My first shaving soap is a success!

[traderbren]

Thank you, Lee for that rabbit hole, err, link. I just spent more minutes than I should have on reading about Bay Rum. And now I have ideas.

I always bought Dad a bottle of good hooch for Xmas, except the one year I got a bottle PLUS various shaving mug soaps when I lived in a town with an awesome shaving store. I think I scored a few more things in his will that year.... But this year Dad's health has made it where I couldn't just clop off to the hooch store so I went with shaving soap instead. As in, I needed a new path from this rabbit hole so I made some in the Fall, and somehow promised him a new puck each month. He has requested a Lime scent for one, but I just wasn't seeing that. Until that dang Bay Rum review.

I have work to do. I'm behind on the February soap.

 

[LBussy]

I ordered myself a bottle of the Dominica classic and the Dominica Lime.

The folks on B&B are every bit as obsessed about Shaving and accouterments as we are about soap.

 

[Bagaudae]

Greeting all!

Total newcomer here.

I tried a very similar recipe to the topic's original. Puls a litle something (almond oil, just a tiny 10% at expense of the coconut oil). The soap turned out just fine and lather is just as expected.

But this was my first experience with HP and I have a hard time "reading the signs". It turned out the soap never geled. Not partially not at all! It kept the same mash potato like state as in the begining! I quited at nearly 2 hours in the oven at 80 ºC (170 -180 ºF) It was a really small batch of 150 g of oils, and all I have is a kitchen scale. Not the most acurate thing...

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

With the high amount of stearic acid, it can sometimes be a funny old thing with how it behaves. I would always use the zap test to check it after a while as it may or may not look like it 'should' and the confusion is understandable

 

[LBussy]

I can;t imagine that it didn't gel ... it may not have looked like it but as Craig said things look different sometimes.

 

[Bagaudae]

If the gel state has something to do with the amount of lye consumed, then it must have gone through it. Zap test is completeley good. imediatley after cooling down no zap at all. The mixture is also completely homogenous, at least at naked eye.

What it didn't get to is that translucent state I was expecting (as shown in the original post pictures).

Thanks all for the opinions. I am a completely noob, first time Hot process and second attempt considering all. First try was a rubish experience just to get the hang of it, so all inputs are very welcome.

Why is stearic so temperamental? what causes this instability? temperature control? I am using animal based stearic by the way.

Yet another question: is I want to include some clay in my next attempt, what type of clay should I use? I am a bit overwhelmed with all the types, colors and names of all the clays there are..

 

[LBussy]

Gell is a visible indication of the saponification of the fats. There is no chemical difference between a soap which has gelled and one which has not - they both contain the same amount of glycerin. It's mostly an aesthetic change brought on by heat - and you had plenty of heat. HP batches, especially small ones, can entrain enough air that the mashed potatoes always have the same opaque look to them no matter if saponification and gel has happened or not. Fact is, most of the saponification happens nearly instantly with HP.

Stearic needs 150 deg F to be melted, and some argue it saponifies so easily it saponifies first and can cause some separation of the soap as it converts. Whether this happens or not it does not seem to have any deleterious impact to the soap.

If you read this thread (and it is quite long) you will see none of us that care about our shaving soap and our razors use clay. I'd go so far as to say it's a crutch used by soapers who do not understand how to make shaving soap and/or have simply followed others blindly. Now some people I care about very much on this forum used to use clay in their shaving soaps but I think we have them converted - so I mean no disrespect by this. Adding dirt to shaving soap is not necessary, has no benefit, and potentially has some negative impact.

 

[Bagaudae]

I have gone through a good lenght of the thread, but not completely yet. It is long and full of information, so much that a complete newcomer like myself sometimes feels a bit overwhelmed. It's hard to seperate what is good solid advice from "personal opinions" not so well funded and that ultimately are dependent on the person.

Truth is, I have never seen a reputable's soap (or unreputable for that matter) include some sort of clay. Not that I have been able to identify at least. I just got curious about the fuss the subject brings.

As for the gell/no gell, I think i will settle for now and patientley wait a week or two (I know it should be more time, but I am impatient) and try it out. I will keep making sporadic test lathers to see if I can observe some sort of change. I am allready very happy with the ease and quality of lather I'm getting, so that can only improve over time. I allways use the same boar brush when trying new soaps, the Semogue 1305.

Next scary step is the adition of some sort of fragrance. The animal base stearic does not smell very good. Is the palm based variation better?

 

[LBussy]

True enough - there is a lot of personal opinion in the clay debate. Empirical evidence is tough to come by, but we have a body of anecdotal evidence that is becoming strong enough to be a guide. If nothing else, it is difficult to discern what clay brings to an otherwise good soap. There is some bad press as well, since some soapers simply added clay to bath/face soap and called it shaving soap. It was not. Try it for yourself though *after* you get a good recipe. That way you know whether it is a band-aid or an improvement.

I don't have a source for animal based stearic so I can't comment. Are you in the US? If so, from where was it sourced?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

For me, the extra glycerin that we add is in place of clay - so if I can add glycerin and not clay then the anecdotal evidence is enough for me to make an easy choice. No one ever hated a soap that had the added glycerin in lieu of clay!

That said, some people think it is a case of adding clay or nothing at all, which does result in a bad soap. You need clay or added glycerin for a good soap

 

[Bagaudae]

I'm European, Portuguese to be more precise. I got my supplies from granvelada.com.es , a spanish based store. It was tagged as material for candle making. They had both vegetal and animal and I chose the animal, because there is a commonly accepted impression that overall, old animal based soaps were better than their all-vegetable versions. Not sure how much of this is myth and how much is true.

I added 40g of glycerine right after the iven and stirred until completely mixed.

Can I reheat part of this batch and add FO? Even though I made a small amount, i ended up with about 200g of soap. It's way more than I can use in a reasonably short period. I want to tweak and try at a faster pace, and I don't want to just throw it in the bin.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I have a very accurate scale, it does 0.1g increments, so I risked making 50g batches to test. I once made some 25g batches but that was far too tight on the margin for error for me to be comfortable

 

[LBussy]

If you are sure you can be accurate, you can grate, reheat with a touch of water and add fragrance oil.

 

[Bagaudae]

I didn't wait. Not even a week. I just shaved with it and it was awesome! But I really need to get it at least a decent smell. The current state is a deal breaker, despite the great lather.
I can't be all that accurate, weight wise, but I can be fairly accurate with volume.

 

[Bagaudae]

Sorry for the double post, but I have been on the lookout for Ingredients list of good Shaving Soaps. One of them is the italian brand Mondial. The list mentions, as expected, stearic, water, cocoa, potassium and sodium hidroxide and parfum. The last ingredient left me adrift: potassium carbonate. As I understand it, this is a weaker base than the hidroxides, right? What is the purpose of this ingredient? Anyone has a clue? Could it be a "slower" base as a strategy to address the high stearic problem?

 

[LBussy]

Potassium carbonate is a byproduct of manufacturing potassium lye. It could be that they had a traditional recipe that was formulated with this taken into account and when they switched to a higher purity source they simply added some back in to account for it. It's an ingredient often seen in the more traditional Italian siaps and not often in newer ones. We've talked about it here and on the shaving forums and by and large we've discounted it as necessary.

I have tried Mondial and find it similar to many of the Italian "croaps" such as Cella, P.160 and the like. I'm a huge fan. I've shared a recipe that makes a fair approximation here: http://www.silverfoxcrafts.com/shaving-soap/

I do not use or advocate the use of Sodium Hydroxide. I feel skipping it results in a superior soap. The recipe as outlined is plenty hard enough to form pucks if desired, but as you know, Italian croaps are used in a dish so that's not a concern for me.

 

[Bagaudae]

Thanks for the insight and the link!
It's funny how things work. One year ago I used an electric shaver and usually had a 3-5 day beard at all times, mainly because shaving was such a pain, and I don't say that figurativeley, It was indeed a painful chore. Then I (re)discovered wet shaving and went all in. Now I'm making shaving soap all by myself.

EDIT:
@LBussy: I'm just going through Silver Fox Crafts and I'm loving it. I do identify myself A LOT (otherwise I wouldn't be making soap, I have about a kg of shaving soap from various brands & flavours so I don't really need it. I just want it.) and I hope to give something to the community in exchange for what I have recieved. I am sure to keep you in the loop when I do. And again, thank you and all the others!

 

[LBussy]

I had the same journey ... didn't stop till I had taken up straight razors as well. Now I have a few very nice Fillarmonica.

 

[Bagaudae]

Yet another question. If I don't add FO when I make the soap, can I add it afterwards? If so, how could that work, I reheat the soap and it turns soft again? Will I need to wait another few weeks after that, or I can consider the cure "done"?
Thanks in advance

 

[DeeAnna]

If the soap is soft, like artist's clay, you can knead scent and other additives into the soap by hand if you're patient. Just like kneading bread. Wear gloves to keep the concentrated scent off your skin.

Earlier, you asked why stearic acid is so temperamental. It's not really, but you are comparing stearic acid to fat, and they are not the same. A triglyceride (in other words, any fat you would make into soap) is three fatty acids hooked to a backbone of glycerin. Any given molecule of fat has three fatty acids in many different combinations. Stearic acid happens to be one of those FAs.

The likelihood of any particular fatty acid in a fat molecule is determined by the kind of fat you have. For example, coconut oil has a lot of lauric acid and myristic acid. Olive oil has very little to none of these two fatty acids.

When you make soap using fats, the lye has to break the fatty acids off the glycerin and then the lye has to react with each fatty acid. The breakdown step is the hardest. This first step is why it takes hours and sometimes days to completely finish the saponification reaction. The reaction with the free fatty acid is really easy and fast.

Stearic acid is the fatty acid that's already been split away from the glycerin, so when you use stearic acid (or any other fatty acid) to make soap, the hard part of the saponification reaction is already done. So all the lye has to do is the easy part -- hook itself to the fatty acid to finish the job. This happens in seconds.