DIY Homemade Shaving Soap

borked said:
Question, you see some artisans mention their soaps are very thirsty, is this due to them excluding/reducing water as an ingredient in order to add more lather building ingredients per total weight?
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Excellent question and I don't know the answer to be honest. My soap has what I consider to be a very clean ingredient list yet it is pretty darn thirsty. It benefits from adding lots of water and building the lather slowly.
 
borked said:
Question, you see some artisans mention their soaps are very thirsty, is this due to them excluding/reducing water as an ingredient in order to add more lather building ingredients per total weight?
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khun_diddy said:
Excellent question and I don't know the answer to be honest. My soap has what I consider to be a very clean ingredient list yet it is pretty darn thirsty. It benefits from adding lots of water and building the lather slowly.
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@Anthony , price check required at checkout four please, Mr. Macri checkout 4...
 
Just a thought and I realise I really shouldn't think, but, to my way of thinking the longer a soap is allowed to cure and dry out the more water it is going to need to rehydrate to the same level as a much softer soap or cream. Also when a soap is made and this is only from a homebrew soap maker, the actual water content % can be reduce to produce a harder more thirsty soap. Certain oils or fats used to make soap require more or less water to reach an accepted hydration point. Coconut oil soap seem to need less water compared to Tallow based soaps. I may be totally wrong but that has never stopped anyone posting on the "Interweb".
Calling @Anthony !!!!
 
I agree with @bald as - coconut based soaps need less water in my experience than tallow based soaps

I also agree with @khun_diddy : starting out dry and adding water slowly will always produce a superior lather...
 
Thinking out loud as a continuance of my question, perhaps it is why some advise to and others advise not to bloom the soap.
@Anthony @Barrister & Mann I think I've let loose the cat amongst the pigeons and require the expertise of the pair of you gentleman.
 
Let's great a little bit crazy here...

Gent's V6

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In order to bump up the olive oil I've had to reduce the castor to 5%. Hopefully this still allows for the lather to initiate. If not, it will be the saturated FAs that will need to be reduced (e.g. 60/30/10).

Roughly 105 minutes to pass the zap test. The soap was surprisingly solid by this time. Perhaps castor oil makes for a more liquid soap? Or perhaps the long cook time drove of lots of water?

Scent was straight up tea tree EO (3.5 g). I'll age this soap for three months.

Gent's V7

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There's so much olive oil in here that I initially thought I couldn't risk pure KOH as I felt it would be just too soft but on the basis of the 60% OO soap above, I've decided to give it a crack. The cook was three hours! Again, the soap was relatively solid by this point. Scent was 3.45 g of Haitian vetiver.

I don't expect this soap to work very well. Roger's 80/20 soap was too far along the continuum and I imagine this will be too. However, if it is semi-legit when I lather it in February then I may consider making a 70/20/10... or perhaps I'll make that tomorrow.
 
That 70/20/10 could be accompanied with a secondary experiment, water content.
I, like I'm sure quite a few others here, sit and watch in anticipation and interest in your experimentation.
 
Very interesting @khun_diddy - just out of curiosity: why do you have to cure if for 3 months? I know they will loose water, but that shouldn't make a difference in the latherability - or does it?
 
alfredus said:
Very interesting @khun_diddy - just out of curiosity: why do you have to cure if for 3 months? I know they will loose water, but that shouldn't make a difference in the latherability - or does it?
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I want to see how hard they get with age. If I don't age them I suspect I will get too much soap on the brush when loading.
 
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khun_diddy said:
I want to see how hard they get with age. If I don't age them I suspect I will get too much soap on the brush when loading.
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Ah, but you could evaluate the lather now already - just to make sure it is worth ageing?
 
From my limited understanding. The hot process has converted the oils/fats to soap and as long as the hydroxides are all accounted for curing should only harden the soap. So a lather test would probably be a good idea.
 
I don't want to get any more water on the pucks while they harden. I also want to age them to see if the scent diminishes and whether they become rancid.
 
That was exactly my thought - just cut off a bit and LATHER!
 
LATHER!

LATHER!

LATHER!

What do we want?

LATHER!

When do we want it?

NOW!

[repeat]
 
Actually I really would like to see pics of that lather :D :D :D
 
Gent's V8

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I have a very good feeling about this blend. It 'traced' quite a bit quicker than the previous two but still took 105 mins to pass the zap test. We will see how it performs in due course.

Scent is lemon myrtle EO 1.82 g. This is an extremely potent essential oil so I've used half as much as normal.

Another soap I'll check back on in a few months.
 
Hey guys,

sorry for the late response, I had this whole paragraph typed up and then looked back at the question again. I was going to go into the specifics of Lye to Water ratio, but I think what you would really like to know is why some soaps require more water to lather than others.

I have found through my personal tinkering around, that soaps than lean heavier on KOH instead of Na require more water to generate lather.
Now this is only my opinion, but I believe it is because of the way the KOH reacts with the oils. See KOH is typically used when making "liquid soap", and part of that process is running the soap through its normal saponification, cooking it out, and then at the end, letting it rest, and adding water to the soap in order to make it into a liquid form.

I could be wrong again, but I think KOH is thirsty because it results in a highly concentrated soap, meaning, the more water you apply to it, the more suds you will get.
Playing around with KOH:Na ratios, will result in either a softer or firmer soap at the end of it, this is because of the chemical make up of the 2 lyes and how they react during saponification.

I personally use a combination of the 2 at a ratio which I felt comfortable with, after running through every combo imaginable. There is a stage where you will find that adding more or less of one makes little difference. And as @bald as said, you can also introduce a "Water Discount" when producing your soap, which results in a more concentrated lye solution, requiring less "cure" or "cook" time and often resulting in a harder soap.

It also comes down to the oils that are used as they react and saponify differently based on the lyes used. I agree, Coconut is one of the ingredients that will generate a nice lather, stearic acid is also another ingredient you will find on almost every shave soap. Having never personally used Tallow in any of my soaps, I cannot speak for it. The closest substitute I found was Palm Oil.

I'm always here to help guys! I've helped a few of the guys on the forum who have PM'ed me, so I'm always happy to have a chat and point you in the right direction or at least give you some food for thought.

There are SOOOO many factors involved when creating a soap (not just shaving soap). Anyways, I hope this kind of answers your question.

DISCLAIMER: Again, this is only my personal experience, I am not a scientist, so I can not get into the specifics of it, but I'm sure google would be a good starting point for anyone wanting to look into how lye reacts with different oils.
 
@bald as No problem at all. Always herd to help [emoji3] there are so many factors. I can't tell you how much product I went through until I was happy. And even then I still made tweaks to it. My first ever batch of shave soaps was cold process. Which resulted in a completely different consistancy that my soaps are today.
 
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