Hard bar shaving soap?

I have spent days reading the forums and scouring the internet for what makes a great shaving soap. I have a pretty good idea, however, one question remains... can you make a decent shave soap that will have a foamy lather with NaOH instead of KOH? Or would the bar be too hard to be of use? Thanks in advance.

Believe it or not, I made a salt soap that is awesome for shaving (my legs, that is, DH refuses to try it). It has four clays and is scented with EOs. It has a six-month cure, and the lather is amazing, the dense, whipped-cream stuff perfect for shaving. Extremely gentle, I find no irritation or dryness. Made it to send out as samples with other soaps, but now am gonna have to add it to the line, scented with cedarwood, clary sage and something else.

I modified a regular recipe and HP'd my Orange Spice shaving pucks with 10% stearic acid, scented with orange 5X, benzoin, amyris EO's, then added nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and allspice dried spices. The lather is extremely stable and creamy and the bar is hard, conditioning and no DOS despite the high canola content.
60% canola
30% coconut
10% stearic

Natural20 said:

I have spent days reading the forums and scouring the internet for what makes a great shaving soap. I have a pretty good idea, however, one question remains... can you make a decent shave soap that will have a foamy lather with NaOH instead of KOH? Or would the bar be too hard to be of use? Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Yes you can.

A Hard bar requires some more time to get the lather started, but when it's there ....

When you search for "shaving" you'll get 11 pages of results.

Thank you all for your replies. I've found a bunch of posts that I have missed before. The research is endless and the possibilities are infinite. That's why this is my obsession I think. My husband thinks I'm crazy. But this seems to be the place for me from reading the forums here.

I highly suggest you read some of the shaving posts for ideas. There a a lot of them with some very informative information. Lots of helpful people here.

Yes- like some of the others have said, you can make a good shaving soap with just NaOH. Of course, what one considers to be 'good' is a matter of opinion and will always differ from person to person, but for what its worth, I've been making a 100% NaOH shave soap for my hubby since 2008, and he really loves it. He hasn't had a nick or cut or weeper since he's been using it. And I make it via CP instead of HP, although I do soap it hot (about 135F/57C) because it consists mainly of tallow and high-stearic butters.

Like Eucalypta said, you'll need more time to get the lather started in a hard soap, but if your soap is good in all the other areas such as glide and protection and after-feel, etc., and if your hubby is anything like mine, the little bit of extra time and elbow grease won't bother him.

Having said all that, I've lately been experimenting with my shave soap formula at the instigation, er, I mean inspiration of a couple of self-described troublmaking wet shaver dudes in some of the shave threads over in the CP soap section. lol I'm not really experimenting so much for hubby since he's happy with my formula just as it is, but I'm doing it mostly for myself because I'm a curious soap-maker who wants to see how much I can improve on the ease of lather factor. And also because the troublemaking wet shaver dudes challenged me to try reformulating without clay since many of the major brands don't have clay in them (and the crazy, mad-scientist soapmaker in me just couldn't resist a challenge such as that!). lol


IrishLass

I was doing some research on cream soaps tonight. Cream-style shave soaps were coming up in my searches, because cream-style shave soaps are, for all intents and purposes, basically a type of cream soap.

Anyways....

Here is an interesting tidbit from the American Perfumer magazine from 1912 that relates a bit to this discussion. The author uses rather dense language, but I think you'll get the gist. Notes in brackets [ ] and underlining are mine.

Excerpt from WHITE SHAVING SOAPS, by H. MANN, in The American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, Vol. 7, March, 1912, pp 56-57.

"...We distinguish shaving soaps made according to the warm process, the semi-cold and the cold process, also those that are produced by means of the plodder [mechanical mixer]. We also distinguish solid and semi-solid shaving soaps, also shaving soaps in cream form and, moreover, liquid shaving soaps....

"The requirements that a first-class shaving soap must meet are, that it must produce a thick lather, that will not dry in, that it is, moreover, free from irritating, that is to say, biting effect on the skin, consequently perfectly neutral and that, nevertheless, softens the beard in a proper manner and prepares it for the operation of the razor. With some trade knowledge and care, all these provisions may be fulfilled.

"We take, therefore, as the foundation for such a [solid] soap, a pure, fresh, beef-tallow, because the soap this yields gives a smooth, thick lather; as this alone would, however, not suffice, we add to it, ... about one-third of the quantity of tallow in Cochin cocoanut oil to which some manufacturers add a small percentage of castor oil, which, however, cannot be exactly recommended, because the so-called cold saponification of castor oil should be, wherever possible, avoided.

"For the saponification of the fats, we take about one-half soda lye, of 37° Baume [31.2% NaOH solution] and half potash lye of 35° Baume [32.7% KOH solution]. To prevent any possible excess of alkali, we add to the soap, before pouring it into the frames, about 2 per cent, of the finest washed and pulverized chalk..."

Given all the talk about whether or not to add clay to shave soap, I thought it was interesting to see this addition of chalk (calcium carbonate). They are using the chalk, not as lubricant, but as an additive to prevent excess alkalinity. The way these soaps were made, excess lye was a definite possibility. But the chalk would also function as a slip agent as well.

Thanks for posting that, DeeAnna! It was right up my alley since I'm on a shave-soap experimental kick right now and am obsessively devouring all I can read about the subject. lol

That's some very interesting info. I'm especially very curious why the author(s) of the article made the statement that cold saponification of castor oil should be avoided whenever possible. I wish they had elaborated more about that. Do you have any possible insight to offer as to why they would make such a statement? Maybe the castor they used back then wasn't as refined as the type we use now? Inquiring minds want to know! :think:

That's very interesting about the pulverized chalk (calcium carbonate). In my reading travels of late, I ran into the ingredient list of a popular commercial brand of shave soap that included calcium carbonate and had been wondering about that.


IrishLass

I am not sure about the "snide" comment about castor either. The author didn't elaborate, and I can't say I've seen this in other 1800s or early 1900s texts I've read.

Like you wondered, I suspect what might have been an issue back then may not be now. For example, many late 1800s texts state coconut oil was NOT a desirable addition to fine toilet and shaving soaps. The authors of the day said CO had a strong, objectionable odor that lingered on the skin. Obviously by 1912, this issue was no longer a problem.

In the other recipes in this article, the author returns to this proportion of 3 parts tallow to 1 part coconut as his preferred recipe for shaving soap. What changes is the softer soaps have more KOH and the harder soaps have less. The recipe described in my earlier post would be his "semi-solid" recipe with roughly 50:50 proportion by weight of NaOH:KOH. This is roughly a 60:40 "stoichometric" ratio of NaOH:KOH -- this 60:40 ratio is what you would use in soapcalc or your favorite soap recipe calculator.

His "solid" shave soap recipe is interesting. It's two soaps milled together -- one made with all KOH and the other with all NaOH. Sound familar, Irish Lass? I'll share this section of the article in the next post....

Excerpt from WHITE SHAVING SOAPS, by H. MANN, in The American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review, Vol. 7, March, 1912, pp 56-57.

The next variety of white shaving soaps are the milled shaving soaps, among which the shaving stick holds a prominent place. Some of the American manufacturers especially have been able to find for their shaving sticks a world-wide market which, owing to their excellent quality, are freely purchased and preferred to the productions of other countries. [Note: Milling in this context means a process quite different than modern-day "rebatching", which is sometimes incorrectly called milling.]

As, however, because of the small quantity of soaps given off, an intensified yield of lather is demanded, it is necessary that these shaving sticks and other milled [NaOH] shaving soaps must not be too hard, and for this reason, about 20 per cent, of shaving soap in cream-form is added to them, which ensures to them a consistency suitable for the more rapid and increased release of soap-substance.

The soap-cream required for this purpose is made from three parts finest beef-tallow and one part Cochin cocoanut oil. which mixture is saponified with 35° potash lye [32.7% KOH], for which about two and a quarter parts suffice. We proceed. in the production of these creams, by melting the tallow and adding to the solution the Cochin cocoanut oil, so that the fat mixture has a temperature of 104° F. At this stage, the lye is added in a thin stream and vigorously worked in with the spatula. As long as the soap mixture still runs off the sides of the pan, the combination is not complete; the proper union may be recognised as completed, by the strings drawn from the mass in working, also by its gradual thickening.

For working in the plodder [mechanical mixer], we mix of this cream, as already stated, about 20 per cent, with the dry chips of pure [NaOH] stock soap and place it in the mill. When all has been uniformly worked together, it is scented as desired, with oil of lavender or artificial oil of bitter almonds.

For these milled shaving soaps, however, perfumes are used that are compositions of heliotropin with terpineol, aubepine and synthetic geranium, with some eugenol. This gives the soaps a sweet but agreeable perfume. We also find coumarin, worked in with oil of lavender a very good composition.

Awesome information I'm going to try the 3:1 tallow/coconut version. I was going to do a 50/50 version, but since it's your article guys preferred recipe... I think I will try it. I don't want to do too high of stearic until I get my KOH in.

My current recipe is a combo of Avocado/Cocoa Butter/Shea Butter/Tallow and 10% stearic. Palmitic=22 & Stearic=30. The foam is nice and holds for min 45min (then I washed out my bowl - lol) but I want a thicker foam and I will be happy (in theory) with my formulation. I keep looking to make it bigger and better.

My grandmother was born in 1901, and she was amazed when she saw the clarity of the castor oil I bought back when my children were babies. So, there must have been a much less refined castor oil back in her childhood, when they were forced to take it every spring.