Thread: Handmade Soaps

What's the difference between lard/tallow and lye based "hand soap" and lard/tallow and lye based "shaving soap" ? Marketing spin ? Ingredients ? Production processes ?

Thanks.

Ingredients and the percentages of ingredients used. Shave soap is a much different type of soap than regular hand/bath soaps.

All soap is made with lye. If there is no lye in it, it is not soap. Shaving soap uses different ingredients and different everything than regular soap.

That is something I am trying to figure out for myself. As I have mentioned in other threads, I make my own soap that I use for bathing, shampoo and laundry soap. Prior to switching to straight razor shaving complete with brush, I'd just use the soap i made for showering with, to shave with. Its nice and slick because of fall the oils in it and gives a good shave. But now I'm trying to design a recipe for shave soap. The difference I'm seeing is lather stability. Vegetable oil based soaps do not contain enough stearic acid to make stable lather. When using my brush, by body bar soap, which all veggie based, will make lots of lather. But stop working the lather with the brush, count to 20 and the lather deflates like you are dumping sand on it. Tallow/lard based soaps contain more stearic acid and have longer lasting/more stable lather. But I think the sacrifice one makes by going "all natural" as far as soap is concerned is the quality of lather. Even tallow soaps can not equal the stable lather produced by big business/less natural shave soaps, some of which contain the famous surfactant SLS among other chemicals which serve as foaming agents. Its a give and take I guess. Also, as it has been mentioned, true soap uses lye (sodium hydroxide) to convert oils(fats) to soap. But most of what is sold nowadays (body wash, hand soap, bar soap) isn't really soap at all, its detergent.

edit:spelling and one additional thought