Thread: Soap making

I've noticed more people here have siad that they make soap.
I've been making soap for a while now and it's a great hobby to have along with shaving.
I don't make shaving soaps, only cold process bath soap as I haven't had enough time to get a good recipe for shaving soap.
It is so much better to wash in homemade soap than commercial stuff. You can control everything that goes into it and get exactly what fragrance you want.
At the moment I am only using essential oils but I'm thinking of looking into fragrance oils as I really want to have a tobacco soap!
Anybody else interested in soap?

Hi,
Any good links has to how to go about this, would be interested in having a go at making shaving soap
regards,
mark....

As far as I can find there are no good internet recipes for shaving soap, although there are plenty of sites for regular soap making. try www.teachsoap.com
I have tried every internet recipe I can find and all turned out to be very poor.
The most important thing is to be accurate with the NaOH. Finding 100% NaOH is not always easy.
You should be able to find most other ingredients fairly easily in supermarkets and asian food stores.

My biggest problem with shaving soap is getting a lather that doesn't disappear. Every recipe I have tried the bubbles are just too big and burst on your face before stropping is even done.

I haven't had any luck with cold process shaving soap either. I've even tried several that established soapmakers have come up with and they just don't seem to work as well as triple-milled or even glycerin melt & pour shaving soaps do.

However, you can make your own shaving cream and it will work very well. It requires slightly different ingredients and process but its very doable.