If pre-shave oil can gunk up a brush and is considered bad for a good shaving brush, wouldn't soaps that list olive oil as the first ingredient be bad too?
Are olive oil soaps bad for brushes?
- Thread starter Kyle Hyde
- Start date
To answer your first question, pre-shave oils can gunk up your shave brush. Olive oil soaps will not. All soaps are made from saponified fats or oils. Once they have gone through the saponification process they have the ability to create a lather.
Clint
Clint
Yep, Clint is 100% right here. You could gunk up your brush by rubbing cocoa butter on as a pre-shave too, but saponified oils/fats won't do it. They might leave soap scum, but that's a different issue.
Another way of looking at it is that after saponification, it no longer contains olive oil (or any other fat / oil) other than a tiny residue to help moisturise the skin. After the process it becomes a different substance (chemically speaking it become a "salt"). Most commercial soap manufacturers are aware of this and would list it as such (probably something like Sodium Olivate) because that's what it contains. However artisan soap makers like to list the original ingredient (Olive oil) to create a warm-fuzzy feeling that you are using a natural product, even though the oil is no longer present in its original form.
- Thread starter
- #5
Good to know.
