My Soap Making Adventure

I took some flakes from the crock pot that were leftover and lathered them up on my face to see if there is any irritation after the hot process. It passed the zap test and face test, this is something I've wanted to try for a little while. I went ahead and did a full pass ATG as well.

That looks like a really good lather.

The sodium lactate really helped in the molding process. Doing soap in stages in definitely the right way to do it. Next time instead if 3 phases in going to do 4 to really dial in my superfat at the end since the castor oil needs to be saponified more and the Shea butter less. The Shea makes a hard bar and saponifies very quickly.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the process and photos with us. Looks like a beautiful soap that will make a nice, creamy lather. 50% stearic is always a nice start, don't you think? I'm also a fan of all the butters, particularly if you can superfat them, which you are doing. I think this is what makes for a really RICH lather and for a nice post-shave face feel.

Thanks, again, for keeping us in the loop.

kingfisher said:

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the process and photos with us. Looks like a beautiful soap that will make a nice, creamy lather. 50% stearic is always a nice start, don't you think? I'm also a fan of all the butters, particularly if you can superfat them, which you are doing. I think this is what makes for a really RICH lather and for a nice post-shave face feel.

Thanks, again, for keeping us in the loop.

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+1

That is really great looking soap!

kingfisher said:

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the process and photos with us. Looks like a beautiful soap that will make a nice, creamy lather. 50% stearic is always a nice start, don't you think? I'm also a fan of all the butters, particularly if you can superfat them, which you are doing. I think this is what makes for a really RICH lather and for a nice post-shave face feel.

Thanks, again, for keeping us in the loop.

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Yeah, 50% is probably where I would suggest everyone start. I would also recommend most people drop the coconut oil from levels I have seen in Newby soap making recipes. 25% is plenty and I'm going to probably drop it from here even. This stuff lathers so well I think I'm going to drop the castor oil and raise the palm oil in it's place. Then again Maybe it lathers so well because of the castor-oil since that's why it was added in the first place... we will see in beta 1.3
I may reduce avocado oil and replace with more kokum butter. We really are down to the nitty-gritty trial phase of finding what works best with my face.

I think kokum butter is really a great addition. I'm not sure exactly what castor oil brings to the party, but some of my favorite soaps definitely include it.

Castor oil is a humectant so it attracts moisture to your skin it also has a fatty acid makeup that increases lather in soap by creating a rich creamy lather. It is used in many many shave soaps.

Is this the batch that you also sent out to your BA PIF winners?

Keep up the good work..I would try this but don't care for the lye and don't have the room.

Shaved with the silver fox sample again today. Lathered it with a slightly different technique. Was finally able to get a very rich, beautiful lather similar to the soaps I favor. This is a really good soap.

Looking really good! That's some killer lather in the most recent shot1

Palm version 1.1 done in 3 stages. Stage 1 all the saponifiable ingredients, stage 2 the mango seed butter and Shea Butter superfat, stage 3 the sodium lactate and glycerin with titanium dioxide and EDTA.

Since my wife likes the Palm kernel oil based soap the most I'm going to proceed with that until I have it perfected in her opinion. I think the mango and Shea Butters are a perfect place to start for super fat.

Look at what Palm kernel oil brings to the party, this stuff is amazing!

Obviously way to much cleansing and not enough conditioning to use it by itself like that. But there's a reason why it's a component of so many really nice bath bars, for sure.

OK, so this morning I lathered up your veggie soap 2.1 for a test run.

Right off the bat the protolather was frothy and airy. I thought loading more soap solids would help so I stayed on the sample but the protolather was literally climbing up the sides of the container and onto the handle of my brush, so I eventually took to the bowl for lather building.

I thought that with a little calm building the lather would get denser and richer, and it did (to a certain extent); I began to feel like I still didn't have enough soap solids so I briefly went back to the puck. After a bit of lathering back in the bowl again, I thought it was as good as it was going to get, so I took it to the face.

Once I got to the face I could see that the lather was actually too dry. So I added water a few drops at a time and lathered on my face until I got a nice, thick lather that sufficed for the shave.

I think when you start with 50% stearic and 20% coconut oil, the soap really needs some added glycerin to curb the tendency of this type of vegan soap to explode into overly aerated protolathers. I ended up with a really nice lather, but it made me wonder how much better this soap would be with a bit of added glycerin......

By the way, I like the Aqua di Gio scent.

Thanks for the review of the ingredients @kingfisher !!!

Veggie 2.1 has 2 tablespoons of glycerin added so that is a little over 30 grams of glycerin or 6.6% added. I hear some soapers here add up to 13% so I will be going higher next round around 10% and dropping the coconut oil down (likely what is causing the over aeration of the lather) and maybe dropping the castor oil for a batch or two to see what the effects are. I appreciate the feedback regarding specific ingredients and I think the forum as a whole appreciates the knowledge everyone is putting into this thread. Its amazing to me how much I have learned just in this one little thread and it affects my soap purchasing every day as well.
I hope we can get a few more veggie 2.1 reviews before I move on to veggie. 2.2 thanks again Randall.

rockclimber said:

Veggie 2.1 has 2 tablespoons of glycerin added so that is a little over 30 grams of glycerin or 6.6% added. I hear some soapers here add up to 13% so I will be going higher next round around 10% and dropping the coconut oil down (likely what is causing the over aeration of the lather) and maybe dropping the castor oil for a batch or two to see what the effects are.

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I have 11% (by memory) in SF and some folks are using upwards of 15% so don't skimp on it.

Tried the veggie 2.1 version again for today's shave. Once again the lather is plagued by very quick production of lots of airy protolather. It calms down after working it awhile, but never really thickens up the way I'd like it to.

I added a small amount of unscented KMF cream and then it got shiny and denser. Again, I'm guessing it has to do mostly with a bit more glycerin being needed.

Now that my 3017 Cella project is done I am digging into my samples. I used Tallow 1.0 today. It was easy to lather and had decent cushion and slickness. I will be trying the others over the next couple of days to compare.