Am I strange?

Somehow I find the idea of tallow soaps very disgusting. You are actually spreading animal fat directly on your face.

Soap is made by combining fat with dissolved lye. And nope, not all of the fat is reacted. When you make a shaving soap you need a lot of foam and the well foaming soaping fats (coconut and palm kernel oil) make a harsh soap. Because of this, soap makers add extra fat in order to make the soap milder. Also only the triglyceride parts of the fat becomes soap, the rest remains untouched (unsaponifiables).

Tallow is OK with me. It works and has ben used for soap for thousands of years.

Animal fat for all!!

I find the idea of butter and sausage manufacturing very disgusting too, but I keep eating them.

Tallow is very good for your skin, and you usually can't tell if a soap is tallow-based or vegan just on its appearance.

I don't think you're strange, although you might be over-thinking it, perhaps. What are your thoughts on kissing another human being?

There are plenty of alternatives to tallow soaps. They work well for me; the "Eeewww!" Factor has never been part of the equation.

They could have come up with a better name than "Grey Poupon" for a mustard I like, though.

Don

I do not think you are strange. I think you do not like tallow soaps.

Man, never go in to the ocean.

(Fish pee in there!)

Actually whenever you see waves crashing against the shore creating foam and see little kids making santa hats and beards with it think of this: the foam is created by congealed proteins and amino acids from organic waste matter. The same goes for foamy hot tubs.

engblom said:

Somehow I find the idea of tallow soaps very disgusting. You are actually spreading animal fat directly on your face.

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I'm not sure you're strange as much as you perhaps are misinformed.

Soap is made by combining fat with dissolved lye.

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Yes.

And nope, not all of the fat is reacted. ... Because of this, soap makers add extra fat in order to make the soap milder.

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Well, that is true however the process used to make the soap defines the type(s) of fats remaining in the finished soap.

Let's consider a recipe that includes tallow, coconut, and stearic. If the manufacturer starts the process with only the tallow and then adds *all* of the lye (and then waits to add the remaining fat) the soaper can be assured of the liklehood that all of the tallow has been saponified.

Also only the triglyceride parts of the fat becomes soap, the rest remains untouched (unsaponifiables).

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I have no idea what you mean by this. Raw fats (also known as triglycerides) are chemical compounds consisting of "fatty acids" and "glycerine." When saponified the glycerine is first separated from the fatty acids. The fatty acids are then converted to salts in an acid-base reaction.

What is leftover at the end of the reaction ("unsaponifiable") that is not glycerin or a soap salt?

You could make a soap out of the various fatty acids instead of raw fats - you'd still get a soap, it just would not have any glycerine in the final product.

To address your original point, if you were to have a soap made from and supperfatted with tallow, yes, there would be some extra raw tallow in your lather. A typical superfat is about 5% by mass, so if you used 1 gram of a soap that was 100% tallow to make your lather you'd have 0.05 grams of tallow in your lather. If you use only this lather for a 3 pass shave and didn't reload from the bar/puck you'd be spreading *maybe* 0.017 grams per pass.

To be more realistic most "good tallow soaps" might have something like 30% tallow, so take the previous figure and divide by 3 again and you might be getting 0.005g of raw tallow per pass.

That's a heck of a lot of 'not much.'

Cheers-
Dave

I think I get a lot more than that on my face when eating meat................................

No I don't think you are strange (similar thoughts have occurred to me too), and as like the other poster stated you might be over thinking it. I have both tallow and glycerin based soaps and the way they lather is similar. It looks like dosco knows a lot more about organic chemistry than I remember and his answer to your question satisfies me.

Effy said:

I think I get a lot more than that on my face when eating meat................................

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Gut one!

I prefer tallow in my kitchen rather than on my face, but if a soap works well, smells good and is affordable I will use it.

I prefer 100% lard based bacon with my eggs.

"Somehow I find the idea of tallow soaps very disgusting. You are actually spreading animal fat directly on your face."
Sorry, but yes you are strange. Sorry to be blunt, but you did ask a question and that's one answer.
The Syrians are widely believed to have been the first to discover soap, and as a species we have been using it for somewhere in the region of 3000 years - almost all of that time with tallow. Even if there are traces of animal fat left due to incomplete saponification, I'm sure it's as nothing compared to what our forbears have smeared onto their skin. Yet somehow they survived. And ultimately you and I were born from them.
So somehow it all worked out. And it will continue to.

Just out of curiosity, Engblom, are you a vegetarian/vegan?

What about you bath soaps?

Limekiln said:

"Somehow I find the idea of tallow soaps very disgusting. You are actually spreading animal fat directly on your face."
Sorry, but yes you are strange. Sorry to be blunt, but you did ask a question and that's one answer.
The Syrians are widely believed to have been the first to discover soap, and as a species we have been using it for somewhere in the region of 3000 years - almost all of that time with tallow. Even if there are traces of animal fat left due to incomplete saponification, I'm sure it's as nothing compared to what our forbears have smeared onto their skin. Yet somehow they survived. And ultimately you and I were born from them.
So somehow it all worked out. And it will continue to.

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+1,000,000. I was going to post essentially the same thing.

You are not spreading cow fat on your face, you're spreading a soap lather on your face. Tallow in soap is saponified. The word "saponified" means "made into soap."

I have ZERO problems with the idea of a tallow soap. I don't really care what fats you use in the soap so long as the combination of saponified fats makes a soap that produces a good shave lather.

kingfisher said:

You are not spreading cow fat on your face, you're spreading a soap lather on your face. Tallow in soap is saponified. The word "saponified" means "made into soap."

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To be fair the OP is correct in that *some* of the fat is not saponified. That's the 'SuperFat' (usually abbreviated as "SF") that everyone talks about.

With that said, the amount of unsaponified fat that would be in any lather would be so small as to be insignificant.

I don't really care what fats you use in the soap so long as the combination of saponified fats makes a soap that produces a good shave lather.

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This.

Cheers-
Dave

If you've ever used Dove, Irish Spring, Lever 200, Zest, or Ivory soap (among a host of others) you've washed your entire body with tallow soap.

I had an aversion to tallow for a while, then when we got an order of Stirling soap, I got over the aversion. Now i think the idea of the commerical chemical soaps are worse. its all perspective

In terms of being weird: everyone is weird. the only normal people are the people you don't know well

I actually find the notion kinda cool. Spreading animal fat on my face to shave with? awesome! Shoot, I wonder if you can use lard as a pre-shave oil...

(then again, I do think I am the strange one. I've eaten raw bacon while cooking, and I'm dang proud of it.

Nope not strange...I just don't over analyze things as much. If I did I wouldn't use/eat 70% of the stuff I do.