Originally Posted by
Blackpool
It's only Value Bath Soap (3x125g bars) from Morrisons supermarket! I just needed a basic tallowate soap, and though it also contains the ubiquitous palm kernel oil, it is mostly tallow. I have also found a very decent olive oil soap called 'Oliva' in Holland and Barrett, the health food shop for £1/$1.62, and a glycerin and coconut soap in The Body Shop for £2/$3.25. The cheap bath soap seems to be extremely similar to those little tablets of soap you used to find on hotel basins, marked 'Buttermilk'.
I have just been cutting corners really. I used to make soap for Christmas presents, for which basically you need fats/oils and sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda (drain cleaner!). But when you start mixing different fats and oils together, each one has a different saponific value, meaning you need to add more sodium hydroxide for one fat, less for another, and so on and so on. Then you have to leave it about eight weeks to thoroughly cure.
If anyone fancies having a go at it, rather than taking my haphazard advice, there are I am sure plenty of really expert websites available (but I wonder if anyone else has discovered that the very new invention of the rubber-like silicon cookware roasting tins are the answer to a soap maker's prayers). I'm quickly talking my way into starting again! The most important ingredient in shaving soap in my humble opinion is the clay, without which, as you will know when you've had to make do with ordinary soap, the razor acts on your face like the shoe on a drum brake!