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Col. Conk shaving soap ingredients

Luc

"To Wiki or Not To Wiki, That's The Question".
Staff member
Hi,

First, I want to say that I never tried any Col. Conk shaving soap. The main reason is the ingredient list. As http://www.col-conk.com doesn't show what their soap contain except Vitamins and oils, I thought it would be good to show a complete list. I found one in a forum in German(Considering that I do not speak nor read the language, you can imagine that I time to kill and I am obsessed to get an answer...) where someone wrote to them and here's the answer he got.

  • Triethanalamine
  • SLES (a variation of Sodium Lauteth Sulfite)
  • DI water
  • Propylene Glycol
  • Soap Flakes
  • Stearic Acid
  • Tatrasoddium EDTA
  • Polysorbate-20
  • Color
  • Fragrance

Now, I do not want to say that Col. Conk is bad because I do not know the product. All I will say is, have a look at those ingredients in http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com and judge for yourself if you still want this soap. As I think that Grand-Pa would keep it natural, I am trying too.

I am still using my "chemically enhanced" Wilkison sword shaving soap but I found someone that can make it and will publish the details as soon as I know if the stuff is good.

As a good boy, here's my source: http://forum.nassrasur.com/showtopic.php?threadid=669

You will have to look for a post on: 10.11.2003, 23:35 Uhr

Cheers,
Luc
 
Hi,

First, I want to say that I never tried any Col. Conk shaving soap. The main reason is the ingredient list. As http://www.col-conk.com doesn't show what their soap contain except Vitamins and oils, I thought it would be good to show a complete list. I found one in a forum in German(Considering that I do not speak nor read the language, you can imagine that I time to kill and I am obsessed to get an answer...) where someone wrote to them and here's the answer he got.

  • Triethanalamine
  • SLES (a variation of Sodium Lauteth Sulfite)
  • DI water
  • Propylene Glycol
  • Soap Flakes
  • Stearic Acid
  • Tatrasoddium EDTA
  • Polysorbate-20
  • Color
  • Fragrance

Now, I do not want to say that Col. Conk is bad because I do not know the product. All I will say is, have a look at those ingredients in http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com and judge for yourself if you still want this soap. As I think that Grand-Pa would keep it natural, I am trying too.

I am still using my "chemically enhanced" Wilkison sword shaving soap but I found someone that can make it and will publish the details as soon as I know if the stuff is good.

As a good boy, here's my source: http://forum.nassrasur.com/showtopic.php?threadid=669

You will have to look for a post on: 10.11.2003, 23:35 Uhr

Cheers,
Luc

Nice to see a fellow Melbournian around here!!

I am a little confused about your post. All naturally occurring substances are in fact chemicals themselves. "Natural" soaps that your great great grandfather would have had, would have been made from lye (caustic soda or sodium hydroxide) and animal fat or oil and bone ash, stewed up and boiled, strained and then formed into cakes.

The list of ingredients you have shown are simply synthetic replicas or in most cases such as sodium EDTA (ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid), stearic acid, DI water (deionised water, which is just purified water) are in fact natural substances. Other things such as triethanolamine, propylene glycol give the soap it texture, moisturising lubricating properties, which in the old days would have some from things like lanolin. Which is still made by stewing up sheep skins.

Chemicals have always been around and always will be, some of the fancy names used nowadays tend scare some people. Personally I do not think there is anything to be afraid of or reason for avoiding these sort of products.

By the way if you really want to be turned off, I would be happy to tell you how they still make gelatin for jello/aeroplane jelly etc, but that’s probably for another forum.

Cheers.
 

Luc

"To Wiki or Not To Wiki, That's The Question".
Staff member
G'Day,

Well, let's put it this way then, natural ingredients that were modified. Now, this is how I think and maybe it's not the best way but what I want is something as close as possible as the natural stage. Meaning, it was not processed too much.

I agree with you that chemical are coming from a natural element somewhere. The reaction of two ingredients will produce another one and they gave it this name. My point was more about the other website when you have a look at the "result" ingredient and the studies that were made at the time.

As I said, I am not saying this to make everyone avoid the product but just to inform since the ingredient list should always be available and it's not the case for this.

As for Lye, well, it's another example, the chemical reaction of Lye when making soap will product water and salt. If it's done properly...

Cheers,
Luc
 
Welcome aboard.

Interesting first post - instead of just asking where you could find a natural soap or indicating that you were in the process of having someone make you a natural soap, you took a more confrontational approach (whether you intended to or not).

There are lots of members who share your concerns/want natural products - and, if you take the time to look around a bit, ask nicely, you'll see that there a lots of cottage soapers who make excellent all-natural shaving soaps that should work for you. In fact, several are members here and routinely provide us with information regarding the ingredients and techniques used to make soap.
 

Luc

"To Wiki or Not To Wiki, That's The Question".
Staff member
Thanks,

Well, tomorrow(Saturday) is the big day for me since I will go and get me soap supply for the next 2-3 months. I know a lady that makes soap by hand and she does not put any ingredients with -iode, -ide, X in it, only the good stuff. I tried to shave with a 100% olive oil soap the other day, the lather was not fantastic but still worked well.

What will be so special about tomorrow? She started to make shaving soap. I know she already has two shaving soap for sale on her website but that third one is supposed to be the one that will be her best.

My plan is to buy all three soaps and try them. I will then post my impressions + ingredients + how to contact her if you want some.

She goes to Farmer markets here in Victoria, Oz. However, I think she ship worldwide and take paypal... Anywho, I used her soap (as body soap) for the past 9-10 months now and it's great soap.

For the post, I thought it was like any other post, since I did not have the new soaps to talk about, yet, I thought I should post my researchs since I considered Col. Conk very seriously. I am still thinking about it. Mainly, I am curious about the "Bay Rum" fragrance...

However, I am open to suggestion if someone has ideas on how to get good products that are a little bit more organic, has less ingredients, more natural, etc. I still have to go through some posts on the forums as I started to follow this website a few weeks ago.

Well, thanks all, love the input.

Cheers,
Luc
 
Do you have any relationship to this soapmaker?

Oh certainly not. . . well it is sounding likely that the soapmaker is his mother/sister/special someone. . . Sory that's me being controversial. . . but that's how is seems to me.
 

OldSaw

The wife's investment
And yet another opportunity for me to say, Love the Colonel. I've been using Colonel Conk almond shave soap for about 20 years now.
 
hey fellas. new member here, Ive been browsing this forum and a few others and have been thinking of joining for about a month now and this was the green light for me. Im sure my future posts With autism and birth defects rapidly becoming an epidemic in this country I have recently been paying much closer attention to the stuff they put in our everyday products. and its down right scarry. Enough about that lets get down to brass tacks: Yes even natural substances are in fact a chemical compound but take a look at what the chemicals in this soap really are...

Propelyne Glycol is Automotive COOLANT!!! prestone, peak antifreeze, Havoline, all those guys. Its the green crap you put in your radiator!

SLES:

Toxicology

SLES is an irritant like many other detergents, with the irritation increasing with concentration.[SUP][2][/SUP] It has also been shown that SLES causes eye or skin irritation in experiments done on animals and humans.[SUP][2][/SUP] The related surfactant SLS is a known irritant,[SUP][3][/SUP][SUP][4][/SUP] and research suggests that SLES can also cause irritation after extended exposure in some people.[SUP][5][/SUP][SUP][6][/SUP]

[edit]Other

Toxicology research by the U.S. OSHA and IARC supports the conclusions of the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the American Cancer Society that SLES is not a carcinogen.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]

[edit]1,4-Dioxane contamination

Some products containing SLES have been found to also contain traces (up to 279 ppm) of 1,4-dioxane. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that these levels be monitored.[SUP][7][/SUP] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies 1,4-dioxane to be a probable human carcinogen (not observed in epidemiological studies of workers using the compound, but resulting in more cancer cases in controlled animal studies), and a known irritant with a no-observed-adverse-effects level of 400 milligrams per cubic meter at concentrations significantly higher than those found in commercial products.[SUP][8][/SUP] Under Proposition 65, 1,4-dioxane is classified in the U.S. state of California to cause cancer.[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][10][/SUP] The FDA encourages manufacturers to remove 1,4-dioxane, though it is not required by federal law.[SUP][11]


Tatrasoddium EDTA: a KNOWN carcinogen(IT CAUSES CANCER)

Toxicity and environmental considerations

EDTA is in such widespread use that questions have been raised whether it is a persistent organic pollutant. Research indicates that under many conditions, EDTA is fully biodegradable. However, when simulating certain non-optimal degradation conditions (high pH), less than 1% of the EDTA was degraded instead to ethylenediaminetriacetic acid, which can then cyclize to 3-ketopiperazine-N,N-diacetate, a cumulative, persistent, organic chemical with unknown effects on the environment.[SUP][23][/SUP]An alternative chelating agent with fewer environmental pollution implications is EDDS.
EDTA exhibits low acute toxicity with LD[SIZE=-1][SUB]50[/SUB][/SIZE] (rat) of 2.0 – 2.2 g/kg.[SUP][3][/SUP] It has been found to be both cytotoxic and weakly genotoxic in laboratory animals. Oral exposures have been noted to cause reproductive and developmental effects.[SUP][21][/SUP] The same study by Lanigan[SUP][21][/SUP] also found that both dermal exposure to EDTA in most cosmetic formulations and inhalation exposure to EDTA in aerosolized cosmetic formulations would produce exposure levels below those seen to be toxic in oral dosing studies.

POLYSORBATE 20
The Clorox-made cleaning solution used by the iRobot Scooba floor-washing robot lists Tween 20 as one of its major ingredients on its MSDS.
Polysorbate 20 is also used by philatelists to remove stamps from envelopes and to remove residues from stamps, without harming the stamp itself


That being said,, Does anybody have a line on some quality natural shaving soap??



[/SUP]
 
Propylene glycol is considered Generally Recognized As Safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The acute oral toxicity of propylene glycol is very low, and large quantities are required to cause perceptible health damage in humans; propylene glycol is metabolized in the human body into pyruvic acid (a normal part of the glucose-metabolism process), acetic acid (handled by ethanol-metabolism), lactic acid (a normal acid generally abundant during digestion), and propionaldehyde (a potentially hazardous substance). Propylene glycol is an approved food additive for dog food under the category of animal feed and is generally recognized as safe for dogs. EDTA is fully biodegradable under ideal conditions. Many companies trying to be "natural" will use Tetrasodium EDTA instead of parabens to preserve their products. A lot of these "natural" products are labeled as such for marketing purposes and pray on consumers fears of the unknown. "This stuff is all natural, I guess the crap I was using before is unsafe and unnatural." Also, I get a kick out of products labeled "organic"... Ether and Naphthalene are organic compounds but I wouldn't want to ingest either. I find it's more a case of these companies hopping on the bandwagon when it comes to the "natural products" market. A company can say "our product is natural, it contains no hydroxyl acid." Many people would start getting scared blindly rounding up all the products in the house that contain this substance. Chemicals are everywhere they are the air we breath, the hydroxyl acid we drink and the soap we lather. So, if I learned anything in college chem its that sure in very high doses (all at once as Propylene glycol does not build up in our bodies it is metabolized) Propylene glycol may have adverse heath effects , so does Theobromine (Theobromine poisoning) in chocolate but I'm not scared of using that either. But at the end of the day everyone is different and if people want to pursue "natural" soap, I say good for you. I on the other hand will spend my time on something more useful to me... like shaving.
 
Thank you for posting the ingredients! Looks like I can strike this from the list of things to try since I have the distinct impression that the alkly sulfates and derivatives such as SLS and SLES are responsible for a lot of dry and itchy skin problems I have been experiencing with products that contain them. The fact of the matter is unfortunately that when it comes to shampoo and liquid body soap, it is difficult to find products that do not contain these kinds of ingredients. Thankfully that does not apply to most good old fashioned shaving soaps.
 
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