I picked up this soap, over a "Last Chance" notice, at my local Whole Foods. (Sorry for the bad photo, I guess I should put a light in my bathroom closet.) Is this really "great for shaving"? It isn't really sandalwood, that's for sure. I can believe the almond and rosemary extracts listed as ingredients, and it smells fine, so that's no problem. But for me, shaving soap should have stearic acid, or potassium and sodium stearate, as main ingredients. Soaps that have sodium and potassium palmate, palm kernelate, cocoate, etc. as main ingredients are better as bath soaps. I don't think I'm alone in thinking this. Compare Tabac shaving and bath soap, or that of a number of other brands, and you see that is the main difference. I've read stearic acid gives shaving soap it's characteristic creamy lather which isn't necessary or arguably even desirable in a bath soap. I haven't yet tried to shave with this. Have any of you?
Whole Foods soap "Great for Shaving!"
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Ingredients: Sodium Palmate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Sodium Cocoate, Water, Glycerin, Fragrance (Natural), Sodium Cocoa Butterate, Organic Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Butter, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Hyaluronate, Sodium Gluconate, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemar) Leaf Extract.
No potassium -- soaps without it usually don't have a stable enough lather for shaving.
I haven't tried it, just my impression after looking at the list @mozartman
Made in USA
No potassium -- soaps without it usually don't have a stable enough lather for shaving.
I haven't tried it, just my impression after looking at the list @mozartman
Made in USA
My guess is the "Great for Shaving" is geared towards women for shaving legs, pits, and bikini line. Stable, thick, and rich lather isn't usually required for that. My wife will shave her legs using shampoo or conditioner. 
To get stable nice lather you need a high percentage of stearic acid and/or palmitic acid. These are contained in several fats/oils like Stearic acid (duh), Palm oil, Most butters like Shea butter etc. Of course these turns into their corresponding compound when saponified. Like in this case Sodium Palmate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Sodium Cocoate is saponified Palm oil, Shea butter and Coconut oil all saponified with Sodium Hydroxide.
Like it has been mentioned this soap does not contain Potassium Hydroxide. All that this does is make the soap really hard! It still will produce a good stable lather, but it will be more challenging to load the brush from this soap due to it's hardness. the ratio of Potassium hydroxide, Sodium Hydroxide determines how hard the soap will be. All bath soap will only use Sodium Hydroxide, but many shave soaps will use a combination to help with lather ability. Shave creams are often made with only Potassium Hydroxide.
This particular soap might be fine for shaving it all comes down to the percentages of palm oil, shea butter and coconut oil. If it is a lets say 40% Palm oil, 40% Shea butter, 10% coconut oil and then the rest of the ingredients it will be a decent shave soap I suspect albeit hard. If you have a hard time loading the brush you can always use it as a shave soap stick and rub it on the face. That seems to get more product on your face than just brush loading in most cases. I have made a Sodium Hydroxide only shave soap myself and it is super hard and difficult to brush load from. You have to load the brush a long time. Try it and see how it does. It might work fine.
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I use these shave soaps that have sodium hydroxide and not potassium hydroxide and they load super easily and lather well. I think the Ogallala soaps have similar ingredients and the lather was different -- not bad, but took getting used to.
Em's shave soap is a single lye soap like you mentioned. The reason that you can lather it easy is the high amount of coconut oil. Coconut oil is the lather generator, but it generates bubbly lather, which we are not after. Also the lather will not be stable either. Now I do see that the second ingredient is Palm oil so that helps both with creaminess and stability and then Castor oil which is great because it helps with stability of the lather. I put Castor oil in my shave soaps for that reason, but too high of an amount can make the soap a bit "gummy" feeling.
Did you do a lather stability test on this soap? Make the lather put it on your brush let it sit for 10 minutes and check how much it has reduced in volume. This is the test that bath soaps would fail at. the lather would dissipate rather quickly. The way you are talking though it seems to be fine. If the soap works, use it.
Indeed you can make a fine shave soap from Sodium hydroxide by itself. You just have to know the effect that it has when you work out your recipe. There are always tradeoffs in soap making just like in everything else.
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Thanks all for the knowledgeable responses. With those soap chemistry facts, I don't see why this would be especially "great for shaving" compared to numerous other bath soaps. I'm guessing it will be hard and the lather bubbly and quick to disappear as you suggest. The real question is, why am I such a sucker as to grab something off the shelf just because it claims to be "great for shaving"? SAD. (See what I did there?) But I'll give it a try.
You never know. I am the same way even though I know these things. Now the soap might be perfectly fine and the only way to find out is to try it. I have used/tried several bath soaps and yes indeed you can use them for shaving and I bet many of our great grand fathers used the same soap for shaving as cleaning. Testing new things are fun!
I knew a German girl while I attended university. She shaved her legs with hair conditioner. And let me tell you, her leg hair was definitely thicker and coarser than my facial hair. I'm thinking she would have been ok as well with bath soap.
We're spoiled by our premium experiences. I was reflecting on that the other day when I was annoyed with the CloudStrike outages that kept me from checking the balance in my 401(k) at the moment.
We're spoiled by our premium experiences. I was reflecting on that the other day when I was annoyed with the CloudStrike outages that kept me from checking the balance in my 401(k) at the moment.
Lather is not required for shaving, period. Its a myth and provable.My guess is the "Great for Shaving" is geared towards women for shaving legs, pits, and bikini line. Stable, thick, and rich lather isn't usually required for that. My wife will shave her legs using shampoo or conditioner.
This is 100% correct.
In ancient Rome, men scraped their facial hair off with pumice stone.
In Egypt they added a dilapitory cream to the process, made of arsenic and quick lime
Before that sharpened flint or obsidian used with water were the fashion of the era
Personally I enjoy lather but YMMV.
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That's true. I enjoy shaving with Cremo, which doesn't lather and is very quick and easy to use, although I generally only get about 90 percent as close a shave as I can get with a good soap or cream that does lather. But unless and until I try this Whole Foods sandalwood soap and get great results, I'll stand by my first comment.This is 100% correct.
In ancient Rome, men scraped their facial hair off with pumice stone.
In Egypt they added a dilapitory cream to the process, made of arsenic and quick lime
Before that sharpened flint or obsidian used with water were the fashion of the era
Personally I enjoy lather but YMMV.
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- #14
OK, I finally got around to trying this budget-priced Whole Foods triple milled sandalwood soap (really almond and rosemary and not genuine sandalwood) that supposedly is "great for shaving" and contains "25 percent Hydrating Body Butters" (?? sounds pornographic). I was surprised to discover that it really is very good for shaving. It's a hard soap and you have to build lather slowly by adding water a few drops at a time. A lot of us (including me) don't want to bother with that most days. You end up with lather that may not provide the most cushion but is very slippery and slick. Some here object to fatty, buttery soaps like this and I see their point. But I must admit they can work, it's just a different approach. This one is being discontinued, but I'm sure there are plenty of similar ones that are similarly cheap. It sure does suggest the size of the markup for the so-called "luxury" brands.
I've never been one to spend much on soaps because they all do more than enough to cushion my skin from the blade. In some areas like my jawline I often do touchups without reapplying lather because I can't get to BBS otherwise.
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Agreed. But hard soaps that are time-consuming to work into a lather, like the bath soap I'm talking about here, aren't my thing for shaving. It's like the now-discontinued tallow-based Williams in that regard, with the difference that it is very buttery and slippery. No doubt that's why they claim it's great for shaving.
How did you measure the 90%?
....and @SalS , a noted before on another thread, where you made a similar statement, a key benefit of lather is that it hydrates the beard and a hydrated beard can require 65% less cutting effort enabling an easier shave. With slicker and wetter lather my shaves are easier and even my blades last longer - great anecdotal and numerical evidence supporting the statistic. Even your favorite shaving cream brand, in its FAQ, recommends using lather for tougher beards.This is 100% correct.
In ancient Rome, men scraped their facial hair off with pumice stone.
In Egypt they added a dilapitory cream to the process, made of arsenic and quick lime
Before that sharpened flint or obsidian used with water were the fashion of the era
Personally I enjoy lather but YMMV.
You are correct that lather isn't required, in addition to the venerable millennium old methods listed by Coler you can just use an electric razor and shave your face dry. Again YMMV so many 21st century electric razors have been redesigned to be used for a wet shave using, wait for it..... lather.
Bottom line is that while not required, many, if not most of us, find our shaves are better with lather.
P.S. I have shaved in a pinch with just bath soap that did not lather when traveling. While it worked it was far less comfortable shave than one with good quality lather.
You may be able to get an even better result if you grate this and mix it with grated Dove Men+Care at a 2/1 (WF/Dove) ration. I've used Dove Men+Care as an excellent superlathering agent in my custom shaving soap blends.
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With a highly sophisticated, top-secret method developed after years of research.
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