Standing on the shoulders of giants......

So I have been curious as to how to make shaving soap, specifically a good soft "Italian" soap or cream. I decided to pursue this a little a cooked up a batch of soap based off of a thread on the Shave My Face forum. Didn't turn out as soft as I wanted, but a great soap (and I now have enough shaving soap to last me a good many years). Fast forward a few weeks and I decided to give it another go....

Decided to try 1/2 pound batches. This was done for a few reasons: only need so much soap on hand, have many recipes/variations I want to try, any smaller and it becomes very difficult to accurately measure the oils and lye. When making batches this small, make sure you measure the ingredients in grams, using ounce measures can make you end up with a soap that is still caustic after cooking (guess how I know...).

I measured out my 4 recipes the night before:
Attachment 161822
I chose these little crock pots because they are just big enough to make a 1/2 pound batch. I had to stir down two batches when I added the lye, but they were fine besides that. BTW, Walmart sells em for $9.99

Assembled my tools the morning of battle:
Attachment 161824
Notice the Safety Goggles. Lye is nothing to take lightly.

This is all of them after about 1hr cooking. Takes about 3 hrs to totally saponify and use up the Lye.
Attachment 161825Attachment 161826Attachment 161827

These are all super fatted to 7%. The "norm" is 5% but I wanted a little room for error do to the very small batches I was making. Most soapers make 5+ pound batches, so they can be off a few grams or even ounces in their measurements and still be ok.

Soap 2A is a modification of the Lye mixture of my previous batch for a softer soap. Made up of lard, coconut, castor, stearic acid, and a dab of lanolin
3A is a MdC clone and is made up of coconut oil and stearic acid. this is super fatted after cooking with glycerin.
1A Tallow, Caster, Coconut, and stearic
1B is a mod of 1A with Tallow, Castor, Palm, and stearic

I will let you know how it goes, wish me luck!

After 3 hrs cooking I did a go-no go test on the ph. I have a solution called 1% Phenolphthalein. You put a drop of it on some of your cooled down soap and if does NOT turn pink, then you are around 9.5 ph ( fairly neutral). After 3 hrs a did a swab of each crock pot and got the following..
Attachment 161835
viola! Houston, we have lift-off!

Gave them a good stir and started dolling them out into portions for testing and storage. Here is the result.

Attachment 161836

Figure I will divvy them into separate Ziploc bags and freeze the ones not being used. That should prevent any spoilage issues I think.... I will try a lather test with each of them later. More to come.

Just to make it clear, I am not claiming I came up with any of this on my own. The title of the thread is "Standing on the shoulders of giants", a phrase that was used in the original thread on SMF to communicate that what I have been able to do is only because other people were gracious enough to share their knowledge, trials, and tribulations. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, ask away or shoot me a pm.

Looks great! I'd like to get into this some day, but maybe not while I have an infant crawling around the house.

So did some lather tests today. Soaked brush in water for 15 minutes and had a slight layer of water soaking on soap as well. This is my normal routine while I take a shower in the morning. I know that all soap behave differently and it can take awhile to dial them in, but to keep things on an equal footing I followed the same lathering routine for each.

Squeeze out brush, empty water from soap.
Load brush for 30 seconds.
Work brush in bowl for 30 seconds.
Apply drizzle of water to brush.
Repeat as needed.

The brush used was my very first brush from a VanderHagen shaving kit. Not an epic brush, but no suprises.
First pic is afeter 3 cycles, second pic is after a 15 minute wait period.

First test was batch 3A, the MdC clone.
Lathered VERY easy. Could not get a read on how soft it was as it was "poured" into a shave mug. 100% KOH. Started getting good lather on the first lathering cycle. More than enough for 3+ passes.

Attachment 161919 Attachment 161920
Initial loading of brush and after 15 minutes. Resulted in a very slick lather. Cant' wait to try this tommorow.

Next up was batch 2A trail #2
Very soft and moldable soap. Was made with 100% KOH. Lathered well. Did 4x to see if it would perk up a bit, helped but not as much as hoped.
Attachment 161922 Attachment 161923


Next was batch 1A. Made a lather fairly quick. 70% KOH / 30% NaOH. Very soft and moldable soap. Seemed a bit thirstier. Lather exploded at 2nd cycle but did a 3rd just to be consistant.
Attachment 161925 Attachment 161926

Lastly was batch 1B. lLathered easily. 70% KOH / 30% NaOH. Very soft and moldable soap. Did 3 lather cycles. Overflwoing lather at end of 2nd cycle and all of third cycle. May be a tad bit "fluffier"
Attachment 161927 Attachment 161928

All in all, fairly pleased with this experiment so far. Need to record my initial thoughts and results for the next trials (yes, there will be more :) ). Now to get shaving with these over the next month and see how they hold up.

Thanks for the thread Matt. Both interesting and informative :)

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to cut some of it.

very cool, you make at home soap production look too easy!
As it appears that you've got the soap performance dialed in, have you given thought to adding EOs for scent?

I figure I will play around with a few more formulations and tweaks on them.... say another month or two. I have been re-reading all of the info I have and searching out more. Once I have a few different formulations down pretty well I will start looking at EOs and scenting. I figure slow and steady will work well. Just need to keep LOTS of notes.

@OCD: Tried the MdC clone today. I have never tried MdC so have no comparison. Didn't like it. It worked fairly well to shave with, but the lather seemed too ... fluffy. Also dried my skin out after the shave. Had to apply some lotion to hydrate it. That being said, I have reviewed the threads I got the recipe from and it seems I may have miscalculated somewhere. I will record the results and move on to the next batch. I may try to rebatch this one and try to make a shower soap out of it. No need for it to go to waste.

I have also looked at some of the info out there on cream soaps. That may be an experiment for another day :)

TwistedOak: As you can see from the prior post, I have the basics down, but I am in no way proficient...yet.

I may get brave in the future and see how people like the recipes, but I don't see that happening for a bit.

Very few people are proficient at anything their first time around. I wish you luck here. For every formerly good soap producer that re formulates and destroys their product, we need two new choices to replace them. I've recently become a sucker for Barrister and Mann soaps. If Trumper wants to make garbage, I'll opt for Will's soaps as an excellent alternative. You could be next if you get it right.

now you go from a Soap acquisition disorder to a SMD-Soap manufacturing disorder
1 puck has lasted me over 9 months and probable got about half left
you look like you have enough for 10 years already & you want to make more LOL

It's as much learning a new skill set and how a process works as providing myself and friends with a product. I have always asked myself why is done a certain way. I have only had the ... fortitude/nativity to start trying to answer these questions the last few years. Heck, that's part of what started me wet shaving in the first place.

they all look to have lathered very well also by the way
can't wait to here the final results of your testing

Well, its's been awhile since I posted any update on this. I did get a chance to retry my McD clone and a variation of it I figured out from an old book. I also thought I would share what sources I have used as references. Maybe someone can find something I overlooked. First off, here are the references I used. There are a few more books from Google books, but I can't find my links :(

REFERENCES:

SRP Forums
HomeGrown
Soapmaking lather question?

Shave My Face forum
“Roll your own” thread

Badger and Blade
“Homemade shaving soap discussion club”
“Reverse Engineering MdC”

Google Books:
Soap-making Manual: A Practical Handbook on the Raw Materials, Their ... By Edgar George Thomssen
Manual of Toilet Soapmaking: Including Medicated Soaps, Stain-removing Soaps ... edited by Carl Deite
Soap Gazette and Perfumer, Volumes 19-20

Some thoughts and ideas so far:

2 stage saponification makes HP work much faster. Pre-melt you oils before adding to crock pot, keep stearic acid separate from rest. Add oils to pre-warmed crock pot, add lye/water mixture and mix well, then add in melted stearic acid. WARNING: Stearic acid saponifies FAST so add a bit at a time and mix very well because it foams a TON!
For HP soaping, use more water in your lye/water mixture. It seems to help promote faster saponification and the excess is all driven off anyway.

***Makes we wonder if doing the 2 stage saponification would nullify any superfatting of all of the oils besides the stearic acid. I have read some literature that states it wont, but that was for a cold process soap. :shrug: Something else to think about***

Keep the lid on the crock pot. I have seen this advised both ways. I think it helps retain the heat and cook faster.

Addition of Potassium Carbonate….. Supposedly this makes soap easier to stir in HP soap and lets it actually be poured into a mold. Haven’t tried it yet, but looking at it and wondering. This is also mentioned in many liquid soap making books. This is an Alkali as well, so needs to be neutralized with fats/oils. I don’t have any values and haven’t run across it in any of the lye calculators.

Cream Soap: Like the kind you get when you use Coates or TOBS. I think using 100% KOH, Potassium Carbonate, and adding some water back in after the initial cooking is the correct way to go but there isn’t a ton of info out there. Supposedly there is an awesome yahoo forum just for Cream Soaping…. But it’s hard to get accepted. Haven’t tried as of yet.

Most soap forums recommend about a 5% SF for soaps. When I made the ½ pound batches I used a 7% SF. This was due to the batches being so small that a slight mis-measurement would result in a batch of soap with too much lye. The 7% SF helps minimize this potential with a little larger buffer.
With the very small batches (1 pound and under) measure in grams vs ounces.

Thinking about adding some Shea Butter. High in Stearic Acid so can substitute a bit and great for the skin.

RECIPES:
Soap 1A:
60% Tallow
20% Castor Oil
12% Stearic Acid
8% Palm Kernel Oil

½ pound batch made with 70% KOH/30% NaOH with a 7% lye discount.
Soft pliable soap, easily moldable. Lathers well


Soap 1B:
46% Stearic Acid
35% Tallow
11% Coconut Oil
8% Castor Oil

½ pound batch, 70% NOH/30%NaOH, 7% lye discount
Soft and pliable, lathers well


Soap 2A:
Lard 46%
Stearic Acid 30%
Coconut Oil 15%
Castor Oil 7%
Lanolin 2%

Trial #1:
1 pound batch, 50/50 Lye, 5% SF
Resulted in a harder bar than goal. Can still imprint thumb nail, not to hard overall. Lathers well and a great shave soap. Thinking of milling/re-batching this to try and add scent.

Trial #2:
½ pound batch, 100% KOH, 7% SF
Very soft soap. Kind of tacky feel to touch. Think this might be the path to a true cream soap. Not sure what next as far as that is concerned. Lathers and shaves very well.



Soap 3A: (MdC clone)
52% Stearic Acid
48% Coconut Oil
Glycerin SF to 5%
100%KOH

*Trial #2 and #3 variations on 3A

Trial #1: ½ pound batch, SF with glycerin once soap was done and mixed well. Lathers well (bit fluffy), shaves ok. DRIES OUT SKIN BAD----FAILURE (think I messed up my measurements)

Trial #2: 55% Stearic, 45% Coconut Oil, 70%KOH/30% NaOH, 5% glycerin SF
Very soft soap, lathers and shaves well.

Trial #3: 65% Stearic Acid, 25% Glycerin, 10% Coconut Oil. (found this recipe in an old soaping book)
*calculate lye discount for stearic and coconut oil only
Very, very soft soap, lathers and shaves well