Originally Posted by
Pete123
There are a few tings in this post I don't agree with and will share some more detail to explain why.
Consider fragrance for a moment. I make and scent a lot of soap, alcohol based aftershave, pre-shave oil and after shave balm. I also study essential and fragrance oil.
There have been many times the that the base, which are the ingredients excluding fragrance, work well. I'll then work on various scents, keeping the formula and results in a spreadsheet. So, the only variable is the fragrance oil or essential oil. Some burn and some don't. Due to there being only one variable, I'm confident that my assertion is correct.
As an example, I recently developed what I though was the perfect Bay Rum, though it set me on fire. It had several fragrances, such as black pepper and cinnamon, which I suspected to be the problem. I reformulated it, with the only changes being in the fragrance/essential oil and it worked perfectly.
The ability of of scent oils to cause problems is sufficiently known that manufacturers advise when to keep an eye out for this.
Along the same lines of sharing accurate information, consider soap. One of the two key ingredients in soap is lye. One use of lye is to dissolve animal carcasses. It is nasty stuff. One of the basic rules of soap making is to test every batch to ensure all of the lye saponified. Either forgetting this step, or failing to mix the soap sufficiently can lead to lye being in the soap.
Keep in mind that most shaving soap companies are small mom and pop shops - it isn't only the artisans. Many aren't sophisticated enough to have industrial controls like larger companies. Castle Forbes, which I consider the best shaving cream of all, started in 1996 in a converted dairy barn. Not sure if they have moved or not.
Unrelated to the post I quoted, though commenting on what some others in this thread have said, I find many of the artisan's to have awesome soap.