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Olive oil is fine.

Just letting everyone know that it's a coincidence that olive oil soaps suck. I've just made an olive oil #1 soap that makes some of the creamiest lather I've produced. It would seem that the reason olive oil soaps suck is the same reason most handcrafted shave soaps suck. Someone takes a body soap, adds clay, and calls it shave soap. It just so happens that olive oil is very popular in handcrafted soaps (trendy), so a pattern develops.

Olive oil itself doesn't make good soap, you need other fats in there to actually make the creaminess (tallow, stearic, palm), but it in no way inhibits those fats from working their magic.


edit: I am NOT trying to suggest that a soap made of exclusively (or overwhelmingly) olive oil makes good lather. However, that point is irrelevant to most soap users, as I've yet to see a soap that says XX% Olive oil. We judge the ratio of the fats by their placement on the ingredients list (and the way the soap performs for people who's interest extends that deeply). I didn't mean to give that impression.
 
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Prove it. :biggrin1:

I have wasted some hard earned dollars on olive oil stuff. My experience has not been positive.

Are you going to sell any?
 
What about using olive oil as a pre-shave oil? Is it effective for this? You only needs a few drops, so it would seem less costly than some of these pricey pre-shave oils.
 
I've used olive oil based soaps with about the same hit-or-miss frequency as non-olive oil based soaps. I've read several times that olive oil kills your lather, but I haven't found this to be true. Even if it were, I don't see why lather of a particular viscosity is so sought after anyway. Some soaps give a crap lather and a great shave, and others give a great lather and a crap shave.

What about using olive oil as a pre-shave oil? Is it effective for this? You only needs a few drops, so it would seem less costly than some of these pricey pre-shave oils.

You can do this if you'd like. I tried it a few times, but I don't like pre-shave oils in the first place, so I quit. I feel like oils gunk up my brush. Actually, there are some major brand names that use olive oil as their base for their pre-shave oils anyway; AoS for example.
 
Prove it. :biggrin1:

I have wasted some hard earned dollars on olive oil stuff. My experience has not been positive.

Are you going to sell any?

I made a 1 lb batch last week. I'll send out a puck or two when it's cured.


My third primary batch is largely olive oil, but it's not #1

Here's a shot of the 1lb batch and some lather from the residue off the lid of a container I poured it into...
 
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I've used some olive oil based shaving soaps that worked fine and others that only worked as a bath bar. I tend to agree that some must have started out as bath soaps that just had clay added.
 
Ian knows his stuff when it comes to shaving soaps. I would never question him in relation to shaving soaps. Personally, we have chosen to stay away from Olive Oil in our soaps because of the high Oleic acid content. Oleic is great for conditioning and moisturizing, but it doesn't do much for a good lather.
 
Thanks. I agree, it does little for lather. I am including it because it's a quick and dirty way to bump up conditioning. However, it's a common thing around here to suggest that Olive oil kills lather in a way other oils don't, and I wanted to test if that was true or if it was as you say that it just doesn't contribute to good lather. So I made the olive oil #1 soap with Stearic acid #2 and Tallow #3, and it turned out to make some pretty awesome lather. A bit gimicky just to be able to say it's a good lathering soap that's primary fat is olive oil, but that's what I was going for.

I'm still in the very early stages of testing fats to improve the conditioning properties of my soap, so loading it with oleic (balanced with stearic and ricinoleic to preserve the creaminess of the lather) is the fastest way to get a good starting point. Once I have a little more disposable income laying around, I'll pick up some additional oils, butters and lanolin and do several micro-batches to see if I can't get a better quality soap, as I'm hoping the Oleic is really just a stopgap measure for the time being.
 
I'll pick up some additional oils, butters and lanolin and do several micro-batches

Very smart. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many 10 lb batches we tossed during our initial testing. Micro batches made our testing a lot easier and quicker. With micro batches we could do 3 or 4 different batches side by side with minor differences and proceed with the best one.
 
Yeah, I picked up an old 2 quart steel camping saucepan to work in, as doing 16oz batches in a 5.5 gallon canning vat was... troublesome. ;)


10lbs tho... that's bigger than the largest batch I've made. What's your drying setup? I've done a 100oz batch one time and it's taking about 20 square feet of drying rack space.
 
i am wondering about a jojoba oil soap. swmbo has been trying jojoba on her face, legs, and elbows and it leaves her skin really smooth. also she has extremely sensitive skin (has to use those boring detergents and unscented soaps) and it has not caused any issues,
 
10lbs tho... that's bigger than the largest batch I've made. What's your drying setup? I've done a 100oz batch one time and it's taking about 20 square feet of drying rack space.

Nah, it really doesn't take up that much space for curing. We line up bars, standing on their smallest side and space them as close together as possible without touching. For pucks, we just stand them on edge and do the same thing.

Bars will fit in almost the same amount of space as the original mold. Pucks take up even less space than the molds do.
 
I am confused by the original post, In the hundreds of shaving soaps I have tried the olive oil based ones are at the very bottom of the list in performance. Many of our soap chemists have explained why OO is physically incapable of performing as a shave soap. Some of this info can be found in the Wiki.
Are you saying you have made one with OO that is otherwise?
 
I am confused by the original post, In the hundreds of shaving soaps I have tried the olive oil based ones are at the very bottom of the list in performance. Many of our soap chemists have explained why OO is physically incapable of performing as a shave soap. Some of this info can be found in the Wiki.
Are you saying you have made one with OO that is otherwise?

I know your question was not directed at me. But I think I can give you a satisfactory answer.

IMO Olive Oil does not have a good makeup for shaving soap. But he stated that his #2 ingredient was Stearic Acid. IMO Stearic Acid is the BEST thing for a good shaving soap. So it is quite possible that he achieved satisfactory results. Although, a different set of ingredients would almost certainly yield even better results.
 
Yes. As Charismata indicated in his first post in this thread, the primary component of olive oil is oleic acid. The properties of shaving soaps (and salts within them) are determined by their comprising fatty acids. Tallow soap is creamy mostly because it contains a fair level of stearic acid. Oleic salts make a conditioning (but not much else) soap. However, the idea that if Olive oil is prominently featured on a soap it can be written off as a poor performer is mistaken, as even a large amount of Oleic salts do not prevent the stearate salts (or other salts that can produce creamy lather such as ricinoleic) from working. It simply means that a soap that contains olive oil must ALSO contain fats that will provide the appropriate acids for other desirable elements of a shave soap such as bubbling and creaminess. To test this point, I made a soap of ~35% olive oil with tallow, stearic acid and castor oil (all which make creamy lather). This soaps ingredient list would have olive oil listed as #1, but it is an effective lathering soap.

I am NOT trying to suggest that a soap made of exclusively (or overwhelmingly) olive oil makes good lather. However, that point is irrelevant to most soap users, as I've yet to see a soap that says XX% Olive oil. We judge the ratio of the fats by their placement on the ingredients list (and the way the soap performs for people who's interest extends that deeply). I didn't mean to give that impression.


Nah, it really doesn't take up that much space for curing. We line up bars, standing on their smallest side and space them as close together as possible without touching. For pucks, we just stand them on edge and do the same thing.

Bars will fit in almost the same amount of space as the original mold. Pucks take up even less space than the molds do.



It didn't even occur to me to stand them on end. I'm laughing at myself right now. Thanks.
 
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Thanks for the post, Ian. You always have interesting things to say.

I have to admit that I've judged many products by their listed ingredients. This is a good reminder that ingredients aren't everything. Just last weekend I made the mistake of risking $4 on a tube of "American Classic" cream on close-out at Sally Beauty. It seemed to be brushless, but had stearic acid and palmitic acid so I thought it might lather. It didn't. It had pretty good glide, but it wouldn't lather any more than water would, and gunked up my razor badly.

So the next time I see olive oil in the ingredients for a soap, maybe I'll try it. Especially if Ian made the soap.
 
Thanks for the post, Ian. You always have interesting things to say.

I have to admit that I've judged many products by their listed ingredients. This is a good reminder that ingredients aren't everything. Just last weekend I made the mistake of risking $4 on a tube of "American Classic" cream on close-out at Sally Beauty. It seemed to be brushless, but had stearic acid and palmitic acid so I thought it might lather. It didn't. It had pretty good glide, but it wouldn't lather any more than water would, and gunked up my razor badly.

So the next time I see olive oil in the ingredients for a soap, maybe I'll try it. Especially if Ian made the soap.

stearic and palmitic are good for stability. For lather it takes something like lauric or ricinoleic, major constituents of coconut and castor, respectively.
 
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Thanks for the replies -OK so to be clear you made a soap with 35% OO? It was a good performer? What commercially available soap would you compare it to, or what is your baseline for whats good vs not acceptable?
Thanks
 
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