Home made lamb tallow soap.

[Woody]

I have some lamb tallow which I rendered for woodworking hand tool lubrication but I have more than I need so my shaving nerdiness has come into play and I'm looking at having a go at making a soap. I'm currently trawling the archives and other sites on info for making soap but most of the other websites information is for normal hand soap rather than shaving soap so I thought I'd start this thread for some information and to document what I'm making.

I have about 700g of tallow (spare) which I have rendered from nice kidney fat from 12 month old lambs. It feels good so I'm hoping to turn it into something nice. I have never made soap before and don't want to spend lots on exotic items.

My very early plan is to make a soap with the tallow as a base but using another oil to bulk it out and because I have heard tallow by itself can be too drying. I am thinking perhaps olive oil primarily due to its cheapness but that's one thing I need a bit of advice on.

I'm not sure about how to scent it either. I don't want anything too strong and was thinking perhaps a little bit of eucalyptus oil as it's simple.

Are there any good resources people can direct me to? My reading hasn't been very targeted so far - it has all been fairly general or targeted to other goals. Has anyone here got any experience or recipes they could share? Any advice? I'll come back with some more specific questions when I have done some more reading but anything anyone can suggest to begin with would be appreciated.

 

[MrDentini]

Interesting the lamb tallow, but it won't be easy to find the right SAP number.
Anyhow, first thing you should do, is to find:

To saponify:
. Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), and know its title (pureness percent)
. Potassium Hydroxide (KOH), and know its title (pureness percent) - optional, required only if you don't want to make a hard soap
. Distilled water
. A termometer (preferably digital with a probe)
. A soap mould (PVC tube is ok, self made wooden also, self made plastic resin even better)

For your safety:
. Protective goggles
. Protective gloves
. Long-sleeved t-shirt
. Long-pants
. Childern and cats out

To deodorize the tallow (please do it!):
. Sodium chloride (kitchen salt ok)
. Alum in powder (shaving alum block ok)
. Saponification ingredients above

When you're ready, knock once

 

[Vlad]

Your soaps are out of stock mrdentini!

Interesting the lamb tallow, but it won't be easy to find the right SAP number.
Anyhow, first thing you should do, is to find:

To saponify:
. Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), and know its title (pureness percent)
. Potassium Hydroxide (KOH), and know its title (pureness percent) - optional, required only if you don't want to make a hard soap
. Distilled water
. A termometer (preferably digital with a probe)
. A soap mould (PVC tube is ok, self made wooden also, self made plastic resin even better)

For your safety:
. Protective goggles
. Protective gloves
. Long-sleeved t-shirt
. Long-pants
. Childern and cats out

To deodorize the tallow (please do it!):
. Sodium chloride (kitchen salt ok)
. Alum in powder (shaving alum block ok)
. Saponification ingredients above

When you're ready, knock once

 

[rearviewmirror]

Woodys Australian Wool Fat!

 

[Useless shaver]

Woodys Australian Wool Fat!

lol!!

 

[BallisticBurrito]

Seeing as your join date is 2009..I figured you would know that Olive Oil is a big time no-no.

 

[Rorpen86]

To deodorize the tallow (please do it!):
. Sodium chloride (kitchen salt ok)
. Alum in powder (shaving alum block ok)
. Saponification ingredients above

Does this mean you can deodorize tallow simply by using NaOH or KOH? If so how is this any different than just plain old making soap?

 

[COHunter]

Check out teachsoap.com and read up on it. If you don't know what you're doing you can burn yourself pretty bad. Lye is caustic and exothermic, to the tune of heating up to around 200 degrees when added to water. NEVER ADD WATER TO LYE.

I make my own soaps, never have used lamb tallow. You will need to find the SAP value for it, but it's probably fairly near other tallow, may also be listed as sheep or mutton depending.. Olive oil is what pure castille soap is made from so if you want to use it, use it. It's not a no-no. Castor oil makes for good bubbles, and some may recommend putting in some bentonite clay for "slip". Also, you'll have to let it sit for about 6 weeks or so before you can really use it.

DO NOT deodorize with NaOH or KOH, that's what turns fat into soap. In layman's terms it's lye (NaOH) and potassium hydroxide (KOH). You need to make sure the lye you use (if you want a hard soap) is 100% pure. You can find it in some hardware stores in the plumbing department, it's with the drain openers. It will say 100% lye on the bottle. What you need to be careful of is some "drain openers" may have lye mixed with metal filings to clear drains. If you open the bottle of 100% lye it will be all white with no colored specks in it.

 

[Woody]

I hadn't planned on using much olive oil but having done more reading there seem to be better alternatives anyway. I'm leaning towards about 5-10% Castor oil and perhaps some coconut too (10-20%?). I know where I can get 98% pure Sodium Hydroxide and I added plain salt to the tallow when I rendered it. I will probably render it a second time and add a little more as it's still faintly sheepy.

Is adding the clay a good idea? It seems like it may be abrasive enough to dull the blades but if it's fine enough the effect would probably be negligable. I've never used a shaving soap with any in it before so I'm not sure.

When it comes to scenting it are the fragrance oils as good as essential oils? It seems to just be the man made equivalent of a natural product so I would assume they work ok? What sort of quantities are used? for 1kg of soap my guess for a mild scent would be just 5-10ml. Is this in the ball park?

 

[Anthony_MQ]

If you don't know what you're doing you can burn yourself pretty bad. Lye is caustic and exothermic, to the tune of heating up to around 200 degrees when added to water.

As proof of TV being good for you, I can proudly say I knew this already thanks to season 3 of "Justified".

 

[SliceOfLife]

You aren't going to want to go pure NaOH. It makes for poor lather. A mix of NaOH and KOH is the way to go (I usually decide what % of each I want by way of what % of my fats I want sap'ed with KOH vs NaOH, then break the recipe down and calculate it as two separate recipes, one with KOH, one with NaOH.)


Also, Sheep tallow is inferior to Beef for shaving soap. You'll need a good portion of stearic or palmitic acid. Somewhere in the 30-50% range, a little less if you also throw in some castor oil. A quick peek suggests that around 50:35:15 Tallow:Stearic:Castor would work. And for that mix of fats I'd likely go for a 65:35 or 60:40 KOH:NaOH split (Again that's ratio of FATS saponified by each). Also, take all the safety precautions seriously and make sure your fats are NOT too hot when you add your saponifiers. Saponification is exothermic, and you're adding WATER to liquid OIL... Obviously if the end result is over 212 degrees (after you include the heat added by the saponification which WILL BEGIN IMMEDIATELY) very bad things happen. Watch your temp and use a container 10x or more the volume of the soap you're making (and deep).

 

[SliceOfLife]

Pvc's not too bad. Don't cut it over 18" or so, have a canned good (Beets Yum) that just barely fits inside of it without sticking (IE, if you dropped it in the top it would fall straight out the bottom). If you can't simply press the soap out once it's set, find a hard surface that you won't damage. Line the can up with the bottom of the soap, press down. If it's still resisting, work the can into it and start to use it like a post driver. IE smack the soap down on the can (can tends to stick to the soap enough you can do a few inch lifts and spikes without it dropping out, and that will be enough).

 

[MrDentini]

@rorpen86: To deodorize the tallow I have indicated the ingredients, not the method. I thought it would be premature to indicate the method if the OP hadn't or wasn't going to get the ingredients.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Isn't the process just to throw the fat, water, alum and salt in a pot and boil it for 15mins, let the fat set, strain and wash?

 

[MrDentini]

That's not enough, SliceOfLife, because tallow can have a strong smell, and lamb tallow particularly. The method I recommend is the following:

1st pass: Use a very light lye, that is for each kg of tallow use 3 to 5 grams of NaOH and 250gr of distilled water (read carefully the safety instructions, before). Add the NaOH to the distilled water, mix with a spoon and use a thermometer and wait for the temperature to go down to 45 celsius degrees. In the meanwhile, melt down the tallow on a mild flame and bring it to the same temperature. When the temperatures match, put the lye in the tallow and mix with a stick blender (we're doing a light saponification here), then boil it very mildly on the flame. You will notice a grey spume that you have to remove with a skimmer until there's no more (those are the impurities where the smell comes from). Let it cold very slowly. When it's completely cold, if there's water left in the mixture it will be mucilaginous and separated by the fat, so drain it away. Then go with the second pass.


2nd pass: Same as the 1st


3rd pass: Back to the flame, but now add 2% of salt and 1% of alum. Let it cold completely. Drain the excess water.


4th pass: Back to the flame to remove all the water that's left. When it reaches 100 celsius degrees you may see greyish water surface, remove it again with the skimmer. Be careful, when the water has completely evaporated the boiling fat will make big bubbles that will sprinkle all around. Better if your wife is not nearby


This will give you a whitened, deodorized, ready to use tallow that will last a long time without decomposing, if properly stored.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Good to know. Thanks.

 

[Woody]

All the work I'm doing is outside on a portable electric hotplate and I will wear a full face shield (I have one anyway) and proper gloves etc. I am taking the safety side seriously.

I'm interested to hear that lamb tallow isn't as good as beef for shaving soap. I had assumed that because it was such a great pure white tallow it would good - just shows how little I understand the chemistry behind saponification and the exact make up of the different fats. Would it generally just be the scrappy fat from under the skin that gets used? I have the kidney fat because I wanted to try the kidneys (never eaten kidney before) but would all the rest have worked just as well?

I was way off in my guess about the scents - looks like I'll have to shell out a bit more on them. I might have to think about what I'm doing with more of a long term goal. I will have access to a fair bit of fresh beef fat in a few weeks so I'll have a think about buying more of the other oils, rendering the beef fat and then making another batch. Like many of the interesting ideas this forum throws up it snowballs fast.

I've been stuck inside sick for the last few days but I'll go out this weekend and see if I can find local sources for some of these oils and lyes. I have a few ideas about where they might be and if I can find them then I can buy smaller amounts and go get more rather than do a bigger online order that I might not use. I think that will give me a bit more of an idea of where to go from here.

 

[MrDentini]

Why don't you just try with your tallow, it could give you surprising and unique results.
Just add some unsaturated fatty acid, coconut oil for example, it depends on what you can find more easily.
I would help you to refine and balance the recipe, if you want.

 

[BentonClay]

Glad I found this older thread. Someone gave me some tallow that smells like, there is no other way to say it, vomit... which I assume is rancidity. Can it be salvaged? Does the outlined deodorizing process remove only the muttony or beefy smell? Would it also remove the smell of rancidity? Also, is the process as described meant for previously rendered tallow or could it be used at the beginning of the rendering process as well? And how do you tell the difference between "spume" and the soap curd?

 

[Obsidian Butterfly]

I had some old bear tallow that was stale and slightly rancid. I tried every method of removing the bad smell I could find and nothing worked. I made soap anyways and the stuff smelled so bad it couldn't be used.
Best thing to do is get some fresh tallow, it should only have a slight meaty smell at the most.