I have a lot of lard (pork tallow, how is it called?), may I use it instead of tallow? I've read that it has a shorter expiration.. I could add a preservative maybe? If so, what?
Not that its a big deal, but EDTA is not an antioxidant or preservative really, its a divalent cation chelator, while this may help preserve some things, it's main function in soap is to bind calcium and help it lather better. BHT is, as you said, an antioxidant preservative.Tetrasodium EDTA and BHT which work well together. This may freak-out the hippies but these are tiny quantities of relatively benign preservatives (antioxidants actually) which are commonly used even in so called "eco-friendly" soaps of all descriptions.
Coconut oil | 200 |
Stearic acid | 200 |
Tallow (or lard) | 150 |
Castor oil | 20 |
NaOH % | 35% | |
KOH % | 65% | |
Overfat (?) | 8% | |
Iodine | 19 | |
INS | 201 | |
Hardness | 69 | |
Bubbles | 46 | |
Persistence | 70 | |
Cleaning | 60 | |
Conditioning | 38 |
I would like to change the ingredients (their proportions or add more), to lover the bubbles and the cleaning effect, while increasing the conditioning.
Any hints?
Other natural preservatives* I could use are (they are maybe easier to find for me):
. Citric Acid
. Grapefruit Seed Extract
. Rosemary Oil Extract
Hi everyone, this is an OLD thread of mine, but since then I have done two other recipes, that all worked well. However, I now know what works best for ME. Honestly, I have a few commercial and artisan soap and lately I just always seem to grab the ones I made. Also, as it turns out, i'm in the pro clay camp. Clay thrown into regular soap does not make it a shaving soap, but clay thrown into shaving soap makes it a better shaving soap. I like how to skin feels after the shave when there's added clay. I've tried Bentonite and Kaolin. Both are nice. Benonite feels a little nicer, but the soap ends up greyish. Kaolin is better than no clay, and the soap stays white.
I won't be making a commercial venture out of this, so I thought I would share my final recipe for others to try. (i'm an open source software nut too)
For one pound of shaving soap:
Oils
Beef Tallow 165g (33%)
Stearic Acid 165g (33%)
Coconut Oil 100g (20%)
Castor Oil 70g (14%)
Lye
Sodium Hydroxide (NAOH) 25.2g
Potassium Hydroxie (KOH) 65.6g
Distilled/Purified Water 180g
This is a 35% NaOH to 65% KOH ratio in snowdrift farm's calculator.
Hi there, thanks for posting this charles_r. I'm really looking forward to (eventually) moving to exclusive use of homemade shave soap.
I just tried a small batch of this last night:
66g palm
66g stearic
40g coconut
28g castor
10g NaOH
26.2g KOH
72.7g H2O
1 tsp kaolin
1 tsp peppermint oil
Before last night I've never made soap before, but I've been wanting to get into it for a little while. First I made a similarly sized cold process batch of a NaOH bar soap castille variation, which went fine (to my untrained eye). I had all the stuff out and had ordered the materials for your recipe (palm subbed for tallow though), so I decided to try it out. Everything went ok until I put the hydroxides into the oil. Hydroxide was 41C, oil was 48C. The second I turned on the stick blender it turned into mashed potatoes! I tried mixing it up with a spatula and packing into a PVC pipe. We'll see if it turns out but I'm not too hopeful. Re-reading this thread, it seems you went to hot process to solve this problem. Any advice, other than going to HP?
Thanks again,
-Holly
Maybe your SWMBO can teach mine!
But really good job! Nice to see all this work come out to be so successful.
Psst...if you ever sell some to B&B members let me know
We've toyed around with the idea of giving out classes. But no idea how this would work online. For your other question.. well.. just look at my tagline
We've toyed around with the idea of giving out classes. But no idea how this would work online. For your other question.. well.. just look at my tagline
Oh nice, good to see you used that skill and are sharing it around I have to recoup from some AD but I definitely want to save this. Great soap and no name-brand cost