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Homemade shave soap

So I've been making soap for a bit now and decided to make my own shave soap. I followed the recipes that a member posted a while ago but changed a couple of things. The ingredients were originally stearic acid, coconut oil, potassium hydroxide and water.

Funny my enough this is the same recipe for razorock Classic. They also however add sodium hydroxide in a smaller portion than the KoH. This would cause it to be a little more firm and last a bit longer. However my batch came out to around 32oz of soap. Yea.... It's a lot.

I used the the ingredients above but changed it a bit to add Shea butter at 2% and threw I a table spoon of glycerin. Here's what it looked like when I was done $image.jpg

I added a "very sexy for men" Victoria's secret fragrance at the desire of my wife (I was going to use lime essential oil) and the smell faded a bit because I added it early. Strange thing about a soap with this high of a stearic acid content (50%), it started to rise super fast and gelled super fast too.

The verdict - a pretty freakin awesome shave soap, and man was it easy. I'm on a 24 hour shift but I'll show some lather pics when I get home. If anyone is interested in how to make it late me know and I'll give you the details!
 
Haha. basically you get yourself a crockpot, some lye, and the oils you want and plug them into soapcalc.net. I used 50% stearic acid, 48% coconut oil, 2% Shea butter and potassium hydroxide. I threw the glycerin in with the fragrance oil. You melt the oils together and mix the lye with however much water it tells you to. After they're melted you mix it all and let it cook! Once it starts to gel, you add the fragrance. I did it as a hot process soap because from what I heard, if you do cold process it'll seize due to the high stearic acid. I didn't take a bunch of pictures cuz I didn't plan on posting it but like I said earlier I'll post some lather pics later.

As as far as the samples, I think I have to have a vendor tag to do that. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction otherwise?

This has just been a part of a huge DIY kick I've been on. I restored a razor and made some scales. They're not amazing but they're home made and personal. It's all part of a gift for my brother in law. I just gotta work on my honing skills next.
 
I want to do this so badly. Where does one buy the acids and lye? Is there a link to a great video tutorial? I found a few that were so-so. Can you post a screenshot of your calculator? I am currently looking at videos on how to use it.
 
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Wholesalesuppliesplus.com is where I got everything but some of the tools. That website has scything you could possibly needed. When I get to my computer I'll see if I have the soapcalc page up
 
I'm interested too. Could you please walk through the steps in detail if you have time? In particular, let us know what stages are critical or which variables can/might be changed depending on preferences.

Thanks.
 
I'm interested too. Could you please walk through the steps in detail if you have time? In particular, let us know what stages are critical or which variables can/might be changed depending on preferences.

Thanks.

It's soap, you can tweak just about everything in the recipe to your liking. That's what soapcalc is for. You plug in what you want and it tells you how much you need of everything.
 
I played around with the soap calc when I had a little time. After I became familiar with the name of lye and what staeric acid was, I was able to adjust a recipe from you tube easily. Can you use the cold process for shaving soap or only for bath bar soap?
 
Cold process is generally avoided by many artisans because a cold processed soap with over 40% stearic acid is more difficult to work with and mold than a hot processed one. For your own use, cold process works just fine, you just might have to pack a semi-solid molten soap down.

Be wary of mix temps. If you add your lye solution to your oils above ~170 degree's you risk a very rapid and dangerous boil over, as the sap rate of StearA is high, and it is exothermic enough to drive a chain reaction that rapidly boils out the water of your lye solution, throwing up molten soap and oil. Use a big pot (several times bigger than your batch size) and a thermometer in your oils to be safe.
 
Alright as promised here you go
protolather using an omega 599
$image.jpg
Bowl lather(sorry if it looks weak I'm a 100% face latherer)
$image.jpg
This beautiful mug
$image.jpg

Move used it a few times now. Is it the best soap ever? No I think it could have turned out better but for a first try it wasn't bad. Does it shave well? Yes. It could be a little more thick slick. Right now it produces a thick lather but the lather does spread as thickly as say razorock or Proraso. Am I happy with it? Sure. But I'll definitely tweak a few things for next time.

Another poster showed the entire process but he used a slightly different recipe. I'll see if I can find it and link it. If not, I'll walk through it, but without pics it won't be that great.

I agree reed with the last poster, a cold process would most likely seize if you didn't let it cook and gel
 

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I made a very similar soap about a week ago but used 5% coco butter as the superfat, added after the cook. The first few times I used it, it wasn't terribly slick but its getting much better with age. It really need a 4 week cure or so to be best.
 
I'll keep that in mind on curing it. I don't really understand the whole superfatting thing
 
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