Lindy, I hope you mend quickly and completely! :smile:
Depending on which version of my shave soap formula I am making, I'll either use clay or not.
Let me start out by saying that my hubby has always loved my regular shave soap formula that I've always made for him with kaolin clay. He's always gotten a smooth glide with it, excellent cushion/protection, a baby butt smooth shave with absolutely no cuts or even a tiny nick, and it made his face feel awesome with no dryness or tightness afterwards.
Then I did some 'clay-less' experiments over the summer with my regular shave formula as a result of the passionate 'badgering' of the dirt eschewing, crazy wet shaving dudes here (absolutely no hard feelings dudes- I say that good-naturedly with a twinkle in my smiling Irish eyes), and contrary to their hopes, the results confirmed that using clay was absolutely
essential to that particular formula.........at least 'as is'.
Without the addition of clay to that formula 'as is', hubby reported that there was no cushion in the lather
at all and that it was the 'crappiest shave' he's ever had with my soap (I told him not to hold back on the critique, and he didn't, lol). Never had he felt so vulnerable using my shave soap before.
But then, when I tweaked my formula by replacing some of my tallow and butters with straight stearic acid to bring my total stearic level up over a certain % while leaving out the clay, surprise, surprise- hubby had a wonderfully pleasant, glide-y, cushiony shave (and he still is).
I learned a few new things that day- 1) that the crazy wet-shaving dudes were probably not so crazy after all and had a valid point, and 2) that clay was completely unnecessary in my particular formula- just as long as my stearic levels were high enough.
IrishLass