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Home made shaving soap

I just barely made a new recipe I had come up with. I am so excited to unmold and try it out. I will report back with how well it worked.
 
There are so many tipes of clay. Are you sure all aren't ok into a shaving soap receipe? For exemple white clay goes on sensitive skin. The green one is great for the oily skin...The red, pink and violet clay have others indications...If you are using green clay on sensitive or dry skin, for sure ain't help :)

Sorry for my english :">
 
Hello,

Hoping someone can help me. I did a bunch of research and tried to come up with a great recipe using Soapcalc and it turned out disastorous. I ended up cooking it in the pot and now it's in the mold so we will see what happens. Here is the recipe I used and was originally trying to make it palm free only to later realize that stearic acid comes from Palm.

Here is my recipe:
Grapeseed Oil 7.36 oz (23% of my recipe)
Coconut Oil 7.36 (23% of my recipe)
Cocoa Butter 4.8 oz (15% of my recipe)
Stearic Acid 4.8 (15% of my recipe)
Castor Oil 5.76 oz (18% of my recipe)
Neem Tree Oil 1.92 (6% of my recipe)

Used Soapcalc and ran this recipe through using both Potassium Hydroxide and Sodium Hydroxide
used 35% water as percent of oil weight and superfatted at 7
Wanted to use 50% NaOH and 50% KOH

NaOH amount was 2.16 oz
KOH amount was 3.03
Water was 11.2 oz

Used about 5% of essential oils with the majority of Cedarwood and a hint of Clove.

I chose these oils due to their stearic content and also was trying to get my Stearic total in the 20's, this recipe works out to 22. Also I read somewhere that you want your conditioning and bubbly to be in the 60's to 70's. Mine is in the high 80's. Made my soap with cool oils and lye/water mixture and as soon as I added the lye/water to the oils it started to seize on me instantly like it turned into blobs etc. Working quickly I put it back on the heat and tried to melt it down and stick blend into submission then added it into a round mold. It was looking watery and started leaking so transferred it back to the pot cooked it more and then it all mixed in and poured it into a wood mold.

So here are my theories: maybe I should not have mixed NaOH and KOH together with water as this was new for me. Wondering if the Neem Oil combined with Castor caused a super fast trace. Wanted to use Neem as it's antibacterial and it's high in Stearic. Can anyone shed light on what happened?

The Soap Bar Quality Numbers are as Follows per Soapcalc:

Hardness 47 Suggested Range 29-54
Cleansing 15 Suggested Range 12-22
Conditioning 50 Suggested Range 44-69
Bubbly 32 Suggested Range 14-46
Creamy 48 Suggested Range 16-48
Iodine 59 Suggested Range 41-70
INS 152 Suggested Range 136-165
 
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Hey Fuchia, sounds like you've caught the shaving soap bug! First off, mixing KOH and NaOH in the same batch is perfectly fine. You mentioned you were trying to avoid palm(I'm assuming this is due to the deforestation issue) but ended up with stearic acid which is a constituent of palm oil. There is stearic acid that is derived from tallow as well but I'm not sure if you are trying to stay all vegetable. As far as your trace issues go, you have several things working against you. First off, stearic acid saponifies immediately upon contacting lye which makes batches containing more than 3 or 4 percent very challenging to pull off using the cold process and even using the hot process it can be difficult with higher concentrations. Castor oil also accelerates trace somewhat and eugenol(a constituent of clove oil) is something that greatly speeds trace as well. All in all what you experienced is perfectly normal for this recipe and is due to those 3 factors for the most part. All you can do is continue stirring and cooking until everything is completely homogeneous and it passes the zap test. Hope that helps. Good luck!
 
Fuchia, there's a few things going on here that I can see immediately.

1. Don't take the term cold in "cold process" too seriously. The oils need to be melted and they and the water lye mixture both need to be mixed when they're about 95 degrees.

2. Ignore the bar quality numbers. They're pretty much useless when making shaving soap. As long as you know why you're using each ingredient, and using the right amount of lye, just see how the soap turns out and works for you.

3. Anything with stearic acid will trace almost immediately, as you've found out. Cooking the soap hot process makes it a little easier to mix everything, but the hybrid process you appear to have used should work just fine, as long as you give it enough time to cure.

4. Since you only cooked it briefly, this is basically a cold process soap, which means you'll want to wait a month or so before trying it out, as if you don't cook it for an hour plus, it takes that long for the fats and the lye to react.

5. Wait overnight and demold it tomorrow and see how it looks. If it looks like a nice moderately firm uniform soap, then go ahead and cut it into bars / pucks and let it sit somewhere dry and ventilated for a month until it's ready to use. (If it's a wreck, consider it a valuable learning experience and start over.) You can test the completed soap by using the "zap test" by tasting it and seeing if it "zaps" like a 9 volt battery. If it does, you need to let it cure longer. If it doesn't, you may be good to go. I prefer to pH test my soaps, but even some of the real pros use the zap test as a gauge, as this video taken at MdC shows. (FF to 1:32. Cue mixer envy by the rest of us soapmakers.)


Keep us posted. You can never tell how it turns out until it's ready to use.

(Try not to get impatient. I've done that when making bath bars in the past, and it's always awkward to wash off your fingerprints. :) )
 
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TandC,

Thanks so much, I've been making cold process soap for a long time and always just made shaving soaps with Bentonite Clay and lots of Castor but lately have become intrigued with a real shaving soap with a long lasting lather. I've never used stearic acid in a CP recipe before and am a bit of a mad scientist in that I'll just try something even if it doesn't work. Sometimes I've come up with great soaps that way. So now I realize this type of soap has to be hot processed unless of course I avoid the stearic acid altogether and just use Palm oil instead. I know Castor and Clove (although a tiny amount) speeds trace just wasn't prepared for the instant mashed potato effect. Just cooked it down and it looks lovely just wanted a round soap in the end. Is the 7% superfat okay or should I aim for a lower percent like 4%-5%? I'm determined to come up with a great recipe in the end. Trying to go all palm free if I can but I still have Palm oil I'm using up so I can try using Palm Oil. Yes I'd ideally like to keep the recipe vegan if possible. Saw another link on her for a vegan one with a higher stearic amount.

JBLA,

Thank you, I joined this group to learn because shaving soaps are new to me. I appreciate your input. Just realized I can use a cookie cutter to make the soaps round.
 
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The first time I tried Stearic in CP I had similar results. Like you I just jumped into it and hoped for the best. I ended up trying nearly 25 different CP recipes containing varying amounts of stearic and came to the somewhat obvious (now) conclusion that using enough stearic to produce an adequate shaving lather was incompatible with CP barring a few extreme techniques. It is generally accepted that superfatting above 5% or so will have a negative effect on lather. As far as going palm free, that is hard to do in a quality shaving soap if you are also trying to be vegan because that eliminates tallow obviously and stearic from tallow.
 
There are so many tipes of clay. Are you sure all aren't ok into a shaving soap receipe? For exemple white clay goes on sensitive skin. The green one is great for the oily skin...The red, pink and violet clay have others indications...If you are using green clay on sensitive or dry skin, for sure ain't help :)

Sorry for my english :">

That's easy; don't use clay. It's not needed and not necessary in a shaving soap. Spend your efforts in getting your formula right before wondering what type of clay to use.
 
Thanks I'm going to try replacing the Stearic next time with Palm Oil and taking the superfat down to 4% to see what difference it makes.
 
If you don't want to use either palm oil, tallow or refined stearic acid (most of the world's production of stearic acid comes from palm oil, not tallow) then the best thing to use is deodorized cocoa butter. In terms of its fatty acid composition, cocoa butter is one of the finest natural fats you can use for making shaving soap as it contains more stearic acid than either palm or tallow. The only problem is that costs much more (by several orders of magnitude) so while it's great for experimenting with at home, it's probably not an economic proposition to use a large proportion of cocoa butter in a shaving soap you are hoping to sell.

To reiterate what TandC said, go hot process. A slow-cooker / crock-pot is a minor investment compared to how much easier it is to deal with high levels of stearic acid and how much quicker one ends up with a useable product.

 
Also... a soap high in cocoa butter will oxidize. Some component of the butter that isn't involved in saponification turns VERY VERY brown when left out. I have some cocoa butter soap that is the color of a deep brown leather sofa... that was white when it was made.
 
Hey all...first time posting, been reading the forums for a little while. I started making soap a few months ago, which lead me to shaving soap, which lead me to wet shaving and then a little obsession with creating my own shaving soap. Two of the variables I see talked about are ratio of Potassium Hydroxide to Sodium Hydroxide and overall percentage of Stearic Acid. So I did a little experimenting...here's the video for it if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5UxMNatAyY

And Fortitudo dei, thanks your comments have been very helpful (along with everyone else who has been sharing their knowledge), thanks!
 
Also... a soap high in cocoa butter will oxidize. Some component of the butter that isn't involved in saponification turns VERY VERY brown when left out. I have some cocoa butter soap that is the color of a deep brown leather sofa... that was white when it was made.

Does the oxidation affect the lathering?
 
Also... a soap high in cocoa butter will oxidize. Some component of the butter that isn't involved in saponification turns VERY VERY brown when left out. I have some cocoa butter soap that is the color of a deep brown leather sofa... that was white when it was made.

A strange one this as I've not had this problem. These days I tend to add 0.1% BHT and 0.1% Tetrasodium EDTA to all shaving and bath soap I make to stop any chance of this happening but even before I did this, I never had a problem with soap high in cocoa butter turning brown (on the other hand, some bath soaps I made which were high in olive oil were another story.... yuck!).
 
Just registered specifically for this post... looks like I am the third person to do so, so this one is really driving some traffic... sticky maybe?

Hey, Fuchia... If you are really looking for palm free *AND* vegan, you might try fully hydrogenated soybean oil.

I understand that processed oils might not be entirely vegan, but they would probably be better than either animal fats or deforestation...

I haven't tried them myself, but at least according to SoapCalc, you would be hitting 87% of the stearic acid level that 'stearic acid' itself would give you... not to mention better numbers than *anything* labeled either 'palm' or 'tallow'.

Might be worth looking into.

New to wet shaving, but I've been looking deeply into soap making, and looking for a new hobby (lol, or two)... might as well kill two birds with one stone.
 
A strange one this as I've not had this problem. These days I tend to add 0.1% BHT and 0.1% Tetrasodium EDTA to all shaving and bath soap I make to stop any chance of this happening but even before I did this, I never had a problem with soap high in cocoa butter turning brown (on the other hand, some bath soaps I made which were high in olive oil were another story.... yuck!).

How high? My 80% cocoa butter soap even lathers tan it's so brown.

And yeah, hydrogenated oleic acid is stearic acid, so if you want a source of stearic other than palm/tallow, your best bet would be to pick an oil high in oleic and find a source of that oil hydrogenated. In fact, the fact that the oil is saturated is probably the primary factor in it's lathering properties, so really any fully hydrogenated oil should serve you well. The only exception to this rule I'm aware of is on the other side of the fence (an unsaturated oil that lathers well).
 
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I'm back again. About to make another Shaving Soap and trying different ratios superfat etc. My dream shaving soap would be palm free vegan and soy free but for now will settle with palm based Stearic in my recipe.
 
I have been studying this thread for a while, and (like a few others) I registered just to comment. I have only made two trial batches, and neither of them are even close to what I want, so I have absolutely nothing to add to this discussion re: that, BUT I wanted to point out that you CAN still access the snowdrift farms lye calc. It's all been archived. Here's the link- http://web.archive.org/web/20110716100637/http://www.snowdriftfarm.com/soapcalculator.htm. The entire snowdrift farms formulary is also archived. I don't know if you can get their from the lye calc, so let me know if anyone wants it.

And I LOVE this thread... I've learned so much from it. I do sell handmade soaps (don't worry, I'm not here to promote or anything, just to learn from "serious" shavers since my husband is SO not one, although he does make a good guinea pig) and I want to be one of those who actually sells a GOOD shave soap, not one based on that about.com recipe. I'm not even going to think about even offering one for sale until I am totally satisfied (even though it is something I am CONSTANTLY asked about!). I am learning a lot, although obviously there are so many opinions that I need to test out myself (high vs. low/no castor oil, clay or not, etc etc).
 
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