Thread: "Premium" handmade soap?

There certainly are no shortages of high-quality commercial and hand-made soaps. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at soap-making. My question is, what would be some of the "best" ingredients if cost was not a concern?

Some ingredients I thought should be included in shaving soap would be:

lanolin
bentonite
essential oils (I lean towards Bay and Sandalwood)
and???

Originally Posted by Chelicerae

There certainly are no shortages of high-quality commercial and hand-made soaps. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at soap-making. My question is, what would be some of the "best" ingredients if cost was not a concern?

Some ingredients I thought should be included in shaving soap would be:

lanolin
bentonite
essential oils (I lean towards Bay and Sandalwood)
and???

Well, you will certainly need soap to put all the other things in. You can either make your own using NaOH and fats or reprocess a commercial soap. If you go through the reprocessing route, you might want to add glycerine. Most commercial soap manufacturers remove the glycerine produced in the saponification reaction so they can sell it. Read the ingredients of the soap you are using as a base. If the ingredients include sodium chloride (salt) then the glycerine has been removed. Some commerecial producers add some glycerine back to the final product. If so, it will be in the ingredients (along with the sodium chloride). If neither sodium chloride or glycerine is listed, then the soap probably still contains the natural glycerine produced by saponification.

Originally Posted by Chelicerae

There certainly are no shortages of high-quality commercial and hand-made soaps. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at soap-making. My question is, what would be some of the "best" ingredients if cost was not a concern?

Some ingredients I thought should be included in shaving soap would be:

lanolin
bentonite
essential oils (I lean towards Bay and Sandalwood)
and???

The best soap that I know is Martin de Candre and it has not bentonite, nor lanolin. Maybe the real talent to make soaps is to make good soap.

The essential oils can be irritant to the sking when overloaded in the formula.

If you're making soap not just for yourself bear in mind some people are allergic to wool, lanolin or arsenic which is used as a sheep dip. If your source of lanolin is pure it should be fine.

I would research what Martin de Candre does, and try to repeat that process. The quality of their soaps is noticeably different. Hard to pinpoint why, but they just are. My family agrees.