My first shaving soap is a success!

[Jackofhearts]

DeeAnna! I love your posts! Always informative and always interesting! I was pretty sure that I had some of that wrong especially about the molecular length. It always seemed to me that it would be determined by the fatty acids themselves. Thank you for clearing that up.
To get very specific about what I mean by slickness, most soaps if you load a lot and keep the consistency thick or yogurt-y you end up with a lot of "cushion" but less slickness (in general). After the blade comes by the soap residue feels gone or even a bit tacky. However if you add more water you are left with a thinner slicker but less cushion-y lather. Balancing these 2 dichotomies is mostly about the preference of the shaver. I, for example, tend to prefer extra slickness when I shave my head (particularly the back) yet when I shave my face I tend to go for more cushion. To be sure there are some soaps that straddle the line of cushion and slickness but what I think is really going on is that there is a balance or sweet spot to when they have the desired amount for both cushion and slickness. Some soaps have a wider sweet spot than others and I guess I'm looking to widen the sweet spot of mine.
All this to say, I was hoping that using NaOH in some amount would up the slickness a bit without sacrificing the cushion afforded by the stearic acid and the ease of loading/lathering that KOH brings to the party.
I also in between my post yesterday and this evening realized that well... It's 17 degrees out tonight and the heat is kicking on a lot which dries out the air quite a bit. This would explain why the lather often (toward the end of the pass) would feel drier and therefore less slick than the lather was when I whipped it up to begin with.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

So, 4 test batches made yesterday. Trying out a direct comparison of lard, palm and tallow. 50 gram batches - even with my awesome scale that is the limit that I would go to, though.

Plus I am trying the sa/co mix but with a higher ratio of sa to co - I still think that the original premise that the sa and co were almost equal parts was wrong. We shall see what happens

With all of them, I upped the glycerine to the amounts that I should have used initially, as well as adding in some citric acid and adjusting the lye amount accordingly.

Looking forward to trying them out!

 

[Obsidian]

Nice test, can't wait to hear about the results. Really curious to hear how lard compares to tallow.

I tried my sa/co soap again yesterday but only on one leg, on the other I used my tallow based soap. Songwinds soap lathered really easily but it still has low slickness and it gave a lower quality shave. My tallow based soap takes longer to work into a proper lather but it gives a closer shave with less irritation and left my skin softer/not dried out.
I've came to the conclusion that tallow is what really helps with slickness, too much sa seems to make a waxy feeling lather. I didn't use any citric acid, maybe that would help or possibly the addition of clay.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I have the citric acid in there to help the lathering in hard water more than anything.

I love my lard based one where I uses more CO than lard. Will see how it compares.

 

[verotxu]

Hello!

I indeed that this is post is beautiful!!!

Regarding my research progress, I am cutting down the amount of CO in comparison to SA as I still have in mind that more than 25% of CO can be a bit drying for the skin. So far I have decrease the CO amount to 35% and my DH has not found any change in the lather...

I am also concern about the amount of glycerin..I know that the presence of more than 10% of glycerin in creams dries the skin, I do not know if this affects to soaps though....Has anyone experience in using less amount of glycerin o has tried any other alternative?

Cheers

Vero

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Soap has some natural glycerine, plus what seems to be a standard 15% for this shaving soap. I think that as people generally will need some sort of post-shave product regardless, the benefits of the glycerine outweigh the issues.

 

[boyago]

But something I am curious about which I haven't been able to find the answer to is this: I saw that fully hydogenated soy bean oil is almost 98% Stearic. Can someone confirm the chemistry in this is that the oleic and linoleic acids are converted to stearic when the double carbon bonds are swapped with hydrogen and thus saturating them? Also I haven't been able to figure out in the resulting "soy wax" still has the glycerine intact? And one more, all of the stearic I see from my usual soap suppliers is labels "from vegetable sources", but most vegetable oils are really low in stearic and the descriptions of stearic production I've read state that primarily fat trimmings and grease. Are they using hydrogenated oils to produce this stearic and (final-final) why is soy wax more expensive than stearic?

 

[Obsidian]

Keep in mind that steric acid doesn't create glycerin when it saponifies, I can't remember why though. The glycerin isn't just for moisture, it helps create stable lather.

I think I may have spoken too soon about not liking the original recipe. I picked up a new shave bowl today and did a couple test lathers. This lather was much slicker then the first few times I used it. I ended up shaving both my forearms and it was a nice shave. My skin isn't dry or irritated.

 

[boyago]

Keep in mind that steric acid doesn't create glycerin when it saponifies, I can't remember why though. The glycerin isn't just for moisture, it helps create stable lather.

The glycerine is remove at the beginning of the process (hydrolysis) they use to isolate the stearic acids from the others.

*wierd, my last two posts swapped. I must be time traveling again.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...oleic and linoleic acids are converted to stearic when the double carbon bonds are swapped with hydrogen and thus saturating them?..."

Yes. Oleic is monounsaturated (one double bond) with a backbone that is 18 carbons long (shorthand: C18 ). Linoleic has two unsaturated bonds but also has a C18 backbone. Stearic is C18 with no double bonds.

"...double carbon bonds are swapped with hydrogen..."

It's not swapping exactly, but I can see why you would have that mental picture. The usual terminology would be to "saturate" or "hydrogenate" the fat, which means to force more hydrogen onto the carbon backbone so the double bonds are eliminated.

"...steric acid doesn't create glycerin when it saponifies..."

A fat is three fatty acids glued to a glycerin. When you saponify a fat, you break the fat apart, make soap out of the three fatty acids, and release the glycerin to do its thing.

When you use a plain fatty acid like stearic acid in a recipe, the glycerin was not invited to the party. The lye just saponifies the lonely fatty acid into soap ... and that's all you get.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

So I test lathered the 4 day-old recipe - one of the three with the same recipe but either lard, palm or tallow. This one was the lard one -



Came back 40 minutes later and it was the same - still silky. Looking forward to how it is in the future.

I also found something very interesting with the low co/ high stearic recipe. It didn't 'lather' as such, but produced a very creamy substance. I will show some pictures in the future

 

[boyago]

So I test lathered the 4 day-old recipe - one of the three with the same recipe but either lard, palm or tallow. This one was the lard one -

View attachment 11044

Came back 40 minutes later and it was the same - still silky. Looking forward to how it is in the future.

I also found something very interesting with the low co/ high stearic recipe. It didn't 'lather' as such, but produced a very creamy substance. I will show some pictures in the future

How is this comparing to the palm and tallow?

 

[reinbeau]

How is this comparing to the palm and tallow?

Patience, Grasshopper, I think the results will be posted

 

[boyago]

Patience, Grasshopper, I think the results will be posted

I went and fetched my patience purse and when I opened it a bunch of moths flew out and it was empty.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Haha! Yes, the palm and tallow test will come soon. I might give the tallow a lather tonight to see how it looks. Palm I'll give the advantage of a longer cure (3days, max) before I test lather it. In the next couple of weeks will be a shave test with each

 

[boyago]

So here is my shaving soap success story. I figured out that my cousins live in boyfriends was a wet shaver and when I told him I was working on a shaving soap recipe he eagerly volunteered to be a tester. So I drop my three generations of shave soap off with my cousin at a school function. I get a text from him this morning saying "good job, great lather". I ask which one he tried and he's not sure. I had marked them I, II, and III and asked him to take note of what he liked and didn't about each. I ask if it was hard or soft and if it smelled like oranges. One was a NaOH combo and the other two where all KOH, one of which was scented. He hadn't noticed the smell of it and said it was pretty hard. I figure it was the combo and like any other time I've tried to get info out of someone about my soaps it was just going to be an uphill data mine and I'd be lucky to get which version he liked best. Later I find the gen I (combo) bar at my exes, It had fallen out of my bag when I was giving my cousin the soap and she had found it after I left. I drive by to drop the bar and find out he had used and liked the salt bars that I gave to my cousin with the explanation that the salt bars were for her to not be jealous of the shave soaps. I guess it's flattering for my salt bars or... somethin.

 

[DeeAnna]

Too true for me too. I ask for feedback, but unless it comes from another soaper, the feedback is usually pretty useless. If I want a decent critique, I count on my good friend Renae. She's a long time soaper, very particular about her soap, and never a person to mince words.

 

[cpacamper]

I drive by to drop the bar and find out he had used and liked the salt bars that I gave to my cousin with the explanation that the salt bars were for her to not be jealous of the shave soaps. I guess it's flattering for my salt bars or... somethin.

Do my eyes deceive or do I read that he shaved with the salt bar and liked it? Mind sharing the recipe?

 

[boyago]

Do my eyes deceive or do I read that he shaved with the salt bar and liked it? Mind sharing the recipe?

I was going to start this with a schmarmy "sure, if you promise not to shave with it". But this is pretty much the same bar I would shave with all the time before reading this thread and starting to make my own dedicated shave soap. How did I get that snobby that fast?
Here's the recipe 1kg batch 80% CO, Castor 10% & Olive oil 10%. 15% SF (this was an estimate as I didn't include the fat from the coconut milk) with 147 NaOH, 147 H2O, and 234 coconut milk. I scented this one with 2:3 Lemon and Balsam tolu EOs and there is 2Tbs of oatmeal and 1Tbs of Atlantic kelp.

Here's some pics after about 60 seconds of swirling with my brush in my hand. The lather is fast and kind of big but not very dense. On the face it doesn't feel as creamy as the shave soaps I'm working on. Also if you love your shaving tools I would kind of worry about the salt.

 

[JustBeachy]

Two ladies I've given some of my salt bars to, have both told me," I love the way it makes my legs feel when I'm done shaving." haha.

I'd gotten accustomed to using shaving lotions. After playing with songwinds base recipe and modifying it a bit, I'm hooked on the shave soap. Smooth, close shave. Face has never felt better. If that makes you a snob Boyago, then I must be with you.