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I had all of my recipes on bits of paper and saved in various places on my PC, so I finally bit the bullet and got myself a copy of soapmaker 3 so I could keep everything in one place. What a great bit of software. All of my recipes are now in one place, I can keep track of how much it is all...

I was trying to figure out a way to get temperature sensitive ingredients into my HP soap (EOs and lanolin mainly) and I came up with the idea of using a meat grinder. So I waited for my soap to cool, stuck it through the grinder on a coarse setting and broke up the resulting soap 'spaghetti'...

I regularly use both NaOH and KOH in my shaving soaps.If I want to get 60% of my lye from KOH and 40% from NaOH what I do is this: For a 500g batch, I enter the oils into soapcalc as percentages, then calculate the amount of KOH required for a 200g batch (40% of the total oils) and the amount of...

I made a batch of this yesterday, I was low on coconut oil, so I had to lower it a bit and up the stearic acid a bit, but this stuff is fantastic! I thought all that coconut oil would produce a lather that was too fluffy, but it's brilliant. Put a damp brush anywhere near it and it explodes with...

It's funny you should ask that, I've got a few different shaving soaps curing at the moment and I did a test lather on them all this evening just to see how they are coming along. My favourite one is the one with the 6% shea butter. It has slightly less lather (not by much) than the same recipe...

I tried some shea butter in my shaving soap, I used 6% after the cook.

Hi I'm keen to incorporate lanolin in my shaving soap but I'm not sure how much to put in, does anyone have any suggestions? The other thing is I've read that lanolin is temperature sensitive and shouldn't be used over 110 f. My soap is still softish at that temp but no where near soft enough...

Hi All I've been experimenting with shaving soaps recently and because of the high stearic acid content and the KOH I've been using I've HP'd it. I usually do it at about 170 for an hou and a half or so until it passes the zap test. I just wondered if anyone knows how much cooking time /...

I like the idea of mixing the oils separately with the different lyes and them mixing it all up after, I guess it would allow you to to fine tune the lather a bit more. I haven't made any more shaving soap since I did a palm based version of the tallow one, I'm still testing them out. I've got a...

It would be great if you could let me know how you get on with your shaving soap, whatever recipe you use. What started as a weekend project for me seems to have turned into a bit of an obsession :D

What I actually did was calculate the amount of each type of lye for a 60/40 split of the oils at a superfat of 2%. In the batch above I used 500g of oils in total, so I put the percentages of oils into soapcalc and calculated the amount of NaOH for a 300g batch and KOH for a 200g batch. Off the...

I've been shaving with it exclusivley for a week now, and I realise I might be a bit biased, but it is pretty good. I'm not sure there is such a thing as too conditioning for a shaving soap. And the shea butter gives it quite a nice slip without feeling greasy. In fact I've just made another...

Let me know how you get on with your shaving soap, I'd be interested to know how it turns out.

That is the theory. The thing is, shaving soap is more than just a soap with clay in it. I can't speak for everyone obviously, but the things I look for in a shaving soap are: It must be a stable lather, I like to load my brush and still use it 15 minutes later for my 'touch up' pass. It needs...

I've never really liked the idea of clay in a shaving soap. I don't know why, It's just one of those irrational dislikes that we can all be prone to from time to time I suppose. I think it's partly because I use a straight razor and I'm not convinced it it will do the edge any good, and partly...

I've been messing about with with shaving soap recipes lately and have recently made a pretty good one one (if I do say so myself :)) you can find it here http://www.soapmakingforum.com/f34/another-shaving-bar-critique-33141/. HTH

Hi, I've just tried my second shaving soap experiment. After trawling the inernet for the ingredients of the top end soaps on the market, this is the recipe I came up with: 40% Stearic acid 30% Beef tallow 20% Shea butter 10% Coconut oil. with a 2% superfat and 40% of the lye was KOH. I...

Hi All, this is a bit of a long post please bear with me :-D. I have recently hadsome success in making a shaving soap that does what I want it to do, theproblem is it sets very quickly even at relatively high temps. This makes itdifficult to get into moulds, and more or less impossible to...

My first batch of shaving soap was quite poor really, not enough creamy lather, and what little there was disapeared after two and a half seconds. So I went back to the drawing board, looked at the ingredients of some top notch shaving soaps and decided I'd try to copy them as best I could. What...

Out of thin air really. I'd like to increase latherability (I may have just made up that last word) without sacfrificing hardness too much, and 20% seemed as good a starting point as any. It will no doubt turn into a fairly long running experiment tho'. And you're right about Woolfat, it's a...