Your favorite homemade shaving soap recipe?

Hi everyone!
I've been reading this forum for a while now and there're so many different DIY shaving soap recipes here.I've tried two recipes so far and faced some problems.
Both recipes had plenty of tallow and stearic acid in them.[FONT=&quot][/FONT] The lather is not bad, but even after adding essential oils I can still smell the tallow, which I certainly don't like. Is there any way to avoid using tallow and still get that nice creamy stable lather?
Moreover I found out that some oils which are especially good for the skin (like jojoba) can kill the lather.Is there any way to make shaving soap beneficial for dry skin?
At the moment I'm looking for the best recipe and I'd be really grateful if you could share your favorite time-tested one with me.
I hope I'm not asking for too much
sorry for my English and
greetings from Moscow!

Send plywood99 a pm and ask him about his olive oil shave soap. It fits your criteria to a T.

My favorite recipe.

50% stearic
25% tallow
25% coconut oil
KOH to 5% SF
35% water

Use a "double saponification" where the tallow is melted first with the addition of ALL of the KOH+water. Once traced add stearic. Once traced add coconut oil.

Where did you get the tallow? I bought mine from Essential Depot and it didn't smell very strongly.

Cheers-
Dave

Dave, not overly sure that the method would bring any benefits - there were some test done over on SMF about it and it didn't seem to make a difference. With adding at trace, you are just at the start of saponification anyway, so the majority of the reaction is still to come.

As to recipes, you could try a 45:35:20 split of stearic, coconut and tallow so the tallow is a lower amount, adding 7% of the oil weight (so stearic + coconut, not including the lye or water) of glycerin after the cook

Effy said:

Dave, not overly sure that the method would bring any benefits - there were some test done over on SMF about it and it didn't seem to make a difference. With adding at trace, you are just at the start of saponification anyway, so the majority of the reaction is still to come.

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My purpose in "double saponification" is an attempt to ensure the only remaining fat in the SF is coconut and not a combination of tallow (or lard) and coconut. The reason for eliminating any remaining "raw tallow" (or lard) is to minimize or eliminate the "tallow/lard" smell of the soap. Other than that I concur that it confers little or no benefit.

My last batch I made a mistake and have residual lard in the soap. The soap performs excellently but is a little "lardy" smelling.

As far as trace and saponification, yes, at trace the reaction is "just starting." Although I am not fully intimate with the chemistry I do know that saponification is really a 2-step process where in step 1 the glycerin is "removed" from the triglyceride, and in step 2 the fatty acid is turned into a soap salt ... my assumption is that trace is the beginning of step 2. With that said IME the coconut oil is the slowest to saponify so if I start with tallow and then add stearic at trace, by the time I add coconut I have a good chance that the only fat in the SF is coconut.

Of course YMMV but I thought an explanation might clarify my logic.

Cheers-
Dave

It's fine, just that so often I see people talking about adding things at trace, which saves maybe 30 minutes from a 24hour+ reaction and makes not a blind bit of difference - the work from Kevin Dunn supports that. With HP, you could do a 0% SF and cook, then add the superfat at the end once all lye and oils had combined.

While if what you are doing is good for you, no problems - but if there is a way that saves you hassle then I would prefer to say it rather than not.

Effy said:

With HP, you could do a 0% SF and cook, then add the superfat at the end once all lye and oils had combined.

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Certainly ... the only concern I have there is the possibility that KOH is not "pure." It's possible that if I compute the amount of KOH required using 90% purity and in fact it is 100% then I will have residual KOH in the soap. As such I could make soap only with NaOH but I'm not sure I want to do that.

While if what you are doing is good for you, no problems - but if there is a way that saves you hassle then I would prefer to say it rather than not.

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I understand and agree. The "double saponification" method is not a big deal for me, but perhaps it could be problematic for others.

Regards-
Dave

I apologise to the op for going this route, but it might be of use for soap making anyway. But do you fully saponify and then combine again? If not, if it is just trace and then you cook it all together at the end, it really isn't double saponification as it isn't saponified when you combine. Symantics, but important, nonetheless.

Depends on the fats and temps involved. If you're pouring at 200* and boiling off most of your water (I don't recommend this), 90% of your saponification will be done within the hour. If you're using a very high stearic level, again, 1-2 hrs and it's done. Pure stearic? It's done in minutes.

It's entirely possible to have 99-100% of saponification done in a batch before you hit the molds (and thereby select your excess fats); it just depends on your technique.

As to the OP. Over here, most tallow is refined until it has little if any odor. Try shopping around and see if a similar product is available there. If not there are a few options. Palm is the easiest substitute for tallow, and is imho a little easier to work with. It has similar fat breakdown, less myristic and lauric, more oleate and some palmitate in place of stearate, but the overall effect on soaps is quite similar. You can also go the more broken-down method and just rebuild what you want from Tallow using Stearic, Coconut, and Olive/sunflower/corn/soybean/peanut/oleic acid/etc in a ratio that closely resembles tallow's overall makeup.

Effy said:

I apologise to the op for going this route, but it might be of use for soap making anyway. But do you fully saponify and then combine again? If not, if it is just trace and then you cook it all together at the end, it really isn't double saponification as it isn't saponified when you combine. Symantics, but important, nonetheless.

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That is why I used quotation marks ... i.e. "double saponification."

You're right ... I used it to describe a different process.

Perhaps "one-and-a-half-saponification" for my approach? Haha!

-Dave

dosco said:

.....Perhaps "one-and-a-half-saponification" for my approach? Haha!

-Dave

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Love it!

Agree with the comments about stinky tallow - I'm not sure if some of the soaping supplies websites in the USA have it or not, but it would be a better choice than cooking tallow if available

Thanks everyone for your replies!

I have a problem with finding high quality tallow as here nobody uses it for soapmaking,so I was only able to find some at local butcher's.
However I'll try dosco's recipe and "one-and-a-half-saponification" today,hope it will eliminate the tallow smell.

One more question: is palm oil just as good or nearly as good as tallow?

Vampyrica said:

Thanks everyone for your replies!

I have a problem with finding high quality tallow as here nobody uses it for soapmaking,so I was only able to find some at local butcher's.
However I'll try dosco's recipe and "one-and-a-half-saponification" today,hope it will eliminate the tallow smell.

One more question: is palm oil just as good or nearly as good as tallow?

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After looking around a bit regarding tallow/lard smell ... there are a couple of things that came up.

1. The smell could be a function of rendering. You might want to render, separate, and then do it again (i.e. render the fat twice). Heck, 3 times might be even better. That should take out some of the smelly bits.

2. Apparently temperature used during rendering and soaping could also make the fat smell ... the higher the temp the more the smell (supposedly). Suggest you render and then make soap (i.e. melting of the fats on the stove or crockpot) at the lowest temperature possible.

About palm oil ... maybe. I suggest you take a look at Soapcalc ... what you want to look at and compare is the constituent fatty acids for tallow and then palm oil. You can tweak the palm oil by adding other oils.

Other possibility is go with 25% palm oil instead of tallow and just not worry about it. My quick look at soapcalc shows me that tallow has more stearic than palm oil ... other than that they are very similar FFA profiles. I would bet that you'll get good results anyways.

Regards-
Dave

I make 100% vegan soap. fats are coconut, palm & olive oils. then water & sodium hydroxide, green clay & typically a essential oil. I lather up more on the dry side oppose to using my AoS lather. it creates a rich lather, which loads very nicely . how ever, the lather stability isn't as stable as my AoS. to over come this, I apply & shave in 5 sections of my face, with occasional touch UPS here & there. I find that this method works nicely for me. I reach sapponication with in 5 minutes when using an immersion blender. cures in 3 weeks time.

I've seen this recipe around, but have altered it a little bit to my preference. I've only made it once, but it worked so well, I haven't had the need to make another batch (yet), though I will probably try altering it a bit more in the future. It is approximately 50/50 Stearic Acid and Coconut Oil, with 50/50 KOH/NaOH, hot process in less than a couple hours and at the end I add approximately 2 tablespoons of Glycerin per pound of soap (if I remember correctly, it could be more) with essential oils and then scoop it into bowls to let cure for a day or two. I'm by no means an expert at wet shaving or soap making, but this has been the best soap I've tried out of dozens I've bought over the last 6+ weeks or so.

cjguitar said:

I've seen this recipe around, but have altered it a little bit to my preference. I've only made it once, but it worked so well, I haven't had the need to make another batch (yet), though I will probably try altering it a bit more in the future. It is approximately 50/50 Stearic Acid and Coconut Oil, with 50/50 KOH/NaOH, hot process in less than a couple hours and at the end I add approximately 2 tablespoons of Glycerin per pound of soap (if I remember correctly, it could be more) with essential oils and then scoop it into bowls to let cure for a day or two. I'm by no means an expert at wet shaving or soap making, but this has been the best soap I've tried out of dozens I've bought over the last 6+ weeks or so.

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This is a Martin de Candre clone, and is an example of YMMV.

I tried making this recipe and it irritated my face big time. I attributed it to the super-cleansing-power of coconut soap. For others this recipe works very well - - - but it's not for me.

After trying this I've decided to stick with recipes that have significant fractions of tallow or lard (or maybe palm oil).

Regards-
Dave

Mr Brian said:

I make 100% vegan soap. fats are coconut, palm & olive oils. then water & sodium hydroxide, green clay & typically a essential oil. I lather up more on the dry side oppose to using my AoS lather. it creates a rich lather, which loads very nicely . how ever, the lather stability isn't as stable as my AoS. to over come this, I apply & shave in 5 sections of my face, with occasional touch UPS here & there. I find that this method works nicely for me. I reach sapponication with in 5 minutes when using an immersion blender. cures in 3 weeks time.

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I'd suggest that you add a significant amount of stearic acid to your recipe, which will improve the lather stability. Maybe like 20% stearic acid and the remainder coconut, palm, and olive.

Cheers-
Dave

Aye, the drying soap of Mr Brian seems to be a normal soap with clay - not ideal and the results are showing it.

Effy said:

Aye, the drying soap of Mr Brian seems to be a normal soap with clay - not ideal and the results are showing it.

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what dour you mean by drying of the soap? curing time?
Above when I state saponification in 5 minutes with an immersion blender, i mean trace is achieved in 5.

I misread and thought that you said it was drying. I still think that the recipe is not great for a shave soap, but rather just a normal soap with clay added, which is why it's not working as a shave soap quite so well