Shaving Soap with no Stearic Acid - Lather Problems?

So I tried a local shaving soap made in French Drome region by a local artisan.

When I received the soap right away I had my doubts because the ingredients we usually see in Shaving Soaps were missing.

The ingredients are:

Sodium Cocoate
Sodium SunFlowerSeedate
Sodium Avocadoate
Aqua
Sodium Sweet Almondate
Glycerin
Vitis Vinifera Seed Oil
Argilla
Cedrus Atlantica Bark Oil
Eucalyptus Radiata Leaf/stem Oil
Lavandula Hybrida Oil
Mentha Piperita Oil
CI 77007
Citral
Geraniol
Limonene
Linalool

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Scent is strong but I like it and so I tried to lather it.
First I bloomed it since it is a hard soap and started working on my lather (bowl and hand).
After adding some drops of water it exploded in lather but full of bubbles and no density whatsoever. The more I worked the brush the more lather it created but always with big bubbles like dish soap.

I tried 3 times with different boar brushes, starting dry and adding water drip by drip and with the same results all the time.

The lather after 3 minutes in the bowl just disappeared into a thin film of bubbles on the bottom of the bowl.

So I contacted the Artisan saying that the soap made lather but lacked density to make it a rich lasting lather and that maybe an ingredient is missing to give the density needed like stearic acid.

I want to know your opinion since SHE thinks it is perfect since she claims she made the soap recipe with a barber that fine tuned it.

Would this formula work for a shaving soap???

Well at least not for me. I can add photos if you want

[MENTION=108945]rcoutada[/MENTION], photos are always fun

as far as the soap being fine tuned with a barber, from watching a fair amount of barbering videos from around the world, I'm finding that barbers don't typically subscribe to the tenets that we do here on B&B. They often times like a soupy wet lather, a drier lather, or no lather at all, just water. It's kinda crazy to see all the different methods out there. If the bubbly lather feels slick, I'd give it a go just for the hell of it. The barber might have been shooting for a very thin, but slick lather or the "barber" might be shaving people with a cart, which would benefit from a very thin and slick lather. I would try and load more soap if I were to try and shave with it.

All that said, the soap is probably terrible and not worth your time.

Interesting - looks more like a bath soap from the ingredients... I'm far from a soap expert though.
Good luck!

Pics are cool. But I agree. Pass on it.

Well she's not shaving with it and you can say anything you want about how you developed it but that doesn't make it a product worth buying. If you search on YouTube you'll quickly find videos that explain what a shaving soap should look like and perform. So I'm thinking she's just snowing you. I have stopped buying local craft soaps unless I can verify that they actually know what a shaving soap should do.

dabrock said:

Well she's not shaving with it and you can say anything you want about how you developed it but that doesn't make it a product worth buying. If you search on YouTube you'll quickly find videos that explain what a shaving soap should look like and perform. So I'm thinking she's just snowing you. I have stopped buying local craft soaps unless I can verify that they actually know what a shaving soap should do.

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I couldn't agree more

Stearic or tallow or no go

Stearic acid is not mandatory for shaving soaps. FOr instance I feel myristic acid superior.
IN any case if your soap does not works try again with less water.
If still does not works but still make bubbles use it for a good shower...

Mostho said:

Stearic acid is not mandatory for shaving soaps. FOr instance I feel myristic acid superior.
IN any case if your soap does not works try again with less water.
If still does not works but still make bubbles use it for a good shower...

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I'm no soaper but I understand that steric acid is the best for stable lathers and is abundant in Tallow and Palm oil so it doesn't always need to be added but the ingredient list has very little from the oils used so would need to be added for a stable lather. Oleic acid is considered the best for slickness but also has the drawback of reducing stability so there is a trade off there. You could get a very slick soap that has no thickness in the lather but then we would all just use a slick bath soap or oil, and some do, rather than a nice lathering soap. Certainly for me, a nice silky smooth lather with good slickness will beat out a slightly slicker, but completely watery, bath soap like lather.

I have several locally made soaps that are now doing bath duty but I use them sparingly because most of them include various vegetable oils, like castor oil, and bentonite clay, which tends to be drying.

I am in the beginning stages of jumping into making a good shave soap. I haven't done it yet but I have been doing a lot of reading and and watching videos. There are a lot of things that have stearic acid in it. I saw one soap maker use soy wax because it contained something like 80% and kokum butter has something like 60%. I am sure I am off with my percentages, but you get the idea.

One thing I've notice with the kokum butter soaps is that they tend to create a very thick lather that's almost chunky when you face lather. I would like to see more soaps using it, but I imagine it's a bit more expensive since you don't see it a lot.

I've read several theories posted over the years which I can't verify but made sense to me.

You mentioned that the soap was French. I remember seeing posted theories that the EU was eliminating certain ingredients from its products due to environmental concerns or safety concerns. I also read opinions that these banned ingredients might post a health hazard only if used beyond a human lifetime.

One thing I have learned from experience is that different soaps respond to different amounts of water and mixing. My favorites are Cella and Arko, but if I take a break from using them I seem to forget how to mix them "perfectly."

dabrock said:

One thing I've notice with the kokum butter soaps is that they tend to create a very thick lather that's almost chunky when you face lather. I would like to see more soaps using it, but I imagine it's a bit more expensive since you don't see it a lot.

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Ya, Mike's natural shave soaps have kokum butter, and his lather stays stable even after it falls into a sink full of water. Other soaps I use differ, but you can count on Mike's soap to retain stability no matter what you do to it! I never knew enough to attribute it to the Kokum Butter, but that is a difference between Mike's and a lot of the other soaps I use.

dabrock said:

One thing I've notice with the kokum butter soaps is that they tend to create a very thick lather that's almost chunky when you face lather. I would like to see more soaps using it, but I imagine it's a bit more expensive since you don't see it a lot.

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Kokum Butter scores amazingly well for shave soaps. At 60 it is off the charts for creaminess.

Super lather with it.

rockclimber said:

Kokum Butter scores amazingly well for shave soaps. At 60 it is off the charts for creaminess.

Soap Bar Quality Range Your Recipe Hardness 29 - 54 60 Cleansing 12 - 22 0 Conditioning 44 - 69 37 Bubbly 14 - 46 0 Creamy 16 - 48 60 Iodine 41 - 70 35 INS 136 - 165 155

Lauric 0 Myristic 0 Palmitic 4 Stearic 56 Ricinoleic 0 Oleic 36 Linoleic 1 Linolenic 0

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Should be really good for cushion.

More than a lack of stearic acid (a common fatty acid but not the only one that can be used to make a quality shaving soap), lack of potassium hydroxide is the thing that makes it a poor shaving soap. From the list of ingredients, it appears that the only lye that was used to make the soap was sodium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide makes soap hard. Shaving soaps usually contain some potassium hydroxide as it helps the latherability. To the best of my knowledge, quality shaving soaps contain more potassium hydroxide than sodium. Potassium hydroxide is more expensive than sodium hydroxide. The ingredient list of that soap appears to be that of a bath soap more than a shaving soap. If you don't see potassium stearate, potassium cocoate, potassium tallowate or the like in the ingredient list of a shaving soap, pass on it.

Sodium Cocoate on top of the list tells you all you need to know about this soap! I would expect the big bubbles which are useless for shaving and you may find it quite irritating to the skin as well! Let's put it this way... I wouldn't even shower with it!

MilfordNJGuy said:

Sodium Cocoate on top of the list tells you all you need to know about this soap! I would expect the big bubbles which are useless for shaving and you may find it quite irritating to the skin as well! Let's put it this way... I wouldn't even shower with it!

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Now that is a concise, expert explanation! Wish you had done it 7 minutes earlier so I wouldn't have written that tortured amateur attempt.

Tom Slick said:

Now that is a concise, expert explanation! Wish you had done it 7 minutes earlier so I wouldn't have written that tortured amateur attempt.

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You made some good points and expressed them well! I was just adding to what you said and pointing out that the positioning of ingredients is just as important as the ingredients themselves. Sodium hydroxide can and does make a harder soap than Potassium Hydroxide because Potassium Hydroxide "attracts" much more water to a soap than Sodium Hydroxide but this is also dependent upon the oils being saponified! Try making soap with a large quantity of Castor Oil that has Ricinoleic acid in it and see how soft the soap is you create and how quickly it just melts away! It's a great choice for liquid soap though! Ingredients lists are the most important thing to read before you purchase something as they tell you the most about the product! Thanks for the compliment but you have to remember that I do this for a living.