Things We Should Know Before Start Making Shaving Soap

[wimbouman]

Gents,

In addition to our own brush making projects, Aart and i would like to give making a shaving soap a try.
No commercial purpose intended, just good old DIY challenges.

Can I ask for the collective wisdom of this excellent forum?

Are there any must-knows before we start?
We obviously did our research on the tools, safety precautions and the recipes, but are there any things we should consider before jumping in? Just to avoid the common mistakes?

Any help and hints highly appreciated!

 

[Mama Bear]

2 things I think are most important for beginners... EYE PROTECTION!! you do not want to get lye on your skin, but can really mess up your eyes.. so be careful.

When making soap.. always add the lye solution to the oil.. keep the oil in the pan you are using and pour the lye solution into the oil. If you do it the other way aruond you could get a small volcano. I don't know if this is true personally... but I have heard it enough that I don't take any chances...

 

[drewmac]

I make shaving soap, and the best advice I can give you is one, research and use stearic acid in your recipe (I can't get a soap to work without it), and two, prepare yourself for failure. I made close to 20 test batches of soaps - with modified recipes - before I found a formula I could bring to market. It's a long process, but definitely rewarding in the end.

 

[scaevola]

2 things I think are most important for beginners... EYE PROTECTION!! you do not want to get lye on your skin, but can really mess up your eyes.. so be careful.

When making soap.. always add the lye solution to the oil.. keep the oil in the pan you are using and pour the lye solution into the oil. If you do it the other way aruond you could get a small volcano. I don't know if this is true personally... but I have heard it enough that I don't take any chances...

I <3 Mama Bear.

All chemists should wear goggles, no matter how stupid you look. I have had to be in a lab that was 80` F for three hours with fogging glasses and goggles constantly. It's better than having an eyewash after an accident.

And the whole thing about lye needing to be added to oil, I could be wrong because I'm not in any mood to drag out my chemistry book and run reactions, but it sounds like the same sort of idea as not adding water to concentrated acid.

And if you have any children, lock them away from any and all chemicals and don't let them near you when you're doing it unless they're old. I read a story once about a toddler who poured lye all over himself when his mother turned her back for a moment. (He ended up okay, it was just horrible for him though from what I remember.)

Everyone, be careful in everything that you do, even if you're a pro. Even pros make mistakes or are careless!

 

[michiganlover]

and two, prepare yourself for failure. I made close to 20 test batches of soaps - with modified recipes - before I found a formula I could bring to market. It's a long process, but definitely rewarding in the end.

+1

This point can't be stressed enough. Accept that you are going to spend 100's of dollars on supplies, wasting a ton of it while you perfect your recipe. While it's fun to be a DIYer, that's a ton of money that might be better spent on quality products that you know will work correctly.

Assume just about any recipe you find on the net for shaving soap will be garbage, for two reasons:

1) many people who make soap don't understand the unique properties that shaving soap requires. They think adding clay to a bath soap = shaving soap.

2) People who have perfected a shaving soap that actually works usually end up selling their product, thus they don't want to share the recipe as that would be giving up their livelihood.

 

[SliceOfLife]

2 things I think are most important for beginners... EYE PROTECTION!! you do not want to get lye on your skin, but can really mess up your eyes.. so be careful.

When making soap.. always add the lye solution to the oil.. keep the oil in the pan you are using and pour the lye solution into the oil. If you do it the other way aruond you could get a small volcano. I don't know if this is true personally... but I have heard it enough that I don't take any chances...

Very true. You can get a volcano even if you add the lye to the fats, but it's less likely. Saponification is HIGHLY exothermic, so if your fats are close to, at, or above 212 F, when you add the lye, the heat from saponification will "Spontaneously boil" (think removing a cup of water from a microwave) the liquid out of the lye solution. This will eject steam and oil from your vessel very fast. And that is why we use a BIG vessel and watch our temperatures. This is especially true with Shaving soap because as drewmac says, Stearic or Palmitic acids are vital for 99&#37; of recipes, and they are solid until very close to the boiling pt of water... between 180 and 200 if memory serves. Basically you want the fats as cool as possible while still remaining a clear, uniform liquid. If they're over 200 degrees F, bad things will likely happen.

 

[Aart]

First of all we would like to thank you all for the replies and your valuable advice.Today we made our first batch, pics will follow. I already can conceal you will see an orange soap. (this might have to do with the red palmoil we used)

Viva Hollanda.

In about 6 weeks we will know whether it is shaving soap.

One thing is for sure we used a large amount of tallow and a little bit of olive oil.

Wim & Aart

 

[wimbouman]

So, in the end we managed to do two batches today.
We followed the advice on eye protection and the order of mixing, and experienced no problems.

One is a nice orange soap, which we scented in a pine-ish scent.
We may have underscented, but hey, that's all a part or the learning process.
This soap is tallow and palm based and traced quite fast.

Then we went mad and created another one, aiming for less bubbles and more creaminess, based mainly on tallow. We left out the red palm, and ended with a beautiful off white soap.

So those are off to be stored in a nice dry place and we cannot wait to see how we did. Not expecting to beat the odds, of course, but for a first try I think we did fine.

At least nobody got hurt and we had a great time

 

[CaptainK]

Congrats to both of you! Let us know how it performs when it's ready.

 

[Mama Bear]

So, in the end we managed to do two batches today.
We followed the advice on eye protection and the order of mixing, and experienced no problems.

One is a nice orange soap, which we scented in a pine-ish scent.
We may have underscented, but hey, that's all a part or the learning process.
This soap is tallow and palm based and traced quite fast.

Then we went mad and created another one, aiming for less bubbles and more creaminess, based mainly on tallow. We left out the red palm, and ended with a beautiful off white soap.

So those are off to be stored in a nice dry place and we cannot wait to see how we did. Not expecting to beat the odds, of course, but for a first try I think we did fine.

At least nobody got hurt and we had a great time

Awesome Wim and Aart! I am THRILLED for you both!!

try using some Stearic and Castor... in addition to the Palm and the Tallow.... Castor will give you lots of creamy bubbles.. I think that is what you were looking for with your first batch.

I am pretty sure we have created a monster here... wink!!

BUT GO! WIM and AART!

 

[wimbouman]

There is Castor oil in there!
And a couple of more oils with promising qualities to perfect the tallow base.

We intend to tell more about our recipes as soon as we are sure we did not create toxic product

We talked about stearic, after we did our research.
Weren't able to get it properly, and came up with a recipe that should end up in a hard soap yet bubbly and creamy. Says the calculator.

 

[Mama Bear]

We intend to tell more about our recipes as soon as we are sure we did not create toxic product .

 

[mharris127]

I would hold off on the Castor Oil. I just priced a small bottle, it was $2.39 for four ounces (it is also used as a laxative, taken by the teaspoon)! I doubt you could make more than two or three small VDH size pucks with that amount, which with other ingredients could make your homemade soaps quite costly!

 

[SliceOfLife]

I would hold off on the Castor Oil. I just priced a small bottle, it was $2.39 for four ounces (it is also used as a laxative, taken by the teaspoon)! I doubt you could make more than two or three small VDH size pucks with that amount, which with other ingredients could make your homemade soaps quite costly!

It's available online for ~$1.50 a lb + shipping. The 35lb jug mine came in is by my guess 2.5-3.5 US gallons

 

[wimbouman]

So, I took way too much photo's.


They'll probably end up in another thread, but just to give you a quick impression about our little soap project some pics.

First batch is the tallow & red palm mix, skilfully blended with great finesse and some support by Bosch

The result is a nice orange substance (a lot lighter than the pics suggest, due to the weather they seem a bit dark).

 

[wimbouman]

And the second batch turned out to behave completely different.

A white-ish substance almost icy or glaced.
That turned hard after a long time, and then extremely fast.

The wait is killing us...
I suppose it will take a couple of weeks before we can try and see where we failed

 

[mharris127]

It's available online for ~$1.50 a lb + shipping. The 35lb jug mine came in is by my guess 2.5-3.5 US gallons

That is a good deal, then -- if you are going to make soap with it. The chemist's charge is more than five times that!

 

[Fortitudo Dei]

A note about the red palm oil you used. This is almost certainly palm kernel oil which is extracted from the seeds of the palm tree. It will sometimes appear in the ingredient list of commercial soaps as Sodium (or Potassium) Palm Kernelate.

Palm oil (creamy white) on the other hand is extracted from the pulp of the fruit of the same tree but it is very different to palm kernel oil as far as soap making goes. Palm kernel oil has properties very similar to coconut oil whereas palm oil's properties closely mimic beef tallow.

Thus while you can make a good soap using palm oil as a major component of the total number of fats used, if you were to do the same using palm kernel oil the result would be very harsh on the skin (as it would be if you used coconut oil in high proportions). Generally the palm kernel / coconut content should not exceed 20&#37; of the total fats used.

 

[wimbouman]

A note about the red palm oil you used. This is almost certainly palm kernel oil which is extracted from the seeds of the palm tree. It will sometimes appear in the ingredient list of commercial soaps as Sodium (or Potassium) Palm Kernelate.

Palm oil (creamy white) on the other hand is extracted from the pulp of the fruit of the same tree but it is very different to palm kernel oil as far as soap making goes. Palm kernel oil has properties very similar to coconut oil whereas palm oil's properties closely mimic beef tallow.

Thus while you can make a good soap using palm oil as a major component of the total number of fats used, if you were to do the same using palm kernel oil the result would be very harsh on the skin (as it would be if you used coconut oil in high proportions). Generally the palm kernel / coconut content should not exceed 20% of the total fats used.

Thanks for that information!
We'll have a closer look at the ingredients and review the recipe.

 

[Luc]

Interesting experiment...