Mechanic soap

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mommyray

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I want to try a mechanic soap for my husband.

I'd like to use canola, shortening, olive oil, and coconut oil. I am ok with that mix and have experimented a little bit.

Now onto to the next step.....what "scrubbies" to use. He wants something that scrubs, but he says lava soap (pumice) irritates the cuts & burns on his hands -- and all mechanics have cuts & burns on their hands!

I'm playing around with the following ideas:

Oatmeal
Coffee
Grits

Thoughts?

Also, can lemon juice be used for scent? I don't mind the idea of using EO, but have some crazy sense of wanting everything (but the lye) to come from the cupboard.
 
If not pumice I use ground loofah, FINELY ground coffee, or oatmeal in my scrubby bars. Make sure you wet the loofah first or it's REALLY scrubby hehe.
 
You want to use citrus EO, it actually breaks down grease. That is why the mechanics soaps are orange. I love fine ground loofah, it makes a great scrub in soap.

Lemon juice won't work for a scent, it isn't concentrated enough.
 
Mechanics love my orange poppy seed soap. It's made with coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, ricebran oil and castor oil. I add about 1 tbsp of poppy seeds to 2 kg of oils and about the same of oatbran.

I anchor the orange EO, by adding a little patchouli EO. Cornflour can also be used to anchor citrus.
 
i use citrus eos too -- orange or lemon, because, right, they do help break down grease. i also use poppyseeds, and sometimes finely ground loofah or very finely ground coffee is good too.

i made one with guinness stout, quite a lot of poppy seeds and orange eo. my favorite description of it came from a little boy whose dad uses it -- 'the dirty soap that gets you clean'! :)

i anchor the citrus eo with litsea cubeba and always a little cornstarch (same thing as cornflour).

variations of this are also great for gardener's soap.
 
I use pumice and finely ground coffee. I also add a little lanolin for those dry mechanic hands.
 
Thank you!

Thanks for all the replies. All very interesting.

I found what I could at the store, so I'm going to try oatmeal and lemon EO.

Ok, I have not heard of anchoring the scents. I have a million things to learn, don't I?
 
Soap smells like and is behaving like bread...

Hmm.....any advice would be appreciated.

I used this recipe from Kathy Miller's site:

28 oz coconut oil
24 oz olive oil
30 oz veg shortening
12 oz lye
32 oz water

Then I made slurry out of 6 oz grapeseed oil, turmeric (I wanted it to be yellow), and a cup of ground oatmeal. I left this out until it was a thick pudding.

When I made soap last week, it became like mashed potatoes very quickly. This time, I kept the crock on "keep warm" but also used "low" during the mixing phase.

Once I put the lye/water in, I stirred it with a spoon, but gave it a quick shot with the stick blender. It turned opaque fairly quickly. So, I left it alone for about 10 minutes, and then turned into pudding. Then I stirred in the slurry with a spoon, and it turned light orange (instead of the desired yellow).

Before I got it all incorporated, it turned into mashed potato. I slopped it in the mold.

Here's the weird part....after about a minute, the soap started to rise like bread cooking, getting tall in the middle and cracking open.

So, I have two questions:

1. Any suggestions about what I did wrong that made it turn into mashed potatoes so quickly?
2. Why did it rise in the middle?

Two things I do like about this:

1. The little pieces of oatmeal turned a darker color than the rest, which gives a rustic appearance that I like.
2. It smells really, really, really good in my house right now -- like lemon bread.
 
MECHANIC/GARDENERS BAR

I have used poppy seeds and cornmeal together. Makes a nice bar for greasy hands.
 
I do a 100% coconut oil soap with a 10% SF, poppy seeds, Sweet Orange x10, Spearmint, Litsea Cubeba EOs. And color it with carrot puree.

Its so ridiculously efficient at degreasing and smells so good!
 
Are you people using a larger quantity of citrus oils than in usual soap ?

I mean - normally ppo for EOs is based on the desired scent intensity not on the need to provide a cleaning boost.

As a note, I've bumped several times into turpentine containing recipes for mechanic soap. Apparently it helps a lot with degreasing.
 
I am not using 'extra' - just the normal amount (anywhere from .5-1oz ppo).

EOs don't saponify so the benefits would still be 'intact'. But the degreasing in my soap comes from the coconut oil and lower super fat (I normally do a coconut/shea soap with a 15-20% SF).

Also, the poppy seeds add some friction.
 
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