Glossary of shave soap ingredients for beginner

Hi guys,

Newbie to wet shaving here and I'm looking at a bunch of the different soaps people are recommending and wondering just what the heck is in these things. I tend to be wary of synthetic things with long names (and I don't want to spark a debate as to what additives are good/bad) so I'm wondering whether anyone who knows a bit about soap chemistry would be able to give me a short "dictionary" of commonly used soap ingredients, where they actually come from, and whether they are just modern (probably purified) versions of things used in traditional wet shaving.

Thanks for your help and I welcome any wisdom!

No Love from wet shaving Chemists? :(

Did you try a search?

Sorry I can't help, but the ingredients of most soaps should be fairly readily available and Google should I expect be able to help out with the what's and where's of the specific ingredients.
If you did it in a spreadsheet form it could easily be added to the library.

First, let me say that I'm not an expert on soap making, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. For most packaged products the ingredients are listed in order of their predominance in the product, so that's something to be aware of. The ingredient list can be quite long. You should be aware that just because an ingredient is synthetic, doesn't necessarily make it harmful and likewise just because something is organic doesn't necessarily make it harmless.

Soap making is called saponification, which just means a process that makes soap. Historically, the most basic soap ingredients are lye and animal fat. Lye is produced by soaking hardwood ash in water which creates a very alkali solution. That lye solution when mixed with animal fat and allowed to harden is soap. As, Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies said: "It'll make your skin just like the finest leather." Most people aren't after that effect, however, so other ingredients are added. The slickness of soap comes from the fatty acids in the animal fat called triglycerides. The level of triglycerides are one of the things that doctors look for in your blood work, so if you wonder what that is, it's just the level of fatty acids in your blood. Because it is an acid, when mixed with the lye which is a base, it brings the PH of the resulting mixture to a level that won't melt your skin off, like the scene where the Nazis open the arc of the covenant in the Indiana Jones movie. That's a good thing.

The Fat Side of the Equation:
Generally, shaving soaps will also be predominantly tallow based or glycerin based. Tallow is just clarified animal fat (usually beef) -- like clarified butter is to pure butter. Tallow has the benefit that it will not spoil if left unrefrigerated. Glycerin, or more properly, glycerol, can be produced synthetically or extracted from plants such as the palm, soy beans, or from tallow. You may also see Sodium Stearate as an ingredient and it is one of the components of tallow. If you see words like palmate, etc. it is an indication that the fat that your are looking at came from a palm rather than from an animal. Other types of lubricants and fatty products such as Shea Butter, etc. may also be added for their benefits to the skin.

The Lye Side of the Equation:
You will also likely see sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide as one of the ingredients. This is the lye part of the lye/soap equation. Soaps that contain sodium hydroxide are the hard soaps and soaps that contain potassium hydroxide are soft soaps. Potassium hydroxide also has the benefit of weakening hair causing it to absorb more water, thus making it softer and easier to cut. In fact, strong solutions of KOH (potassium hydroxide) are used during the hair removal phase of the tanning process on hides.

There may be other ingredients added as well which combat things like the hard water issue to make the soap perform well under conditions where there are a lot of minerals in the water. The remaining ingredients are generally fragrance related.

It is highly unlikely that you will find anything harmful to your skin (allergies excepted) in any of the cottage industry soaps available. I can't speak to what large corporations might be willing to do to you.

Lastly, studies show that during animal testing on nutria in Louisiana 9 out of 10 nutria preferred the craft shaving soaps over corporate canned foam for their daily shave. Further studies show that 85% of the people in America will believe anything if the sentence starts with "studies show".

Hope this helps alleviate your concerns.

For the most part, shaving soaps tend to have pretty simple ingredients - except for that catch all "fragrance" component. If you want to really know what is in it, then you can go to the manufacturers website and see all of the ingredients. I routinely do this when looking at orange based scents - I love the smell, but some of them cause me to have a skin reaction.

One thing is for sure, they all contain DiHydrogen Monoxide and that compound kills thousands of people every year!

Thank you Uzi, while perhaps not an "expert" your knowledge certainly exceeds mine, thus providing the necessary knowledge gradient for learning to occur, thanks again!

DyHydrogen Monoxide. Good one!