shaving with lye soap

[breadstick]

I think I remember reading something about people using regular lye soap for shaving. My wife just made her first batch and it turned out really well and I was thinking about trying it. Has anyone here tried shaving with regular lye soap?

I tried to search for the answer, but the word "lye" is too short to search.

 

[Fairlight]

"lye soap" and "soap" mean the same thing. All the soaps and creams that get talked about for building a shaving lather around these parts are soaps made by saponification of animal or vegetable fats with lye (sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide). Even "glycerin-based" soaps contain sodium tallowate, sodium palmitate, or something along those lines. Any skin cleaning product which does not contain sodium hydroxide must by definition be a detergent based soap, and I haven't heard of anyone successfully shaving with a detergent bar.

I suspect you'd be surprised to discover how many moisturizing creams contain these also.

To answer your question, it is worth trying your wife's soaps as shaving soaps. If the recipe she uses turns out to not be good for shaving, there are shaving soap recipes on the internet if you google for it. Making a good quality shaving soap at home is entirely doable.

 

[breadstick]

That's pretty much my plan. I have found a few recipes for shaving soap, but none of them have any comments on if they work or not. I don't think she will mind a little trial and error, but 3 weeks is a long time to wait to see if it works or not, especially since I move to Korea for a year in less than a month so she'll have to mail it to me. If it doesn't work, she'll be out the time and money.

 

[RichGem]

I think I remember reading something about people using regular lye soap for shaving. My wife just made her first batch and it turned out really well and I was thinking about trying it. Has anyone here tried shaving with regular lye soap?

I tried to search for the answer, but the word "lye" is too short to search.

Nothing to add to the info above, except a little google-fu will solve the "word too short" problem.

From the google home page (or box in firefox, etc.) enter:

term site:badgerandblade.com

This will use google to search for "term" limiting the search to those that are found on the site after the "site:" bit.

So...in a google box....

lye site:badgerandblade.com

would use google to search for the term "lye" limiting the search to the badgerandblade.com website.

You can add other terms if you wish and use all the regular operators such as minus to exclude from search, etc.

 

[WinstonSmith]

My wife has made her own soap in the past too. It wasn't much for shaving, but we liked it for the shower. IIRC she used olive, coconut, and palm oils in a mix. I've seen a few comments from those in the know around here that olive oil is the kiss of death to a good shave soap.

One thing that made all the difference in the world was aging it. She'd make it in a large block about the size of home plate, then chop it up into bars and let it sit for 3 months or so. That'd make for passable but fairly aggressive soap. As the stuff sat, it'd mellow considerably over a further 6 months, improving all the way... Almost like it starts as "Octogon" and ends as "Ivory".

 

[soapbox]

More info in the B&B Wiki page on soap.

 

[SliceOfLife]

There are a handful of fats that make suitable shaving soap. Generally they are high in Stearic or Palmitic acid.

These products aren't often used in hand and body soap as they aren't particularly cleansing, and they are often middle of the road nourishing (with dozens of superior nourishing fats available). They can and sometimes are added to body soap to improve the lather, but a good shaving soap is so vastly more demanding of lather quality than body soap that it's a very unusual body soap that is suitable for getting a decent shave.

 

[BigBuddha76]

well, if she has some left over, I would be willing to try it

 

[WastedResources]

If your wife makes another batch, most shaving soaps have bentonite or kaolin clay as an added ingredient to make the lather a little more slippery.