Thread: any homemade soap recipes?

i tried making shaving soap about a month ago and finally i was able to use it after a month of curing. its good soap except for the fact that the lather doesn't last. i can get a lot of lather pretty fast but it disappears quickly. it also leaves my skin very dry after. i tried a few extra drops of glycerin but doesn't help much. anyone have any recipes/tips to share?

I can't help you, but I think others may be more able to help you if you post the recipe and process you used.

some very useful info here:
Shaving Soap - Straight Razor Place Wiki

I am a professional soap maker and can offer some tips - The soap may have come out drying for a few reasons: You may have used too much lye, you may have used drying oils or you may be allergic to some of the ingredients. I'm not sure what recipe you used but make sure you are taking a good lye discount or are superfatting (adding additional oil to the recipe). I usually discount 8-12%.

Using more than 20 - 30% coconut oil, palm oil or tallow can be irritating and drying to your skin. Coconut oil provides fluffy lather but you must incorporate more nutritive oils like almond, avocado, shea (unless allergic to latex), evening primrose, or olive oil. Avoid cheap filler oils like soy/plain vegetable oil.

You will need to add a significant amount of castor oil to make a fluffy, creamy, stable lather. I would recommend usage of about 10% of all oils. This makes a softer soap so balance it out with cocoa butter and coconut oil.

I have a list of base oil properties if you are interested at http://site.momandpopsoapshop.com/Ba...roperties.html I hope that is helpful for you!

The soap you just made is obtained by a process called saponification ( Saponification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) in which the lye, a strong base, reacts with the oils you added (triglycerides Triglyceride - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) forming the soap (salts of the fatty acids; Fatty acid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and glycerin.

Depending on the purpose of the soap, a certain profile of fatty acids ("size") is desired. The size of the "tail" determines some of the properties of the fatty acids, and ultimately of the soap itself. Short chains are used for cleansing and longer tails give more creaminess to the lather but there has to be a certain balance. If your soap has too many short chain fatty acids, it could be very drying, even if it has been completely neutralized. I would suggest increasing the size of some of your fatty acids, this should lead to creamier and more stable lather.

The other issue that should be evident from this is that it is irrelevant what oils (triglycerides) you use in your soap, as long as you preserve the correct profile of fatty acids, different mixes would produce the correct match. The secret of "soapmaking" is not in the oils you use but the fatty acids that you produce. For superfating the oil (triglyceride) is what matters.

I hope that you did not make too much of this soap. For further trials, I would I would make smaller batches, change only one variable per batch and write my observations.

Al raz.

Originally Posted by chris21908

i tried making shaving soap about a month ago and finally i was able to use it after a month of curing. its good soap except for the fact that the lather doesn't last. i can get a lot of lather pretty fast but it disappears quickly. it also leaves my skin very dry after. i tried a few extra drops of glycerin but doesn't help much. anyone have any recipes/tips to share?

i have failed several times because it has left my face extra dry and the lather on my face disappears quickly. i took a break from making my own shave soap and right now im just using my samples i purchased from the shave den. they are great products!

i have read some of the tips given by soapmomma and il definitely up the % on castor oil since i only used 4% on my last small batch of shaving soap. il also drop my coconut % down from 22% to maybe something like 14. il definitely keep you guys updated with my results of my next shave soap attempt.

Originally Posted by chris21908

i have failed several times because it has left my face extra dry and the lather on my face disappears quickly. i took a break from making my own shave soap and right now im just using my samples i purchased from the shave den. they are great products!

i have read some of the tips given by soapmomma and il definitely up the % on castor oil since i only used 4% on my last small batch of shaving soap. il also drop my coconut % down from 22% to maybe something like 14. il definitely keep you guys updated with my results of my next shave soap attempt.

Good luck!

I started making my own soap about a year ago and I have gotten to the point that I can use it for just about everything. I use the hot process method to make liquid soap using safflower oil and it works pretty well. Safflower works well with my skin and is pretty much unscented. I have tried sunflower oil, too, but it does have a light smell to it. I have found that fractionated coconut oil is a bit too strong/drying and will start to leave a weird smell after a couple of weeks. I add a lot of glycerin to thicken it up and it works as a shampoo and for shaving. It lathers up pretty well and faster than a puck of solid soap does, too. The only problem I have with it is that it does dry up and I find myself reapplying lather before I make a full pass. I've thought about trying to make a cream before, but the stuff I have now is working good enough for me not to bother with it given my time constraints. I have used it as a laundry detergent, too, but I find that I run out of soap pretty quickly when I do use it for that and it takes at least 4 or 5 hours to make a 2-3 gallon batch.

I have tried my hand at bar soap, which is easier and faster to make, but it's easier to fix and modify the liquid soap if I screw something up.

I know olive oil based soaps do not seem to lather well for shave soaps IME, and also Shave soaps are way different then hand soap recipes you find all over the web.

If you're still interested, snowdrift has a good lye calculator to get you in the ballpark.

Snowdrift Farm Soap Calculator

The NaOH will give you bar soap. KOH will give you liquid soap. You can use both, too, to make a cream or liquid. I like this calculator because of the glycerin function. As stated before, different oils and acids will react to the lye differently and you have to adjust accordingly. The lye discount is figured from the purity of your lye and the water it has absorbed. Even if you could get pure lye, it will still still need to be discounted because of absorbed humidity.