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Thoughts on ingredients list from our soap makers/experts?

Sodium tallowate, potassium stearate, potassium palmitate, sodium cocoate, ptoassium cocoate, water, glycerine, fragrance, titanium dioxide, sodium chloride, o-tolyl biguanide, trisodium hedta.
 
Sodium Tallowate is a mix of lye and beef tallow (beef fat). Soldium hydroxide (lye) mixed with beef tallow (fat) is saponified and turns into sodium tallowate. It's found in most commercially produced bars.

Same thing with cocoate it is what occurs mixing lye with coconut oil.

Titanium dioxide is used to lighten a color or produce white bar soap.

Sodium chloride is plain old salt (also good on french fries :).

Glycerin is a humectant. It is porduced naturally in soap from saponified fats and potash (lye).

Sue
 
Very interesting. This is what's listed as the ingredients on the puck of vintage Old Spice shaving soap that I recently coughed up for.

Is there anything on the list that stands out as a "they just don't do that anymore" kind of ingredient?
 
They list it as a low hazard. I'm not worried, but I think that wouldn't be a big selling point.
 
I'm unfamiliar with 'o-tolyl biguanide'. Maybe someone else has personal knowledge of this ingredient.

Reading further on the website (noted in previous post) it further states that neurotoxicity is to [the ingredient itself] not when it's contained in a product.

i.e.... I wouldn't recommend anyone eat a cup of pure baking cocoa but is sure makes a good chocolate cake when it's part of the ingredients.
Sue
 
It makes me wonder if this product could be recreated even if the desire by P&G to do so was there, or for that matter, if anybody else could take that list and do it.

I know that there is stuff today that performs superbly, but it's sad to see something that was such a fixture for so long slowly fade away.

I like using the vintage puck I bought, and it performs as well as I remember, but I kind of feel like I just shot a passenger pigeon for the sport of it. When this one is gone, I'll get me some Aged Spice and I'll be able to use it guilt free.

Oh, and my wallet will feel better, too.
 
I'm unfamiliar with 'o-tolyl biguanide'. Maybe someone else has personal knowledge of this ingredient.

Reading further on the website (noted in previous post) it further states that neurotoxicity is to [the ingredient itself] not when it's contained in a product.

i.e.... I wouldn't recommend anyone eat a cup of pure baking cocoa but is sure makes a good chocolate cake when it's part of the ingredients.
Sue

I don't know what that one is either.. but it looks like tallow soap to me.. Go for it, should be a good shave!
 
Very interesting. This is what's listed as the ingredients on the puck of vintage Old Spice shaving soap that I recently coughed up for.

Is there anything on the list that stands out as a "they just don't do that anymore" kind of ingredient?

Nope, fairly standard and up-to-date ingredient list. Sorry...
 
trisodium hedta.

Oh, and you won't find too much of that anymore, but that's onlu because the disodium and tetrasodium edta variants are easier to make. Just a metal sequesterer though, to bind iron in production, and a little bit of calcium and magnesium during use...

Henk
 
I thought that might be the case. It's nice to hear form some of you with chemistry knowledge.

I guess the question becomes, if it's a "pure and simple soap", why there isn't something like it on the shelves here in the USA?

It's worth noting that the ingredient list for Williams, the surviving mass market tallow soap, lists potassuim stearate, then sodium tallowate, omits the potassium palmitate and potassium cocoate, and adds stearic acid, penasodium pentetate, and tetrasodium etidronate.

I'm no chemist, but as a humble shaver I note the lather comes thick, rich and easy from the vintage Old Spice shaving soap, While the Williams isn't noted for those properties, although when softened up by warm water it gets closer to performing like the Old Spice.

I'd say the vintage Old Spice performs more like Tabac or Palmolive, two great European soaps.
 
I guess the question becomes, if it's a "pure and simple soap", why there isn't something like it on the shelves here in the USA?
I'm not really sure. I've often wondered at the noticably different ingredient lists for products like VDH and SCS; and when I saw Mantic's videos on method shaving where pure olive oil soap is 'primed', 'lubricated', 'luxurioused', and what not my first response was: why not put everything in one simple, ready-to-use puck or tube...?? The reasons could be economical, historical, or even simple logistics of the manufacturing process. Consider: The USA is, compared to most other countries, a huge chunk of land, and that means that a manufacturer wishing to deliver nation-wide probably takes too much risks by using just a single production facility. Not to mention additional shipment costs and the logistics of timely delivery. So it would make sense to use multiple 'local' production facilities. But if ingredients with strict quality control tolerances are specified for the recipe, the local sites must be made too complex again. So one would tend to develop simple recipes using synthetic intermediates whose purity levels and the like are much easier to keep an eye on.
 
Consider: The USA is, compared to most other countries, a huge chunk of land, and that means that a manufacturer wishing to deliver nation-wide probably takes too much risks by using just a single production facility. Not to mention additional shipment costs and the logistics of timely delivery. So it would make sense to use multiple 'local' production facilities.

I beg to differ. It may have made sense to have localized production facilities in the past, when cross country shipping took the better part of a week, or two, or more.

That is no longer the case, with cross country shipping taking at most a few days: I can order a product from a west coast online shaving store, and have it in two days.

It makes far more sense, to have one large facility, with ultra modern equipment, one set of office staff, and only one facility to maintain.

Just about every major manufacturer continues to scale back plants, while in turn ramping up production at the remaining plants. :tongue_sm
 
I stand corrected. That said, it was merely thinking out loud about what I, as inhabitant of a small country, would consider an 'obvious' reason. Still, it's an impressive achievement to have goods move about so quickly.
 
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Yeah, but an even more impressive achievement would be to have mass market, tallow based, easy to lather soap on the market....:rolleyes:
 
I stand corrected. That said, it was merely thinking out loud about what I, as inhabitant of a small country, would consider an 'obvious' reason. Still, it's an impressive achievement to have goods move about so quickly.

Don't get me started on 'Method Shaving' and its backward selection of lather-building materials. It starts with an unsuitable soap (a sodium olivate 'cube'), and then it needs off-line addition of lather stabilizers, where, if you want to market a really good and not necessarily expensive product, you can combine a suitable soap, lather stabilizers (if you really still need it) and other ingredients in one convenient product, not unexpectedly called shaving soap.

DIfferences in formulae for shaving soaps generally reflect differences in available basic ingredients, secondary requirements (such as required hardness) and ways of thinking to end up at a final product that needs to meet ONE hard and fast property requirement: lather quality and stability.

It is relatively easy to judge from a formula whether the soap was made by saponifying oils, mixing presaponified oils, mixing fatty acids/fatty acid salts, or a combination of these.

Other ingredients usually have a clear purpose too. You'll generally find lather stabilizers (emulsifiers), lubricants (clays, petroleum derivates, or silicones), pigments, preservatives, actives (such as bisabolol or allantoin), and perfumes.

Henk
 
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