# Yet another shaving thread



## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

In researching shaving soap, I ended up at this very enabling web site 
So, now I have two shave soap recipes (one for me, one for the wife), I have several bar soaps I love, CP and HP.

SO, my next level of adventure is color in CP soaps, and liquid and cream soaps.

October-ish of last year I made a cream soap out of steric acid, coconut oil, Shea butter, and sunflower oil.
I turned out a bit odd in texture, but fairly certain I waaaay over cooked it, and "rehydrated it" wrong to get back to batch weight.
Regardless, it is still a good soap.  I add jojoba beads to some , and the wife uses it as exfoliating face wash.

I tried shaving with some, and it worked surprisingly well.  Lacked some of the volume I would normlaly expect from a shave soap.

So.. here I am.

Yesterday I cooked up a batch of cream soap, specifically to be used as shave soap.
Used the SBM Crafter's calculator and made a small, 8.8 oz batch (I normally weigh in grams but this tool does not offer that option.)
Super creamed to 3%,

Looking back on the Songwind thread, the original recipe was 52% steric acid and 48% coconut with a lot of glycerine.

Sounds promising.

Looking at a common shave cream (Proraso green), the over all amounts seem to fit with the ingredient list there as well (they and a non-soap surfactant in small amounts).

It cooked up fairly quick (35 minutes total).  No zap, made bubbles in water.
Set the crock in a pre-heated oven, at 180F, and turned off oven.

There it sat overnight.

Here it is after taking the lid off.
(please ignore the mess in the pictures, I am in process of smoking 14 lbs of pork and making sauce, have not yet cleaned it all up.)


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

Turned it out of the pot, a bit "ricey" and has some small "tapioca beads" of soap in the mix.  So I am thinking I either did not mix ell enough, or had too low initial temps when adding lye to steric/coconut mix.


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

Here it is whipped up.
Looks pretty good.  Added maybe a table spoon of boiling water to help consistency.


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

While cleaning up, I had to test it.
Lots of lather, very easily created.
Nice and slick, later was not quite as thick and creamy as I prefer, was a bit more "foamy", but would defiantly shave comfortably. 
I have hopes this will rot well and turn into a good shave cream.


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

Here is the lather 20 minutes latter.  Definitely had too much water in the brush, but lather held up well past the time I need to shave.


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## Kcryss (Apr 2, 2020)

Nice soap! Shave soap is on my to-do list and I would have gotten it done by now, but the virus has increased my workload so it will have to wait a bit.

Edit: Then again, looking at that lather, I may have to pull an all nighter just so I can get to it sooner rather than later.


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

Kcryss said:


> Nice soap! Shave soap is on my to-do list and I would have gotten it done by now, but the virus has increased my workload so it will have to wait a bit.
> 
> Edit: Then again, looking at that lather, I may have to pull an all nighter just so I can get to it sooner rather than later.



For a small batch, and that is really ALL I need, it was quite quick.  Maybe an hour prep and do, and then just let it sit over night.  
Whipping took all of 10 minutes.
Cleanup was easy as well.

Now the hard part, letting it cure for 4-6 months.
I did keep a smaller amount out in a separate container for "testing."  

If this turns out well, and I have high hopes, this would be roughly six months of daily  face shaving for me.

Some lessons learned for me... steric acid melts around 160.  So, make sure the steric and coconut are hot enough that when you add lye solution, you stay above the 160-ish mark on temp.
Should give a smoother, more uniform result.
(Soap around 170 is my plan for the next round.)


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## Kcryss (Apr 2, 2020)

Dumfrey said:


> For a small batch, and that is really ALL I need, it was quite quick.  Maybe an hour prep and do, and then just let it sit over night.
> Whipping took all of 10 minutes.
> Cleanup was easy as well.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the tips! I routinely soap pretty hot anyway (HP) so it should be easy to keep at or above 160. I seem to have a harder time getting the temp below 200. lol


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## Dumfrey (Apr 2, 2020)

Kcryss said:


> Thanks for the tips! I routinely soap pretty hot anyway (HP) so it should be easy to keep at or above 160. I seem to have a harder time getting the temp below 200. lol



Then this is the recipe for you!
I LOVE cream soap.  The amount of glycerine used makes for a very non-drying soap.
The first cream I made was only 20% coconut oil, and it is an amazing shower soap.

My next goal is to try a middle of the road and do 30% coconut, 52% steric, and 18%??  Possibly tallow.
In HP shave sopa, I love what tallow adds.  Not sure that will rally transfer to cream soap.

Off to research commercial soap based creams!


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## Kcryss (Apr 2, 2020)

Dumfrey said:


> Then this is the recipe for you!
> I LOVE cream soap.  The amount of glycerine used makes for a very non-drying soap.
> The first cream I made was only 20% coconut oil, and it is an amazing shower soap.
> 
> ...



Thanks! Let me know what you find.


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## Dumfrey (Apr 10, 2020)

I have not abandoned this thread.
I managed to drop my small batch scale (good down to .1 gram).
Have another on order, but its nonessential, so will be about three weeks until it arrives.
I do have a larger scale, its a bit flaky at a single gram, but 8.8oz batch again.. is honestly way too much soap!
Not sure I trust the current scale for smaller values.
The plan was to try 52% steric acid, 30% coconut and 18% tallow.

I think I may wait on the new, replacement scale so I can do smaller (50 gram) batches.
I want to compare a base recipe of ;
52% steric, 30% coconut, 18% (tallow, shea, palm) against each other.
making 3 8.8 oz batches of each would be crazy amounts of soap.


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## Kcryss (Apr 10, 2020)

Good to see you're still working on it. I finally made some a couple of weeks ago. I modified of course ... I can't seem to help myself with making changes to everything. lol
Here's what I used plus glycerin after the cook:





And the result. Still very soft, I used dual lye (25/75). Tried it out and it works great!


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## Dumfrey (Apr 10, 2020)

Glad it turned out well!
How much glycerin did you end up adding?

The recipie I make turns out the consistency of cake frosting/cream cheese icing.

The shave soap I make is also very soft; firm putty,  just shy of soft for a bar. 
I am not to fussed about texture.


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## Dumfrey (May 24, 2020)

This batch curnig nicely, and will be pretty decnet in a few more months.
About every two weeks i test a a sample.
So far, saves well  enough, lacks the slickness I prefer, but seems to be on par with other commercial shave creams in this regard.
Was a bit harsh at first (surprise with 1% superfat built in as a margin).
But seems to be mellowing very well.
Last shave was in the no longer harsh stage, so guessing I ahve waitd out the last of the residual lye.

New batch cooking now.

50% steric acid
20% myristic acid
10% palm
10% shea
10 coconut

Cooked hotter, and seems to have better texture than last batch.


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## Dumfrey (Oct 15, 2020)

Posting a follow up for any one that stumble son this latter.
So bit of a delay in getting back... Work + Life = no time to soap.
But, this did allow the cream soap plenty of time to age.

verdict: All versions of the cram soap I made performed decently as shaving soap.
That being said, a decent shave soap (as opposed to cram soap) recipe works much better.

Main problem I had with the cream soap is the volume of water and glycerine needed to keep it "cream" dilute the soap concentration.
So I as using too much water when building a lather.
Also, the lather is not a voluminous as with a good soap.

The remaining cream soap (and there is a lot), is getting mixed with Jojoba beads for shower scrub.  Works better there.


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