Reverse engineering?

[user 28270]

A highly-regarded shaving soap has an LOI of: Potassium Stearate, Aqua, Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Cocoa Butterate, Sodium Palmate, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Sodium Avocadate, Parfum, White Kaolin, Allantoin, Glycerine.

I'd like to recreate the recipe to make some modifications to it. For one, I don't want kaolin clay in my soap.

Since the Jojoba oil isn't listed as saponified, I'd infer that it was added as the SF. Assuming it followed the somewhat standard 5% superfat and the order of ingredients, how would you determine the rest of the percentages?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[penelopejane]

What is the brand? There are a few recipe hacks on SMF and the net.

 

[dixiedragon]

I think jojoba is technically a wax, vs an oil, so maybe it doesn't saponify much, if at all?

 

[user 28270]

It’s Wickham 1912.

 

[steffamarie]

Looks like it's a dual-lye soap that they saponified in two parts (the stearic acid with the KOH and the remainder with NaOH). My shaving soap called for 40% stearic so starting there, I think we could get somewhere around:

40% stearic

^ saponify solo with KOH

20% coconut oil
10% cocoa butter
10% palm oil
5% avocado oil

^ saponify those together with NaOH

5% jojoba as SF
3% fragrance if desired
2-3% allantoin if desired
2-3% of total oil weight in glycerine (although personally, I used 15% as recommended in the "my first shaving soap is a success" thread)

This is, of course, a VERY rough guesstimate but I think you could get somewhere with it. Hopefully some more experienced shaving soapers will be along to give their feedback!

 

[GreenDragon]

So I decided to play around with this recipe yesterday. I don't think Jojoba oil adds anything to the party besides name recognition, so I substituted PKO flakes instead. Batch in two parts: KOH + SA, NAOH/KOH + everything else.

Part 1) 200 g Stearic Acid melted in mini crock pot. Added KOH mixture (103 g H2O + 44 g KOH) and stick blended about 30 seconds.

Part 2) Melted 120 g Coconut Oil, 60 g Cocoa Butter, 60 g Palm Oil, 30 g Avocado Oil, and 30 g PKO flakes. 90/10 mixture of NaOH/KOH of 41 g NaOH + 7.1 g KOH into 113 g H2O. Blended 30 seconds, then added to crock pot with the SA mixture. Blended together for a minute. Divided the batch, adding red clay and Oatmeal, milk & Honey fragrance to one portion, and a little blue mica with Birchwood Oud fragrance and Kaolin clay to the other. Immediately portioned into molds. Removed and trimmed 2 hours later. (Full disclosure - I forgot to add my 25 g of glycerine!)

Tried one out this morning. Exploded into a tight lather with my shaving brush. All in all was a very nice shave, did not dry my skin out, and rinsed off easily. However, it does not have quite the slickness / slip of my usual recipe which is 30% Beef fat, 50% SA. Of course, that could be due to the lack of glycerine. I plan on melting a puck or two and adding in the glycerine and trying again.

Oils melted and lye's prepped

Fragrances and clays ready

Soap mixtures after adding lyes.

Everyone into the pool!

Starts out pretty cottage cheesy looking

A minute of blending really smooths it out.

Into the Molds

Ready to go!

 

[GreenDragon]

Update:

I re-batched this and added in the Jojoba and Glycerine. Much better slip. I also think that the clay makes for a very dense foam that "sticks" well to your face. All in all I like this recipe - it's a keeper.