Aaronxqz

This starts off slightly floral and soapy, but the floral note disappears very quickly. Then the juniper berry takes over. It’s a little sharp, but in a really pleasant, clean way.

Give it a couple of minutes and the soapiness starts to come forward again. It’s very well blended, though, so depending on what you focus on, or simply how it wafts in your direction, you might get more of that soapy character, or you might get the sharper, cleaner juniper. The two work remarkably well together.

What’s especially interesting is a strange note I get that almost reminds me of the lingering scent of cigarette smoke, but in a good way. Imagine someone wearing a nice cologne who had been around someone else who smoked. Not actively smoking, and not an ashtray smell; just that faint trace of smoke clinging in the background. If you’ve known a smoker, you probably know exactly what I mean.

My bottle is very, very old, so that could simply be a result of age. I don’t know whether it was part of the original scent profile. Either way, it works surprisingly well. I also wonder whether fragrances from that era were intentionally made to coexist with cigarette smoke. Smoking was so common that even people who didn’t smoke were constantly around people who did, so fragrances inevitably had to live in that environment.

More than anything, though, this smells like every beloved older family member you’ve ever had.

I keep a little of this bottle because it reminds me of a family member. I once let a coworker smell it, and their immediate reaction was that it reminded them of their grandfather.

Some fragrances smell good. Some fragrances smell like a memory. This one does both.

Surprisingly fresh and clean for something marketed as a wood-based fragrance. It opens with citrus, cucumber and a marine/aquatic freshness that actually reminds me a little of Nautica Voyage, just more citrus-forward. Underneath that is a dry cedarwood character. Overall, it smells clean, masculine, easy to wear and considerably more expensive than its price would suggest. I don't find anything particularly offensive or challenging in the scent itself.

There is one major caveat: Sawtooth contains an Iso E Super/OTNE-type woody material, and if you're prone to going nose-blind to those materials, this fragrance can become extremely difficult to evaluate. That's exactly what happened to me. I could smell the opening clearly, then the fragrance seemed to fall off a cliff remarkably quickly. The remaining wood also takes on that dry cedar/pencil-shavings character I associate with Iso E Super. Because my nose adapts to it so aggressively, I can't give Sawtooth a fair judgment on projection or longevity—it may still be there when I can no longer perceive it.

That's unfortunate, because before the olfactory fatigue kicks in, I genuinely like Sawtooth. It isn't a case of a cheap fragrance smelling bad or synthetic and then getting excused because of the price. The actual scent is good. Fresh citrus, aquatic cucumber and cedar make for a very approachable everyday fragrance, and it punches well above what Duke Cannon charges for it.

So my recommendation comes with an unusually specific warning: if Iso E Super doesn't mess with your nose, Sawtooth is absolutely worth trying for the money. If you're highly susceptible to olfactory fatigue from Iso E Super, though, this may be a frustrating fragrance—you can lose the ability to smell it long before you've figured out what it's actually doing.

For the price, it's a great deal. I just wish I could keep smelling it.

This very strongly smells like pina colada for about 2 hours and then goes away and leaves a dry down that's quite nice but barely detectable. In high heat, the smell is quite overpowering and sickly. This is probably my least favorite thing that I've bought and the thing that I am least likely to try again. It's basically a pineapple vanilla full frontal assault that fades away into the night.