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I don't put the damp brush in the jar, but what I do is take a baby spoon or ice cream sample spoon and dip out an almond size portion. I either smear that on my face or on the bristles of the brush, then commence to lathering on my face. Works wonderfully well :smile: I don't know yet. I...

OK, here is my latest attempt at shaving cream. In a previous batch I lowered the initial lye discount to 9% and after the cook added in 3% shea and 3% mango butter with the supercream for a final superfat of 15%. It wasn't drying during the couple of test shaves I did, but I think that level of...

And thank you for having the patience to stick with me trying to wrap my mind around this.

I think I see now. So if I have this right - the stearic acid works as a thickener when used alone because it's just SA, but works when used in the saponification process (eg - shea) because it broken away from the rest of the fatty acids of the ingredient by the lye; so if shea is tried to be...

OK, thanks DeeAnna, it's becoming a bit clearer. But here's what I still don't get - if the fatty acids and fats don't function in the same way, then why does the stearic component of shea, tallow, etc go towards the thick, creamy lather of a soap when not used as a supercream? I may need to...

Thanks again for the advice Lindy. I realize the supercream and superfat are two different beasts. I was contemplating if I could get the best of both worlds out of a supercream with shea - lather density and conditioning. Maybe I'll make a small batch for my own edification.

Also, playing around with the numbers - to get the 14 gm of stearic supercream needed, I would need 35 gm of shea/mango which are each ~40% stearic. That's 7.7% of the total oils. I wonder now if that much free oil will impact the lather too much? Really only one way to find out.

Thanks for the suggestion, Lee! Of course, though that means I need more patience before I can try this again. . . sigh

When I made this recipe last week, I thought it was a bit greasy, but after sitting for a bit less than a week it's much less and the lather is a bit more bubbly. Even with the short "rot" I'm quite liking it and can't wait to see how it is after another month or two. I also made a shave cream...

Thank you for putting this up, Lindy. There doesn't seem to be much out there on the net about cream soap and this is helpful. A couple of clarifications, if you will - I made the batch yesterday and whipped it this morning, but the resultant cream seems rather greasy to me. Is this recipe...

I think part of the issue of shipping low flash point EO/FO by air and why UPS/FedEx will do it and USPS won't is (I've heard) that UPS/FedEx have their own airplanes that are dedicated to cargo whereas USPS uses passenger planes for shipping their parcels. If this is so, then it's more than...

She means don't go over 10% coca butter in your recipe. I don't think one lye calc is really better than another, it's just SoapCalc is probably the most popular here 'bouts. A note on lye calculators - they will all return different results to a small degree. this is because sap values for any...

I don't know the exact percentage, but the clay is listed last or second to last so it can't be a lot. But I was wrong, one of my top artisan soaps does not have clay in it and I really can't tell any significant difference in slip or feel between that one and the ones that use clay. Apparently...

FWIW, I mainly use artisan shave soaps that all use clay (either bentonite or kaolin) and I haven't noticed my blades dulling any faster or any physical damage to the blades or razor. I DE shave and haven't used a straight, yet anyway.

T.E.G. Did you ever get around to trying this in HP? How did it work? an how did the scent hold up? I'm trying to come up with a Bay Rum for shaving soap and thought of using rum as a scent component. Thank you and happy soaping!

songwind nailed it exactly. Having made soap and knowing what the ingredients do makes it a bit easier to evaluate soaps before buying. That said, the face test reveals all. Some good soaps "break the rules" and the only way to find out is to try. I like Mystic Water and Mikes for artisan soaps...

Sigh. Confetti soap, lite purple rebatch, or cute unscented soap? That is the question. SWBMO votes for cute unscented.

Thanks for the sympathy and suggestions all. Confetti soap sounds like it might be nice, but I don't have a color that would contrast well with the alkanet colored soap. Maybe rebatching with the EO added is the way to go, but I'm wondering if there is enough alkanet to color the entire batch...

I decided to make a 5 pound batch of Lavender Lime soap today using the in-the-pot swirl. I got two batches of soap going - one uncolored, one colored with alkanet root. Everything was going great. The oils and lyes were cooled to 100F at the same time, the mix to light trace was spot on, the...

I tried this method a couple weeks back and with only 1/2 water the soap was very stiff after the cook. So stiff in fact that I couldn't incorporate the GM fully and wound up with a marbled bar. ETA - and the GM part turned light brown anyway. That may have been the FO though.