Thread: burning sensation

Well I've been talking with coleen and I believe we've narrowed the problem down to the clay in her shaving soap. she's going to send out something that should work for me!!?!
I must say that this is by far the best customer service I have ever received!!! Who would've thought you could get such personal service on such an impersonal device as the computer? thank you so much coleen!!


Mark

Hey There!! I wanted to say that I'm excited myself!

Mark is quite the detective and went after these "burning" questions with all the tenacity of a pitt bull, so that has made my job easy! It'll be fun to see if my experiment works. Now I know ya'll are thinkin "what experiment" all I need to do is to leave the clay out....right! The simple answer is Yes, but I have been experimenting with an ingredient that comes from the plant world that is not a clay....to help give more slick.

So this becomes the experiment....I'll be sending Mark two different soaps (blind) it will be interesting to see what happens....

Of course at this point Mark has no idea he's just become part of my experiment...lol "Surprise".....

Soapmistress

Originally Posted by JMS

Well I've been talking with coleen and I believe we've narrowed the problem down to the clay in her shaving soap. she's going to send out something that should work for me!!?!
I must say that this is by far the best customer service I have ever received!!! Who would've thought you could get such personal service on such an impersonal device as the computer? thank you so much coleen!!


Mark

Yep. Colleen is the best kept secret in the shaving world. Oh, and enjoy being part of her experiment - she aims to take over the world one beard at a time

Originally Posted by JMS

Well I've been talking with coleen and I believe we've narrowed the problem down to the clay in her shaving soap. she's going to send out something that should work for me!!?

This is a common problem with glycerine soaps. I believe classic's glycerine soaps had this problem for awhile (and may still have for all I know). I've switched exclusively hard soaps because they don't use clays which seems to eliminate the primary irritant for me. I've never had an irritation problem with any hard soap. Unfortunately hard soaps don't have the range and intensity of scents like the glycerine soaps or creams, which kind of sucks.

MParker,

I don't see why hard soaps, as you call them, would be any different in terms of fragrance than glycerine ones. Both are fragranced with essential oils. By hard soap do you mean bath soap with no added glycerine? Glycerine is a liquid so you can't make a soap exclusively from this.

Also the addition of clay does not depend on the type of soap base used, as I understand it anyway. The clay is there to let the razor slip so is added regardles of soap base. Commercial soaps use a silicone compound for this.

I don't mean to sound off, I just can't see any logic to your reasoning. Perhaps I have misunderstood what you meant, I suspect this mat be the case

Colleen, just an idea......perhaps you could also experiment with the type of clay. I know you use Kaolin but there are others available, as I'm sure you already know. I use Bentonite in my soaps for example. The veggy alternative sounds interesting too.

Originally Posted by Bobbo

MParker,
I don't see why hard soaps, as you call them, would be any different in terms of fragrance than glycerine ones. Both are fragranced with essential oils. By hard soap do you mean bath soap with no added glycerine? Glycerine is a liquid so you can't make a soap exclusively from this.

Well, I am not a soapmaker (ok one batch, but not a serious soapmaker like colleen). Hard soaps are made with oil, lye, and water. This makes traditional soap. You can play around with different oils, and different lyeil ratios, and add scents to them, lather enhancers and so forth. You don't need to add glycerine to hard soaps; it's present naturally, though nearly all commercial soap has it removed during manufacture by curdling the soap with salt because the glycerine is very valuable by itself - this started happening during the late 18th century because of glycerine's newly-discovered importance to the armaments industry.

Getting a strong scent in a hard soap is tricky to do because the lye tends to break the essential oils down - it's just another oil to it. Also, hard soaps dissolve much more slowly than glycerine soaps (a puck of T&H or Williams can last a year of daily shaves), so even if you get the same percentage of scent oils in a hard soap the aroma levels will be much lower.

Originally Posted by Bobbo

Also the addition of clay does not depend on the type of soap base used, as I understand it anyway. The clay is there to let the razor slip so is added regardles of soap base. Commercial soaps use a silicone compound for this.

Glycerine soaps need the bentonite to provide slip. Hard soaps don't need it, so they generally don't have it. I'd like to know your source for the presence of silicone in commercial shaving soaps, I've never heard of this and it wasn't listed in the ingredients of my T&H or Harris soaps.

MP, I know they use it for the Wilkinson shaving soap.

I know they use poly organo siloxanes for shaving cream as I do consultany work for oleochemical producers including soap manufacturers. Common ones are the methyl and phenyl siloxanes. Actually the term "silicone" is actually incorrect, chemically speaking, but is used nonetheless for some bizare reason. Silicones are excellent lubricants and so are used in metal working/automotive applications as well as in cosmetics.

OK, so what you are calling glycerine soap is just a hard soap with added glycerine, rather than a soap based on an artificial surfactant such as Linear alkylbenzene sulphonates.

You probably have a good point about the scents. Softer soaps would probably be more fragrant.

Not all shave soaps have a slip agent in them. They are not essential. Maye the label will say something like PPS or PMS or similar......

(but related somewhat, lol)

30 years ago I lived in New Jersey and frequently passed an International Flavors & Fragrances factory... AFAIK it's still there. You never knew what it would smell like in the vicinity... some days it was cookies, some days it was coffee, or aftershave, or perfume. They make the synthetic fragrances and flavorings used by commercial manufacturers in producing soaps, perfumes, foodstuffs, etc. Virtually all mass produced soaps, perfumes, deodorants, and many foods use these "fake" flavorings and fragrances in place of the real thing. Foodstuffs generally list "artificial flavorings" in their ingredients list to let you know why that strawberry flavored drink can taste and smell like strawberry and not have any strawberries in it. But non-food products don't necessarily do so... although most of them use imitation fragrances from someone like IFF. As I recall they had cosmetic and perfume outlet stores on-site.

I'm sure they only sell wholesale in large quantities, but the list of fragrances they produce gives you a good idea of what's used to add the scent to commercial soaps and fragrance products. AFAIK, what they were producing was a chemical designed to smell like something natural... so who knows what's really is in a commercially made cake of soap or can of shaving cream... the scent agents might be completely artificial. So when you decide you're allergic to something, you have the added dimension of whether it's the natural organic product you're allergic to... or the imitation one!

In the [IFF Fragrance list] if you click on an item in the left column it gives you the chemical composition, etc. for the fragrance.

I have just copied the above link to put in my Secret Notebook Great source of information Joe! Thank You....

Colleen