First batches of shaving soap

[psfred]

With the assistance of this lovely forum I've manage to make four batches of shaving soap without incident (all rather small but the last).

Simple recipe:

50% SA
20% Coconut oil
20% lard
last 10% either cocoa butter or cocoa butter and shea butter.

60/40 KOH/NaOH

All hot process.

Resulting soap is quite nice, even the next day it lathers up very easily and makes for very good shaves, it's the best soap I've used yet, in fact.

I did have one observation to pass along -- I did a counter top hot process for the last batch, 500 g of oils, and using that much stearic acid resulted in an instant soap volcano. I was aware of the possibility and was slowly adding the lye, so just stopped pouring and stirred really hard with a whisk and kept everything in the pot. Pretty much instant soap, I don't think it took more than a minute or to for it to get to the vaseline stage, but next time I'll keep the oil temp lower (190 this time, no more than 180 if I try that again).

I used full water in all of them, so they are quite soft yet, but should get pretty firm in a few weeks.

I always wondered why my mother unwrapped soap and stored it in a drawer "naked" -- I guess poorly cured soap isn't a new thing, eh?

Peter

 

[SaltedFig]

Pictures? :mrgreen:

(Welcome aboard Peter!)

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Based on what you said in the other post, I would lower your batch size for now - 100g of shaving soap lasts a very long time, so trying to tweak a recipe with 500g batches will leave a lot of unloved soap crying in some cupboard somewhere.

 

[psfred]

The 500 gr batch was for scent experiments since the basic soap works quite well. It's quite soft, so it's easy to chop up a piece and knead in scents.

Since I use much less than half a gram of soap per shave, I've probably got a five or six year supply already....

Peter