Burning in the face

So I have been making an awesome shea butter bar that seems to be clearing up the acne of anyone who uses it. I have had a minor concern with this bar however since when I use it (and a few others) it lightly burns my face for 20 minutes. When I say burn I don't mean lye burn. The formula:

20% coconut
35% olive
5% Palm fruit
15% palm kernel
20% castor
5% shea

Caprylic 1.9
lauric 16.8
palmitic 10.4
capric 1.7
myristic 6.2
stearic 4.6

oleic 33.2
linolenic .4
linoleic 5.8
ricinoleic 17.5

I recently bumped up the shea percentage to 9% and cut down the palm kernel and palm a couple percentages but I have not used that yet. So the burning applies to this recipe. I often feel the need to use lotion on my face which seems to correct the problem. This kind of blows me away because I figured that handcrafted soap with all its glycerin wouldn't do this so bad but evidently this is a common problem. From what I understand, a facial soap is different (even in the handcrafted community) and must be designed differently. I know that when I use my castile soap this doesn't happen, AT ALL! But castile soap is useless to those people you want to help with facial conditions (especially if they tend to have oily faces). Btw, I only use unrefined organic oils. Thanks.

Just a suggestion, maybe your cleansing value is too high & the burning is because its too drying.

that could be. My numbers on soapmaker 3 say that the cleaning is 6.1 of 8. Though I know these numbers aren't exact I didn't think that was unrealistic of a number.

The high coconut + palm kernal makes for a very cleansing soap, to which many people are sensitive. I don't use soapmaker 3, but your recipe is a 23 in cleansing on soapcalc, the suggested range there is 12-22 and I prefer my soap lower than that. I would say that is the place to start. Also some people are sensitive to shea butter.

awesome, I'll give it a try. Thank you!

Do you have a latex allergy or any other allergy for that matter?

nothing like that, no

I wonder why this recipe burns your face. An allergy maybe? I would let your face heal and just wash with plain waer or olive oil until it does.

when i say burn I mean that it lightly burns my face for 20 minutes and feels dried out then goes away. No red marks or anything weird.

Still, 20 minutes must be uncomfortable. I always have to moisturize my face after I wash with my soaps or it'll feel tight for over an hour. I bought some aloe hand and body lotion with no methyl or propyl parabens in it and thought it would be such a good thing. Stings any broken skin I have going on like crazy, though.

Interestingly, I never feel tight or burn when I use hemp seed oil in my soap. I think hemp seed oil is one of the more amazing oils we have!

My experience with oils in skin care is that its highly personal. Hemp seed oil does absolutely nothing for my skin, despite many people finding it glorious. I've used and tested over 30 different carrier oils in my skin care but really only found two to be of major benefit to me. You'll probably find its the same with soap. Is everyone else experiencing the same with this soap or just you?

I don't use soap on my face, I use the OCM for my face. You have a very high level of castor and coconut oil. Castor oil is an oil a lot of people find drying in the OCM so the high levels of that could be partially to blame. Castor oil has strong drawing properties when used directly on the skin. Most people use only 5% of this oil in their cleansing blends. I would knock the castor down to 5% and the coconut down to 10% and increase the olive.

Castor & Coconut are 2 of the most interesting oils in our repertoire of oils. Coconut prior to being soaped is one of the most moisturizing available and is wonderful on hair and face, but the minute it becomes soap it becomes one of the most cleansing/drying. Castor is the opposite. In its unsaponified stage it is quite drying but as soon as it becomes soap it becomes one of the more moisturizing/conditioning oils.

If Hemp oil is something you find that really works for you then you should use it regularly. I do love the lather it creates...