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I prefer the sandalwood FO from Bulk Apothecary to Sensuous Sandalwood from BB. Bulk Apothecary's FO smells much more like actual sandalwood to me, BB's version has some perfumy notes that aren't offensive, but aren't sandalwood either. It also has a reputation for fading badly. My sample...

That recipe will make a decent shave soap. I have not used my castor oil containing shave soaps enough to tell if it adds much, but initially the lather wasn't as good with that much castor. My personal favorite recipe is 50% SA (or soy wax) 30% tallow 10% coconut oil 5% shea butter 5%...

I'm not too impressed -- not enough stearic acid, too much oleic, and I'm not all that frond of castor oil in shave soap (other people like it though). Replace half the Kokum butter and half the coconut oil with soy wax, and you will have a much nicer shaving soap. Or make a small amount and...

0.1% to 0.5%. Use citric acid at the same rate. I also use EDTA at 0.5% to help with my very hard water.

Lol, two drops of Drakkar in 70 gr of soap was too much for me, although it was bearable six months later. Not my scent. Most u-tubers use enough soap for an army for each shave, far more than is either necessary or desirable. You want light, slick lather with lots of water, it must be shiny...

I think the classic definition of a mild soap is one that doesn't leave your skin feeling dry or "tight" after rinsing it off and drying. I suspect this is in reference to old fashioned "lye heavy" soap made on the farm by "guess & by God" as the Newfie's would say. A fully cured lye heavy...

It will be very nice shaving soap. My take on shave soap composition is that as long as you have 50-60% stearic plus palmitic acids and around 30% oleic/linoleic acids, the actual oils don't matter very much. High saturated fatty acids give you fine, dense, stable lather that holds water well...

Brambleberry's Drakkar is mighty powerful stuff indeed. I would have used about six drops, maybe four, and it would still be way too much for me, never did like Drakkar. Fortunately, it does fade somewhat with time, and in a month or so won't be so strong. You may find that recipe to be...

It can take a while for saponification to complete, and the soap will change quite a bit over the first week or so after you make it, too. Did you use the 95% option for the lye when you ran a soap calculator? KOH is normally 95%, not 100% "lye", mainly due to water (and some carbonate). If...

For a small supply of tallow, you can just buy cheap (high fat) ground beef and save the fat after you brown it. Don't let the water all boil away, you don't want to get the fat smoking hot or it will smell like a hamburger right off the grill when you make soap with it. I use a large spoon to...

Should be. Olive oil is slow to saponify. A little cooler won't hurt though for your first soaps -- unless your goal is to get the soap into the mold as fast as possible slower soaping is better for learning!

I would agree, although I've not make pine tar soap (maybe someday). Fast saponification in CP is going to make for very stiff, unweildly batter. HP is a must for stearic acid base soaps, I'd assume it was equally true for pine tar for the same reason -- lots of free fatty acids that react...

Hand mixer will require a very long time to emulsify -- keep stirring! This will probably take several hours, just as if you were using a spoon. The stick blender emulsifies the lye and oil much faster, which makes for faster soapmaking. Your first batches may or may not make soap if you...

You will need to warm the oils above 140F to dissolve the beeswax. You will then need to allow them to cool somewhat to prevent overheating. I'd guess you have an accelerating FO, compounded by a lot of coconut oil and sugars. Your soap is overheating and will smell "cooked" as a result, and...

I've always gotten large numbers of shaves per blade or cartridge, must have rhino hide for skin. Sparse beard helps too, I think. Polsilvers are nice (should get lots of shaves from them) and German made Wilkinson Sword blades are very good. I'm also impressed by SuperMax Blue Diamond...

Italian Barber and West Coast Shaving are good sources, but I get my blades from eBay mostly. And with some care, we are really talking low cost here -- I'm averaging more than 50 shaves each on DE blades (yes, 50). Top of the line blades are more like 90 shaves, low end ones are 25-30. I use...

For me, of rather limited experience, it's a universal. Solution traces, gets rather thick, then suddenly goes slack and "ricey" for a bit, then smooths out and eventually goes to the "vaseline" stage if I have enough water. Still zappy at the "applesauce" stage, zap is gone by the vaseline...

Don't know about legs as I only shave my face, but I suspect legs are similar. The advantages are much sharper blades that shave closer with less discomfort. The disadvantages are that DE razors do not inherently control the angle of the blades, you must do that yourself, and carelessness or...

Yup, looks just like coarse ricing. It's only too hot if it volcanos on you and you don't catch it in time to stir it down. In fact, if you use high temps (200F oils) fresh hot lye, and "heating" oils or sugar, you can have the soap ready to pour into the mold in 30 min (aka fluid hot...

HO oils should be quite similar to olive oil. I did get some DOS in the canola/soy oil soap I made, but the distribution of it makes me think it was the lard I added as superfat. The oil was used for frying donuts several years ago and I wanted to use it up, so I soaped at zero SF and added a...