Chiseled Face Shave Soap Review

Chiseled Face makes a variety of men’s grooming products including shave soap, aftershave, beard oil, cologne, and more.

In today’s review, you will learn about one of their most popular products – Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap.  Specifically, you will get an overview of how this shave soap performs with a safety razor.

Note: There is also a video review of this shave soap available:

Review Disclosure

Here are a few notes about this review that you should know:

  • This is not a sponsored post or paid placement.  We have no direct relationship with Chiseled Face.  They have no knowledge that this review is being made.
  • This product was paid for out of our own pocket.
  • This post contains affiliate links to help cover expenses (i.e. buying new products to review, hosting costs, salary, etc.).
  • Tools of Men is independently owned and operated.

Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap Packaging

To give you a quick backstory, Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap was included with the Maggard wet shaving starter kit we recently reviewed.  Therefore, this is considered a sample size at 2oz rather than the full 4oz size:

ghost town barber shaving soap on bathtub ledge

And here’s a closer look at the ingredient label:

closeup of chiseled face ghost town barber ingredient list

There are a few things to note here:

First, the ingredients are nearly all-natural.  The inclusion of potassium stearate and potassium cocoate are both relatively safe ingredients according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and are found in many men’s grooming products.  

The potassium stearate acts as an emulsifying agent (source) that will prevent the ingredients from separating.  Potassium cocoate is a surfactant that is made through a combination of coconut oil and glycerin.

But perhaps the most important ingredient to call out here is the inclusion of potassium tallowate – also known as beef tallow.  This is derived from rendering-down beef fat (source) which provides a slick and lubricated base – the essential feature that men look for in a quality shave soap.

Should you prefer animal-friendly shave products, then this shave soap isn’t for you.

Overall, the ingredient label is fairly clean and should be fine for most men.

Lathering with Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap

Let’s take a look at how this shave soap lathers.

After soaking and wringing out the shave brush, I went ahead and started working the bristles deep into the soap for about 30 seconds.

If you are coming from a shave cream background, you will find that the soap has a much firmer body and requires a bit more effort to load – especially when compared to a soft shave cream like Taylor of Old Bond Street.

Here’s how the brush looked when fully loaded:

man holding shaving brush loaded with ghost town barber shave soap

After first adding a bit of warm water and Proraso Pre-Shave Cream (reviewed here) to my face, I began working the loaded brush into my skin.

After adding just a little bit of extra water to the brush, the lather began to develop nicely:

man applying ghost town barber with a shaving brush to face

Ultimately, here’s what the lather looked like on my face once fully done:

man looking at camera with ghost town barber fully applied to face

Overall, it was nice on the application and consistency.

Shaving with Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap

Now before we go over the shave demonstration here are a few details to note:

  • For the pictures in this article, it was for the third pass with the shave soap – the first two were done for the video (shared at the start of this article and available here).
  • The razor used is a Merkur 38C – which you can read a full review of here.
  • The razor blade used was a Super Shark blade.

Let’s see the Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap stands up.

Here’s how things were looking while shaving:

man using safety razor shaving cream is ghost town barber

And how it looked post-shave:

man looking at camera after using ghost town barber shave soap
man looking upwards after shaving with ghost town barber shave soap

Here are my notes on the shave experience and how the shave soap performed:

What was good about this shave soap:

Shave Experience:

The tallow base for this shave soap created a nice and slick surface for the razor blade to glide on. The results that I was getting from this shave soap in tandem with my blade and safety razor were exquisite.

I found the cushion to be a bit mild.

Scent:

The smell from this shave cream was quite pleasant.  It has an old-timey fragrance similar (but definitely not the same) as sandalwood.  It’s rich, nice, and warm.

Irritation:

Generally, I rate that my skin is mildly sensitive.  When using the Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap, I experienced no irritation.  As you can see in the pictures above, this was my third pass and my skin shows no signs of irritation or redness.  Kudos here to Chiseled Face.

Where the shave soap came up short:

One of the biggest drawbacks to this soap I have noticed after using it for several shaves was that it dissipates rather quickly.

As evident on my chin and neck (north of the Adam’s apple) in the pictures above, you can start to notice that the soap was really starting to thin out.  This requires you to do either risky shaving with a thin coat (not advised) or re-lather and finish up those sections.

I don’t think that this dissipation of the soap is a dealbreaker by any means, but I do find this a bit annoying.

The Bottom Line

Overall, the Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap by Chiseled Face is a fine product.  While it does have a notable drawback, it should provide you with a comfortable shave experience.  It smells wonderful and the tallow base does a good job at making for a decent and reliable shave. 

Where to buy Chiseled Face products?

While a quick Google search can help you find where this may be sold in your country, for USA-residents, you can either buy this direct, through online specialty shave shops, or from Amazon – linked below:

Wrapping it all up

We hope that this review was helpful in giving you a better understanding of what to expect should you decide to pick up the Chiseled Face Ghost Town Barber Shave Soap.

Thanks so much for checking out the review and do come back again!

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