WSP Rustic Shaving Soap Review – Oh the Variety!
WSP Rustic Shaving Soap
Wet Shaving Products Rustic Shave Soap is a thick oil-based soap that comes with a large variety of possible scents to try made from all-natural ingredients
Pros
Large Variety of Scents to try out
Nice Lather that springs up quickly
Soft texture feels great on the skin
Scents are subtle and not overwhelming
Small containers are great for traveling
Cons
Sample tins are very small, hard to gather soap on your brush
Somewhat expensive
Can dry out your skin without any pre-shave
The next in our series about finding the best shaving soaps here on Shave Advisor brings us to the Rustic Shaving Soap line from WSP.
WSP has an extreme variety when it comes to options for scents and soaps. They use a coconut oil base to make a nice and smooth textured soap for shaving.
How does it stack up to our other options? Well, you might be surprised!
About the Brand: WSP stands for Wet Shave Products (a pretty self-explanatory brand name). WSP is a brand all about making small-batch soaps, aftershaves, beard, and hair care products just for men. All their products are made in the USA from natural ingredients, and are formulated “in-house” by their own skin care specialists.
WSP Rustic Shaving Soap Description
WSP has several different options for their soap. Most common is their 4.4 oz tins, which are normal for this type of shaving soap. For my part, to make sure I tried out as many different scents as possible, I went with one of their sampler packs which range from 5 to 8 smaller 1 oz tins.
This works out for me, because I’m a sucker for trying out new scents.
The sample tins are small, about the size of the palm of my hand. In fact my razor is actually bigger. That isn’t a problem though. These tins are designed for traveling so they can get tossed into a travel bag and not get pinged by various airport security officials.
The larger 4.4 oz tins don’t have that problem as they have a large enough diameter to swirl your brush around and gather the soap on the bristles easily.
The container tins screw shut and are pretty secure. None of the jostling I gave them, or that the USPS gave them, forced them open at all.
About the Scents
There are a long list of scents available for purchase, ranging from sweet and floral to deep and musky. The great thing is how they definitely make a statement, and yet are very subtle. These will not clash with any pre-shave or after-shave scents you want to use.
For a quick overview of the scents I got my hands on:
Tobacco
Tobacco is a soft smoke smell, with a hint of sandalwood under it. I get a soft smell of citrus underneath, but that could just be me. It finishes nice and clean and doesn’t linger.
Gaelic Tweed
This scent is one of my favorites. It starts with a soft floral note, making me think of wildflowers. That scent quickly moves to a linen type smell, then finishes with an almost sweet honey-like scent.
Barbershop
This scent is a nice classic. It has a musky start that quickly moves to a cleaner almost antiseptic aroma. It ends with a nice floral note.
Black Amber Vanilla
This is one of the stronger aroma’s available in the sample pack. It has a very sweet aroma that hangs around in your nose for abit. It is just on the edge of being cloyingly sweet, but doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Blackbeard
Yar me matey! Yee be wantin’ spice? This be the one for you! In all seriousness, this soap has a powerful spicy aroma, but balances it off with a sugar sweet smell. It brings to mind spiced rum and fruits.
Cedar Citron
Would you like some citrus? This is the one that has you covered. It has a definite orange aroma, bringing a sweet and sour type of hit to your nostrils. It then follows it up with a wonderful cedar scent that helps the citrus aroma to finish cleanly.
Mahogany
This soap has a deeply floral aroma, smelling of flowers and honey. Below the floral though is an oaky or woody aroma like aged wood furnishings.
Lavenderwood
Clean and Floral, this soap comes with a very light aroma that evaporates almost the moment it hits your nose. It ends nice and cleanly.
Sandalwood
Deep, woody, and musky. This sandalwood scent is deep and complex with a spicy finish that almost smells like firewood.
Olympus
This one has a light citrus smell that moves into a soft floral breeze smell. It has a sweet and light feeling, like clean soap after a workout.
Ingredients
These soaps have a deceptively small ingredient list. It’s very short: “Stearic Acid, Water, Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Shea Butter, & Fragrance.”
A short ingredient list you can understand is best, and this is probably one of the shortest I have ever seen.
These are natural ingredients that won’t irritate your skin or cause any issues with sensitive skin. They are also mostly vegan if that is something that concerns you.
The Lather and Shaving Experience
WSP Rustic Soaps were a very pleasant experience to shave with. I tried out several of them over the course of the week, and enjoyed the experience from start to finish.
It did take me adapting some of my shaving techniques to make the tins work best, but that was not really an issue.
How does it Lather?
As you can see from the pictures, the small nature of the soap tins makes gathering soap on the brush and then lathering in a separate bowl difficult. It would be much easier of course with the full-size 4.4 oz tins as you can see in this video.
The best way I found to lather up was just to drop it in my shaving mug and lather straight off the soap itself. After the shave, it was just an easy task of fishing the soap out of the lather, rinsing it off, and screwing the lid back on.
As far as the lather itself, it was good and thick with plenty of suds as it was being built. It lathered VERY quickly, taking almost no time to build more than enough lather for several passes over my fat face.
How was the Texture?
The soap itself has a somewhat oily texture when you touch it but it doesn’t cling to the skin. It’s relatively dry, between that of bar soap and triple-milled soap.
As a lather it is very light and clean, rinsing very easily with water. It feels just like any other soap, really. The great thing being it is light enough to not clog up your razor when you shave, but heavy enough to almost come into stiff peaks while you are lathering it up.
It also rinses off the brush very quickly, so you don’t have to spend so much time cleaning up after you are done.
How was the Overall Shave?
Overall, the shave was very pleasant and easy. I had no trouble building the lather, I enjoyed the scents on my skin as I shaved, then soap rinsed off easily and it didn’t leave any kind of oily residue.
Some guys might not like how light the lather feels, but it is a very pleasant lightness afterward.
My skin did feel a bit dry afterward, but that is normal with most of these light soaps.
Value for Money
From here we run into a slight snag when it comes to the value for money.
The 4.4 oz tins generally go for around $22 USD, which isn’t a bad price, but is somewhat high when compared to what you can get from places like Classic Shaving. It’s a good price if you know exactly what you want, but if you are wanting to just try something, then the samplers are going to be your best option.
The sample packs are a great option if you just want to try out some scents. Though they can be somewhat expensive.
This expense isn’t unwarranted though. These are small patch soaps made with natural ingredients. You can do worse for $22 USD.
Any Common Consumer Issues, Complaints, or Positive Reports?
For the most part, these soaps are reviewed as overwhelmingly positive by most customers. They like the lightness of the soap, the ease of building lather, and the variety of warm scents.
The few complaints that people seem to have are that they are wanting somewhat more of a description of what the scents are when they buy them. As an example, there are a few people (like myself) who think of tobacco as the dried leaf or the aroma of smoke. It’s actually more the fresh green leaves and flowers.
The only other complaints I have seen are people who are not thrilled by the price. Some customers feel the soaps are somewhat overpriced for what they are, but considering the small-batch handmade nature of these soaps, I think we can excuse that.
Final Thoughts – Who is WSP Rustic Shaving Soap for?
Overall, WSP Rustic Shaving Soap is a really solid option for a soap brand that deserves a try. The lather is nice and the texture is good and clean as you shave.
WSP’s Soap is definitely something to give a whirl if you are looking to change up your shaving game.
The samples are also a great option if you are looking for a small gift for a friend or a stocking stuffer for the holidays. Of course, the samples also help a person find the right WSP Rustic Shaving Soap scents before buying the larger 4.4 oz tins, but do keep in mind they are tricky to lather as mentioned above.
You can pick up any of the shaving soaps at wetshavingproducts.com.
