, all my shaves have improved since I " Refurbished it" but I must admit I do like the mdc, wish they would bring it down in price to around £5 a tub :)
I have seen some going in the marketplace a bit cheaper but used...I may go down that route if it becomes available again.

Ach!!!... just bought a rose scent MDC, Call it a late Christmas present :)
 
Morning all, when this thread was first posted i followed it with a little interest, i must admit that i had seen the Martin de Candre soaps in the past but had never paid them too much attention as they were frankly out of my price range. So after this thread was posted i revisited the soaps and took a closer look at the ingredients, and being an amateur soap maker thought "I can make that!" So i did.

The ingredients for this soap are pretty basic and inexpensive, stearic acid, coconut oil, touch of salt bit of glycerin and saponified with potassium hydroxide. Their website gives some clues as well, it's made with the hot process and it has a long curing time, although some of this is open to interpretation, soap makers like hot process because the soap is essentially ready to use straight away, though most will cure for a week to ensure saponifacation is complete and to dry out just a little more, so a long curing for a hot process soap could be two weeks, or it could be a year.

Anyway i finished making this yesterday and already the soap is fairly hard, harder than i expected, and a pure white colour. I'm going to let this cure for a minimum of four weeks and see how it goes, and will report back. Having never tried the real deal i won't be able to make a comparison but i'll be able to say whether it's a decent shaving soap or not.

Oh, and there may be a couple for me to give away in the future, my tub is full and i had enough to make a couple of extra pucks, but i'll start another thread for that nearer the time, i'd love for someone who uses the real deal to make a comparison.
 
Morning all, when this thread was first posted i followed it with a little interest, i must admit that i had seen the Martin de Candre soaps in the past but had never paid them too much attention as they were frankly out of my price range. So after this thread was posted i revisited the soaps and took a closer look at the ingredients, and being an amateur soap maker thought "I can make that!" So i did.

The ingredients for this soap are pretty basic and inexpensive, stearic acid, coconut oil, touch of salt bit of glycerin and saponified with potassium hydroxide. Their website gives some clues as well, it's made with the hot process and it has a long curing time, although some of this is open to interpretation, soap makers like hot process because the soap is essentially ready to use straight away, though most will cure for a week to ensure saponifacation is complete and to dry out just a little more, so a long curing for a hot process soap could be two weeks, or it could be a year.

Anyway i finished making this yesterday and already the soap is fairly hard, harder than i expected, and a pure white colour. I'm going to let this cure for a minimum of four weeks and see how it goes, and will report back. Having never tried the real deal i won't be able to make a comparison but i'll be able to say whether it's a decent shaving soap or not.

Oh, and there may be a couple for me to give away in the future, my tub is full and i had enough to make a couple of extra pucks, but i'll start another thread for that nearer the time, i'd love for someone who uses the real deal to make a comparison.
Russ @RussellR5555 will be a good guinea pig. He's a big fan of MdC!
 
Ach!!!... just bought a rose scent MDC, Call it a late Christmas present :)

Well the sample I bought is more or less finished, but I could squeeze another shave from it if I wanted, but, with the new Rose mdc waiting in the sidelines it was difficult to resist. I bought three samples of different makers, mdc fougere being the one I had most interest in, all the samples were very badly broken or sliced into very small pieces, that was a bit disappointing, they were packed in a tiny ziplock bag.
I put the mdc "fragments" into my q-shave scuttle and squashed them together...that worked very well.
Now for my new 200g jar of rose, it is filled to the brim, I applied the soap to my wetish brush holding the jar upside down, having read about 15 swirls being plenty....I went for that thinking..no way!, it turned out plenty for 2 passes, but on reflection, as i applied the soap, I had to keep adding small amounts of water and the lather improved and bloomed, if I had done it a bit better I believe three passes is possible, this was face lathering btw, I have a trumpers rose soap but do not find much difference in scent, but I dont have a good nose so I may be off the mark there, so in summing up, I think it is indeed a quality soap with good scent and performance, the real standout is the price....you will get a awful lot of shaves from a 200g jar and this makes the cost imo worth it. I feel it was a good decision to buy the samples because it lets you really try out a soap you are interested in, I think the mdc sample was £3:50, I have easy had 6 shaves from it and still a wee bit stuck to the scuttle that will do another 1 or 2, I need to look at the other two samples I got...I have totally forgot them...lol, I will post a pic.
 
Morning all, when this thread was first posted i followed it with a little interest, i must admit that i had seen the Martin de Candre soaps in the past but had never paid them too much attention as they were frankly out of my price range. So after this thread was posted i revisited the soaps and took a closer look at the ingredients, and being an amateur soap maker thought "I can make that!" So i did.

The ingredients for this soap are pretty basic and inexpensive, stearic acid, coconut oil, touch of salt bit of glycerin and saponified with potassium hydroxide. Their website gives some clues as well, it's made with the hot process and it has a long curing time, although some of this is open to interpretation, soap makers like hot process because the soap is essentially ready to use straight away, though most will cure for a week to ensure saponifacation is complete and to dry out just a little more, so a long curing for a hot process soap could be two weeks, or it could be a year.

Anyway i finished making this yesterday and already the soap is fairly hard, harder than i expected, and a pure white colour. I'm going to let this cure for a minimum of four weeks and see how it goes, and will report back. Having never tried the real deal i won't be able to make a comparison but i'll be able to say whether it's a decent shaving soap or not.

Oh, and there may be a couple for me to give away in the future, my tub is full and i had enough to make a couple of extra pucks, but i'll start another thread for that nearer the time, i'd love for someone who uses the real deal to make a comparison.

Very interesting reply.

Have you ever had a chance to use 3P? The ingredient list is very similar to MdC but 3P is a croap to begin with but if the lid's left off then it becomes a very efficient hard soap in a short amount of time.

I'd be intrigued to find out how hard your MdC clone is once it finishes curing, especially in comparison to your tallow hard soap ('Bazzlobra' is my name for it) which might be one of the hardest soaps I have ever come across.
 
Very interesting reply.

Have you ever had a chance to use 3P? The ingredient list is very similar to MdC but 3P is a croap to begin with but if the lid's left off then it becomes a very efficient hard soap in a short amount of time.

I'd be intrigued to find out how hard your MdC clone is once it finishes curing, especially in comparison to your tallow hard soap ('Bazzlobra' is my name for it) which might be one of the hardest soaps I have ever come across.

Hi, no never tried 3P, i'm afraid i'm not a fan of the almond/marzipan scent at all so it's totally off my radar. I'm surprised that you find my tallow soap is that hard, i don't find it any harder than OSP or any of the soap sticks that i've used, still as long as it works eh?

I'll update my findings on the MdC clone when curing is done.
 
Hi, no never tried 3P, i'm afraid i'm not a fan of the almond/marzipan scent at all so it's totally off my radar. I'm surprised that you find my tallow soap is that hard, i don't find it any harder than OSP or any of the soap sticks that i've used, still as long as it works eh?

I'll update my findings on the MdC clone when curing is done.

I can just about tolerate the almond scent, but even on some days my nose doesn't find it the best! There are some great almond based soaps, eg Vitos, 3P etc.

Yeah, my sample of your soap is rock solid. I tried to face lather it one day but it was so hard I didn't have the slightest bit of luck! It works superbly though.
 
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