Homemade Shaving Soap - An Illustrated Guide to a Test Batch - LONG POST

[goatee]

question...i have a melt and pour glycerin base, mold, ect. but it doesn't have much of a scent at all. oils can be so expensive,, can you recommend a cheap alternative and where i can find this alt.? BTW,, this soap is just a bath soap. not intended for shaving.

which brings me to your soap. AWSOME!! id love to try this but i have no idea what im doing. what i have is a no brainer.

 

[JBLA]

question...i have a melt and pour glycerin base, mold, ect. but it doesn't have much of a scent at all. oils can be so expensive,, can you recommend a cheap alternative and where i can find this alt.? BTW,, this soap is just a bath soap. not intended for shaving.
which brings me to your soap. AWSOME!! id love to try this but i have no idea what im doing. what i have is a no brainer.

You can google "fragrance oils", and there are all sorts of different kinds of cheap options out there. I'm a big fan of the natural / essential oils myself, so I tend to spend a little more to get the decent stuff. Eucalyptus oil is pretty cheap, and gives a nice menthol scent, and lavender is not wholly outrageous, and well worth spending for. (I still want to do a soap scented with rose otto, but at $300+/oz., that may be a little while.)

Do try making your own. Aside from having to pick the ingredients, calculate the lye and water, and mixing it, it's really not that much harder than melt and pour.

 

[quantumcloud509]

THIS IS COOL! Thanks for sharing.

 

[TheVez2]

Been wanting to do this for a long time. Have a very similar recipe saved waiting for me to try it out.

 

[nav]

Fantastic!!
It's very interesting to read such an awesome pictorial!

 

[Barto]

As a soap making hobbyist with a few shaving soaps, I think you made an excellent tutorial! I think you hit the nail on the head with proper research as well. Shaving soap/cream is very different from bath soaps. Good luck and I look forward to hearing how your recipe works out.

 

[Songwind]

Thanks for the post! Will you continue to update on your progress, or do you feel like it's complete?

 

[WoodNUFC]

I have another question for you JBLA, or any of the soap makers out there.

If water was the second listed ingredient, and coconut oil third, wouldn't that mean that the percentage of coconut oil is lower than that of water? In that case, according to the calculators that I've looked at, it would mean that coconut oil is less than 38% (the default amount of water on the calc).

Could someone tell me if I'm understanding that correctly?

 

[JBLA]

@songwind -You're very welcome. The post is more or less complete in terms of how to make a batch of soap. I'm testing a bar and having friends test a couple of bars to see how worthwhile it is. So far, it's performing much better for me than a certain mall store's brand of shave cream, and it's performing better than a local brick and mortar artisan soapmaker's shaving soap for my friend, but I'm holding off on sending samples out to people I don't know until I feel I've got something good, as this can be a tough crowd. I'll update intermittently.

I've been soapmaking for years, but only recently took up wet shaving, so getting my head around the different variables in an ideal shave (razor / blade / brush / pre-shave / lather technique / shaving technique etc.), in addition to the variables for soap ingredients and their qualities, is taking a little thought and effort.

@woodnufc - You're correct, there is less coconut oil than water in this soap recipe. (I used a 30% lye/water solution, and based my calculations on that.) I thought that was a little unusual myself, but that was the way the soap I was working from had it listed, so that's what I went with.

NOTE: If there are any other folks needing a basic guide to lather, the illustrated one on the wiki here is pretty awesome - http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/How_to_make_great_lather_from_a_soap

 

[WoodNUFC]

@woodnufc - You're correct, there is less coconut oil than water in this soap recipe. (I used a 30% lye/water solution, and based my calculations on that.) I thought that was a little unusual myself, but that was the way the soap I was working from had it listed, so that's what I went with.

Thanks JBLA. I just read the original post again, and now I understand your proportions. For some reason I was confusing myself!

My wife wants to start making soap, so I'll have to give this a shot whenever we have the supplies together.

 

[JBLA]

Thanks JBLA. I just read the original post again, and now I understand your proportions. For some reason I was confusing myself!

My wife wants to start making soap, so I'll have to give this a shot whenever we have the supplies together.

You're very welcome. PM me if you have questions; soapcalc.net and google make it pretty simple. (It's also a good winter social thing, as there's a lot of time spent letting the soap cook when it would be good to have friends and cocktails around, and people LOVE taking home party favors, especially when it's handmade artisanal soap that they just made.)

 

[Duran805]

I really want to try this.

 

[josie67]

Great post.....I also subscribed.

 

[Merkur25]

I am very impressed.

 

[Songwind]

How/when would you add scents? Is it during processing? Folded in before molding?

 

[JBLA]

How/when would you add scents? Is it during processing? Folded in before molding?

Good question. The short answer is yes, you fold it in before you pour it into the molds.

The long answer is that you add the scent after trace and before molding when you're doing cold process. When doing hot process, as seen above, you wait for the soap to cool down for a bit (but before it gets too hard to stir and mold), so that the heat doesn't cause the essential oils to evaporate and fill your house rather than the soap with scent.

 

[k2clones29]

I'm fairly pleased with the results. I highly encourage you all to purchase a crockpot, as waking up to fresh soap is pretty cool.

By purchase a crockpot, do you mean "borrow" the misses and hope she doesn't miss it? Because that's what I'm planning on doing

 

[Duran805]

By purchase a crockpot, do you mean "borrow" the misses and hope she doesn't miss it? Because that's what I'm planning on doing

I've been reading up on this soap making stuff and everyone says once you use the crockpot for soap making you don't want to use it to make food. I don't think the misses would like that.

 

[Merkur25]

Thats it I am making my own batch... You gave me the itch

 

[breadstick]

My wife makes soap from time to time and I've used her soap crock pot for food. I do make sure I scrub it out really well, even though it's put up clean when it gets used.