Bar soap turned into shower gel...can this be done?

[Jaccart789]

Hello everyone! I have some questions and I haven't been able to get any real answers. Let me first introduce myself... my name is Jaclyn and I am a new soap maker and I am in love with all things bath and beauty. I have been studying like crazy, reading posts and watching tons of videos over the past 4 months.
My question... one of my first projects was to make shower gel and I actually came out pretty good using lye. I followed a tutorial on youtube, but what I wasn't crazy about is wasn't as bubbly as my normal store bought gel, plus the process was very tedious; however, what I do like is not having all the harmful chemicals found in store bought, so I want to try this again.

Back to the question... on youtube I found several other people shaving down bar soaps and adding it to boiling water. I would use my own CP soap. They melt it down, let it sit over night, stick blend the next day when it has gelled over and they bottle it. My question... can this work? People swear by it, but don't you need a preservative? I like that it isn't the long tedious process but I don't want to cut corners for a bacteria laden shower gel either.

Any thoughts? Thank you!

 

[lsg]

Anytime you add water, use a preservative, that is my advice. Regular bar soap doesn't need a preservative because of the pH, however when you thin down the soap with liquid that changes. My experience when grating cp soap and adding water is that it turns into a "snot"-like substance. It will still not lather as well as commercial bath gels because they contain surfactants. Not all surfactants are evil. Go to the swiftcraftymonkey blog and type in bath gel. Susan has a lot of good advice and some recipes.

 

[Jaccart789]

Thank you so much for answering... "Snot like" is definitely not the desired outcome lol! I will take your suggestion educate myself more. Thanks again! Finally an answer!


Sent from my iPhone using Soap Making